A Day at the Zoo

It's vacation week in the FP household. Instead of jetting off somewhere we decided to keep it local and do touristy things in MN. Yesterday was Canturbury. Today was an old favorite, Como Park and Zoo. No pictures, we forgot the camera at home. A few notes:

• The lakes in Mpls are prettier to walk around, but I've got a soft spot for Lake Como. I hear it's namesake in Italy is kind of pretty, too. At the coffee shop (the Black Bear?) they sell a blue raspberry soda that we enjoyed. We sat at the pavillion and watched the swallows. Very nice.
• They put a bridge over Lexington Ave (aka Lex) a few years back. It looks like soviet era construction, raw concrete and black railings. Very ugly. I suggest they offer the St Paul highschool art classes an oppurtunity to paint the thing. Cover it with murals or something.
• Near the west end of the bridge is a large concrete circle. Once you get to it, you find a strange pattern worked into the top. It's part of the St Paul/Nagasaki sister city program. It's some kind of 'Labyrinth of Peace'. And no, that doesn't make sense to me either.
• The Japanese gardens are quite lovely. Someday if we're wealthy, I'd love to have one. With big fat koi. And dozens of sculpted bonzai. Quite lovely.
  
• There were four billion mothers w/children at the zoo. Together they had 2.5 billion strollers (all numbers estimated). That's not a good combo.
• The big cats (my favorites) were all asleep. It's always striking how similar the big ones are to the housecats. We saw a snow leopard and a lion both sleeping on their backs, legs splayed everywhere. This matches a common view in our house. The only tiger we saw was sleeping on his side. I thought he needed his belly rubbed while the FP Gal thought his chin needed scratching.
• Somewhere in all of this my head got nice and burned. Not cherry tomato, but a good deep color. We've applied aloe and all will be well.

A good day.