THE TIME I SAW A POLAR BEAR...

You may have noticed that my zoo update didn't contain anything about polar bears. That's because we took so many pictures of the whole day, including the polar bear that it would have been too long. So instead you get one whole post about it!

First off its probably fair to say that I was far too excited about the whole thing.  I tried to play it cool but really I was as excited as some of the screaming children who were there. When you arrived there was a cute little display that had giant story books telling you the story of two of the polar bears. They were rescued as cubs and brought to the zoo so there was an amazing sculpture of the two of them. Now don't be deceived I was not as calm as I appear in this photo!

Once we'd walked round the corner the pure excitement could not be contained. He was there! A real life polar bear and he was amazing! 

He was so hilarious. We sat there for ages just watching him sleep and stretch out. He went forging for carrots and started munching on them. I was just loving it. He seemed so adorable and to be honest would fit in so well with Macintosh as they are both as lazy as each other! So of course if I ever find an orphaned cub its coming home with me!

After being there for a while just endlessly watching Andrew did convince me to see some other animals and then return. I reluctantly agreed but upon me return he was swimming!!

He just casually walked into the water, stretched himself out and then set about trying to scratch an itch using the rocks underwater. It was so funny. Hard to photograph due to the glass, which was more than a little smeared due to small children. Yuck! But you could see him so clearly. 

He then decided to swim straight past me!

Andrew managed to snap a picture of me once he'd finished swimming past me. I look semi normal as a result. Whilst he was swimming past Andrew said my face looked hilarious as I was literally like a child on Christmas morning!

Mr Polar Bear then decided to just casually sit in the water for a bit so he was cooled off before he waded straight out in search of more food. Amazingly he didn't shake himself off when he got out of the water. I don't know why but I always imagined he was shake like a dog. Apparently not, its best just to let everything drip off you. 

So there we go, me and the polar bear. I'm already looking at ways to see one in the wild. Antartica anyone?! 

H

SAN DIEGO ZOO

Ok, so I have become truly awful at updating you on things that have been happening. We have done some things and they've taken an age to get blogged about. Those of you who have a form of social media will see snippets of what we've done, but those of you who rely on this will have no idea. I want to blame the summer for this, things all get out of balance and you relax more, but as I'm not officially working I can't blame the summer. Its just me! So finally I have a post about our trip to the zoo.

It was raved about by my uncle before we came to live in California so when we finally went down to San Diego without the dog we knew it was going to be something we'd do. I can tell you now it was an amazing experience. The zoo is so lovely, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

There was an amazing skyfari, an aerial tram, that took us from one end of the zoo to the other. Obviously we had a few rides...

We saw a whole host of different animals. It was completely amazing. Here's just a few of them.

Otters are Andrew's favourite animal so we spent quite a bit of time watching them. Unfortunately we didn't get many good pictures of them because we were too fascinated. This otter was playing with a rock underwater and was darting around all over the place. He was so much fun to watch. Andrew was laughing away. 

We also got the chance to get quite close to the tigers. One of them was busy showing off for the others so he was playing about with this giant bowl in his area. Every time he got close to the glass people would gasp. I just thought he was beautiful. 

Then the final cool thing we saw was part of their animal outreach programme. They like to take animals into schools and into the community to raise awareness. Obviously there is a limited amount of safe animals they can take but they have been developing a way to take cheetahs and other cat like animals (not lions or tigers) out into the community. Its through dogs. They pair up their zoo animal with a domestic dog and once they are really friendly the zoo animal will take its cues from the dog. When the dog is calm then so is the zoo animal. If it gets angry then so does the zoo animal. 

Whilst we were there they had to move the cheetah so that they could do and do one of these talks. So we watched them bring the dog into the enclosure, they put both on them on leads and then the cheetah simply followed the dog around. It was crazy. The lady was walking the cheetah as if it was the most normal thing in the world!

We loved San Diego Zoo, so put it on your list of places to visit. My uncle was right! 

