We Met an Aardvark

The Oregon Zoo now offers animal encounters now and we recently signed up for the Aardvark encounter.

Now, the zoo has a large and handsome aardvark.

This aardvark loves noms from a tube.

We totally got to feed the aardvark noms from a tube and we also got to pet him.

If ever you have a chance to pet an aardvark, by all means do so.

Read More

Eddy Loves Lighthouses

Eddy had a birthday trip this year too! We got up bright and early in the morning and headed out to the Original Pancake House for our favorite buckwheat pancacke breakfast.

Then we hit the road to the Oregon Coast Aquarium!

We started the day watching tons of feedings.

Then we wandered the rest of the aquarium at our own pace.

There was even a pretty outdoor area where we watched a seagull hunt a crab only to lose it during a seagull fight.

I wore my penguin hat despite the fact that this aquarium does not house any penguins. After a long day staring at the fishes, we headed to our hotel where they were kind enough to give us a room on the top floor with a very choice view from our balcony.

We took a little walk down to the beach.

The next day we headed down to the piers to see the sea lion colony.

We also saw not one, but two lighthouses.

Eddy loves lighthouses.

Very, very happy birthday to my very, very favorite Eddy Westbrook!

Read More

Remember the Summer?

It has been a real long time since I've blogged.  That means we're going way back to the summer time in an effort to get caught up.  It's nice, actually, to look out on a snowy Portland and remember all the summer fun we had with Eddy's family when we visited the midwest.

First we went to Wisconsin to visit Ceci.

She showed us how to eat all the cheeses.

I mean, like, all of them. We also went to a Zoo. Turns out the Madison Zoo is particularly punny.

But there were penguins there.

And things to stick our heads through. And pose next to.

Eddy's favorite is always the polar bears.

Also, we did some drinking with Ceci on the UW Madison campus.

The botanical gardens in Madison had a great spot for me to have tea parties to topiary bears.

Also a beautiful Thai Pavilion.

Next we went to Chicago to see these characters.

We got to meet little Harrison for the first time. He and Eddy had a lot of shared interests.

Clearly we couldn't visit Chicago without also hitting the Lincoln Park Zoo as well. Eddy was sad that the polar bears were off exhibit.

I sat on a tractor there. In the middle of the city.

We also did some Divergent tourism.

We went to the Merciless Mart.

It wasn't what we expected inside based on the books.

Get it? Because post-apocalyptic literature?!  And pillows?

Read More

Japanniversary! Tokyo

To celebrate the fact that we have successfully tolerated the presence of one another for a full decade, Eddy and I decided to take a good long trip around Japan.  Here are some of the highlights from our Tokyo trip!

The first thing we did when we hit Tokyo was head over to the Imperial Palace to enjoy some views of the structures and gardens.

We were fascinated by these dudes trimming these elaborate trees. We watched for a real long time.

We also visited Asakusa.

Of course, no visit to Tokyo would be complete without Godzilla.

We stayed at a hotel in Shinjuku that features a giant Godzilla statue (complete with nightly growls and flames!) Also a bunch of Godzilla friezes that told the film history of the creature.

We also visited Meiji Jingu.

Aaaaaaaaaannnd we hung out at a cat cafe.

Our take away from the cat cafe was that cats who don't know you are aloof. 22 at a time. All of them aloof.

We forced some pets on the sleepier ones, though.

Finally, we visited the Ueno Zoo, home to this hilarious zebra video that has been circulating the interwebs of late.

The most important thing there was clearly the penguins.

We tried to be mature and not giggle about the type of penguin that lives at the Ueno zoo.

Also pygmy hippos, OMG!

But honestly, the best thing about any public attraction is obviously the ice cream novelty machine.

We didn't miss the pandas.

When we left the zoo there was a large festival taking place in the park, which included this traditional(?) performer who threw coins wrapped in gold paper at us.

So we actually *made* money going to the zoo. We are basically wasting money not being at the Tokyo Zoo right now. At least that's how I see it.

Stay tuned for Tokyo Disney!

Read More