Double D: London, Day 4: London Zoo and British Museum

We got lucky on Wednesday. It drizzled the entire day, but never got worse than your average morning shower. Yep, the one in your bathroom. We didn't even care because it was a definite improvement over Tuesday's fire-hose weather.

We arrived at London Zoo nice and early and wandered into the first building with a roof. Ironically, it turned out to be the aquarium.

I have to admit I had "Under the Sea" playing in my head the whole time. Simplistic, I know, but that's how my brain functions (I suppose I should insert some sort of disclaimer whenever I make the assertion that it functions at all, but you get the idea.) In terms of actual aquatic life, the London Zoo aquarium isn't terribly spectacular for someone who grew up in Washington touching sea anemones and starfish at the beach every other weekend and getting their starfishy slime all over my matching sweatsuit (ahhh, joggles...a fashion trend better off forgotten.)

However, the thing that strikes me about the London Zoo is its age. It was the original big-time zoo of the western world.

Maybe I'm just too easily impressed by stuff like that, cause really, this aquarium was best described as "pleasantly okay-ish." Anyways, here are some pics:

My favorite is possibly the fish with the glow-in the dark eyes. They were pretty cool, but kind of hard to catch the effect in pictures. Henry was asleep the whole time, so we didn't get his reactions to big ole fish up in his face. However, we did see a fish who has pretty much the exact same lips as Henry.

Following the logical desire to stay indoors and out of the rain as much as possible, we ran straight from the aquarium to the reptile house. Yes, for Harry Potter fans, this is the very same reptile house that features in Book 1 and Film 1. Dustin was quite pleased to follow up a nice fish-viewing session with some lizards and snakes, since he prefers all of the above-mentioned animals to puppies, kittens or birds, by far. Every time we enter a pet store, he beelines it for the first scaly animal in a tank.

A couple shots from the reptile house:

One of the best parts about the reptiles, of course, is that most of them are quite poisonous. Sorry the little yellow tree dart frog is so out of focus, but he's extremely small and yet he can kill ten men with the sweat sitting on his skin. Rock on, little hopper! Also, the viper is rather deadly too, but next to Tiny over there he's practically a harmless worm. Henry continued sleeping throughout this entire part of the visit, so we couldn't get his personal opinion or Cicero-type speech on being inches away from potent death. Although I'm sure it would have been poetic.

There was an animal show in the zoo amphitheater at noon, during which Henry woke up to find himself face-to-face with a burrowing owl. Seriously, the thing was right in his face. I still can't decide if the owl's expression was funnier than Henry's or vice versa (they both seemed really taken aback) but unfortunately the moment passed before we could catch it on camera.

The flamingos earned a good speech though. And oh my goodness, Henry loved the monkey house. Again, both 11-month old boys and monkeys move very quickly, so here are the best pictures we ended up with:

There was a bit more to the zoo, but apart from watching an African hunting dog eat half a gazelle, it was mostly rain and giant birds. We walked through the gorilla exhibit, but they were reluctant to come out in the rain (I completely understood and agreed with them.) Personally, I think the zoo staff should have given each gorilla an umbrella just to see what would happen.

Living next to the British Museum has its definite advantages, especially in a rainstorm. We headed straight over from the zoo and wandered around for hours, hitting up the highlights (they have so much awesome & famous stuff and it was so hard to choose...these are more like the highlights of the highlights):

First off, the museum's skylight is pretty neat...