H

LET'S GO SEAHAWKS!

Our trip down to San Diego was partly to relax and have some time sans Mr Macintosh, but it was also a lot to do with our first NFL experience. For those of you who are English and have no idea what I'm talking about, we went to see an American football game. To be more precise we went to see the San Diego Chargers take on the Seattle Seahawks in one of their pre-season games.

My experience of American football up until this point was very limited, and mostly revolved around watching the Super Bowl, so I wasn't expecting to understand very much but thankfully we were sat next to two very nice Seahawks fans who were happy to explain anything that was a little beyond us. So basically we constantly badgered them to explain what was happening!

Now the world of American football is very different to any sport back in the UK. This is such a big franchise. The teams have so many players. There are tons of support staff and coaches. There is so much going on its insane. This match was no different, despite being a pre-season game, because it was military appreciation weekend. So there was a little more pomp and circumstance to the game. 

When we first arrived we were completely blown away by the sheer size of the Qualcomm stadium. It is insanely big and holds so many fans. Yet despite the size you still manage to get a really good view of the pitch because the tiers go up so steeply. It really didn't feel like we were in the nosebleed seats! 

Before the real action got underway the players came onto the pitch to warm up. The seats were still pretty empty at this point but I wanted to see everything so we were there throughout! I couldn't believe how many players they have though. Below is a picture of the team huddle and then the Seattle Seahawks warming up. They take up half the pitch!!

Both teams went back to their changing rooms whilst the Marine band came and did some of their repertoire. They were pretty impressive. Then following in the military theme we had some ex-military guys parachute into the stadium. Was pretty impressive to be honest. 

Then it was time for the football to begin. The San Diego Chargers came out through a tunnel, with real flames and walked through a path lined with their cheerleaders. There was a lot of cheering for them being the home team. The Seahawks had appeared earlier with a smaller amount of noise. 

Obviously the national anthem was sung, whilst a giant United States shaped flag was unfurled. They really do go all out in America! 

I won't be able to tell you much about what happened in the game, except that the Seahawks were doing really well until about the third quarter when the Chargers started to come back. We were down to the last minute of playing time and the Seahawks needed something spectacular to win. I think it was in the last 30 seconds that they managed to score a field goal meaning they won 16-15. Close but still a win. Have to say that Andrew and I were screaming our heads off and cheering so loudly, despite being in a predominantly Chargers area. Nothing kicked off though, at least football over here doesn;t equate to fans fighting...

It was a crazy experience and both us of came away saying we'd happily go to another game. So anyone want to come visit and see a game with us? 
H

THE QUICKEST CITY TOUR EVER

As you have gathered this past weekend Andrew and I went down to San Diego for the weekend. We left on the Friday afternoon and came back Sunday evening. It really was a flying visit. 

Lots of people had told us how great San Diego was and how much there was to see. There are tons of museums, plus the zoo and sea world, but we had Macintosh with us so our tour of the city couldn't involve any of those things (although we scouted them out for a return trip without him!) We decided instead to spend time around the gas lamp quarter, downtown, the marina and Balboa Park. The weather was good so we were able to just wander around and take it all in. 

Out of all the areas I think I loved Balboa Park and the marina best. Balboa Park houses some of the museums and the zoo but also has gardens, dog parks, theatres and more. We wandered around a small area that contained the botanical gardens, a church, theatres and some beautiful buildings. It was lovely just taking it all in and Macintosh had a good old sniff around as there were lots of dogs everywhere!

The marina area had a small seaport village at one end which housed small gift type shops, restaurants and cafes as well as having nice areas to wander and towards the other end was a more military area with lots of floating museums. We loved wandering along there and looking out at it all. We loved it so much that we went back briefly on the Sunday morning before we left San Diego just to have one last look. 

We loved our mini trip and are looking forward to coming back to visit again. It will be fun to do all the things we missed. But for a quick trip I think we saw a fair amount of the city! 

H