Day Two

The nice thing about vacationing three hours further west is that you can feel like you’re sleeping in, while in reality, you’re up at a normal time.

We got up around 7 and went and got breakfast. I have to say that the free expanded continental breakfast was good. The waffles were filling.

To avoid traffic, we got on the road at nine. However, this IS California, and we encountered some traffic. We got to the zoo just before 10am. The internet is our friend, we had $8.00 off coupons-seems others had $3.00 off coupons they wanted to give us.

We start our day by taking the bus tour around the zoo. It was pretty comprehensive and shows us that the exhibits were built into the landscaping, rather than the other way around. The zoo is quite hilly, something we’re not used to anymore after living in Florida for a couple of years.

Once we’re done with the 35 minute bus tour, we get off the bus and our first order of business is to go see the koalas! They all decide they want to sleep. We continue walking through the park. Little guy keeps on saying he wants to meet Bagheera, so we venture down Cat Canyon and find the jaguar for him.

Once we complete Cat Canyon, we’re upon the Panda exhibit. We get to see Mom panda and her 1 year old and three year old cubs. We then trek up to the top of the zoo to see the Polar Bears. They have four bears that they alternate in the exhibit, and we seem to have arrived just as the shift change occurred. After hanging around for twenty minutes, we see one bear-he made a beeline for the food.

Next, a skyride down to the bottom of the park, grab some lunch and visit the children’s zoo. The day at the zoo ends with a visit to the reptile house, which older child has asked for all day.

It’s not a good idea to leave town right now-it’s 4pm and it’s rush hour. We take the advice of zoo employees and head downtown to the Gaslight area. The parking area we were directed to ends up being the parking garage for the mall, so we venture in. It’s an outdoor, multilevel plaza. We find See’s candies and the employees ply us with samples as we choose a pound of chocolate nirvana. The boys also get their copies of Lego Star Wars 2.

The walk around the Gaslight area proves that there are plenty of restaurants, all with outdoor dining areas-unfortunately, we’re not hungry enough to justify sitting down for a meal. I’d definitely head back the next time we’re in San Diego.

We head on the road at 6:30 and have an uneventful drive up to Anaheim. I pricelined our room in Anaheim while back in Carlsbad-my 80 dollar 2.5 star bid got upgraded to a 3 star. We’re in the Hyatt Regency about ¾ mile up the road from Disneyland. 10^th floor kid suite! OMG, this for 80 bucks? It’s very nice! Note that almost all the Anaheim hotels charge for parking, and this is no exception. They charge for internet access, too, so we’re hijacking bandwidth where we can, and the updates probably will all be put up when we find our hotel for Saturday night.