Peanut butter and jelly. Dinner and a movie. Hot coffee and marshmallows. Some things just go well together, and something about a light show at a zoo really pulls in my girlfriend and me. Continuing the theme from last post, Zoo lights at LA zoo was our first actual "defined" date experience, and this past weekend in celebration of that momentous time, we went to Zoo lights again, in a different city, but with similar spectacular results, in my opinion.
For some reason, zoo lights is really catching on in most large metropolitan cities in America: LA and Chicago for sure have one, and I saw on TV Boston had it. The premise is simple: put Christmas lights around in the outer parts of a zoo during the winter to attract customers, since no one goes to zoos in the winter, and the animals have to be relocated (imagine animals trying to survive a Chicago winter), but leave some indoor exhibits so that it still has a zoo feel. Also put up plenty of light displays that involve animals, including elephants, gorillas, all the fan favorites, and you got yourself a successful zoo lights show.
LA zoo, in its fashion of being inferior to other zoos, charged for admission last winter, and it didn't have a winter feel: 55 degrees in LA, but it did surround different areas nicely with colorful lights and music. Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo really blew LA out of the water in that sense. First of all, free zoo: no admission, all comers welcome, and saves all the time taken to get tickets, go through the ticket area......when it's free, one just walks in. Chicago had a live polar bear living outdoors! Imagine that, a polar bear living in arctic conditions. Chicago had a ice cutting exhibition, with a professional ice cutter on a stage cutting animal shaped ice-blocks with a saw (I guess an ice saw?) The icing on top? It was snowing in Chicago during Zoo Lights, and not the blow-in-your-face, painful snow, the majestic, powdery snow that falls down slowly like you're on a set of a movie. Truly brings out the taste of winter.
I guess the biggest complaint is that it is COLD.....welcome to Chicago I guess. But to cure that, the zoo opened up several indoor exhibits with monkeys, birds, reptiles, etc. that one can duck into for a while just to get away from the zoo. Really soothing effect, being able to enjoy a warm room after spending it outside in icy conditions. There was also hot chocolate selling outside for a low, low price of.........$6 a cup. That's a.......wait for it, pyramid scheme.
Speaking of zoos, The Little Goat diner in West Loop, Chicago is superb. Very fine concoctions of food, serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner at all times. I don't usually endorse restaurants, but this really hit the spot after a long day of walking around in the snow.
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