Lions, Monkeys and Friends, Oh My!

This morning I woke up, straightened the house and headed to Heathrow Airport.  As it is a holiday weekend, traffic was VERY slow and I ended up arriving at the arrivals gate soon after my friends arrived, but nevertheless, today, I got to welcome four great friends from my college days.  Emily, Blair, Amanda and I are all sorority sisters, meeting eleven years ago soon after going through recruitment at Auburn University.  Brian, Amanda's husband is a great sport and traveling with the girls this week, too!  I'm so excited that they are here for we always make wonderful memories together and spend much of our time bent over laughing.

My goal today was to keep the gang awake until a reasonable time to go to bed, so that they could get a good night sleep and wake up on the right time zone.  I wanted to find something that would keep them entertained, but not be too vigorous nor too informational.  The drive through safari park seemed like the perfect combination!

When I had gone before with friends, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, but it was crowded, so we couldn't really move at our own pace and the animals were a bit inactive.  Today, was perfect!  We arrived late in the afternoon on a perfectly sunny day to find near-empty roads with animals that were eager to entertain.  The black bears and wolves got very close to the car, slowly meandering around their habitats.  Many of the lions were sleeping, stretching and rolling about, soaking up the warm sunshine, but a few of them got up and wandered amongst the cars, reminding us just how large and mighty they are.






The cheeky monkeys were incredibly active today, leaping from car to car, chasing one another up, over and around the cars.  They were so much fun to watch!  And what an experience!  How many of us can say that we've had monkeys sitting on our rearview mirrors?


A very proper monkey




After a walk around the zoo and a meal at the pub, we are all ready for bed!  But what a great first day of our week of adventures!


Lemurs

Soaking up the sun!

War Eagle!

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