I'd been thinking of taking Lillie to the zoo ever since our visit to the aquarium. I figured she would really love it so when I heard the news that I had a few more days to kill I thought it was perfect timing. Then the timing got even better ... I opened my Groupon e-mail and saw that they had a deal for tickets (Buy 1 get 1 free: only $16 for 2 people ... tickets are normally $16 each). I also had just received an e-mail for $15 off my next Groupon purchase ... can we say impeccable timing? So for $1 Megs, Lillie (who still gets in free) and I were all able to go to the Franklin Park Zoo.
We weren't too impressed with the bird exhibit. It looked like it was once great but looked overgrown and unloved now. We kept on walking and found the giraffes and a zebra. Lil was thrilled.
Then we found a butterfly tent. There were so many butterflies flitting about it felt like being in a magical fairy land or something. There were so many varieties and colors and sizes. I'll be teaching all about butterflies this year in school so I just had to try and get a few pictures myself. I was only able to catch some pictures because there SO many around and I took at least 5 horrible blurry pictures for each good one ... they move so fast.
After seeing the butterflies we had to stop for awhile to eat and had a short little panic attack when a huge dark cloud was passing over us and the wind whipped up. I was sure that it was going to start pouring any second and I had left the windows open in the car (trying to keep it a little cooler while the AC is still broken.) Luckily by the end of lunch everything seemed to blow over so we kept on walking and found some wildebeest; which Lillie thought looked like sheep ... she kept saying "ba,ba" over and over again.
Next to the sheep we found some more zebras.
Then we went back to see the giraffes because it was a little less crowded than the 1st time we saw them. Lillie even took her stuffed giraffe Ginger to see the real giraffes.
We wandered a bit more and on the way out we found a cute little pygmy hippo. We also found baby gorillas. SO cute! There was a huge crowd around their window and people just wouldn't leave so we almost gave up and left without actually seeing them but I'm glad we stayed a little later. Lillie LOVED them. Someone let us get right up by the glass and Lillie just kept pointing at the glass and smiling. She was so cute about it.
It was a nice day and we very much enjoyed seeing the animals that were there. I will say that I'm glad I didn't pay full price for the trip. If we had paid the full $32 for both Meghan I to get in I probably would have been annoyed but for $1 and free parking it was amazing (we parked in the giraffe lot which seemed to be less "known" and much easier to find a spot in ... also a much prettier entrance with a little playground right there). Lillie loved seeing all the animals and we will definitely be planning trips to other zoos for future breaks from school.
Note: Portions of the movie The Zookeeper with Kevin James were recently filmed there so there were signs advertising it all over the zoo. I have to say I was a little disappointed as the zoo was nice but not really up to par with other zoos I have seen in the past and when I looked at pictures of scenes from the movie the exhibits in the movie and the exhibit in real life looked completely different. I'm not sure I would have hyped the movie so much considering that the zoo looked nothing like it based on the pictures I saw. I am interested in seeing the movie at some point in the future to see just how much was actually filmed there.
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