Home cooked dinner.

 When your gown-up son, invites you dinner, sets a table and cooks a two course meal, it makes every one of those 500000 meals  you've dished up over the years all worthwhile!!

Canberra Zoo - 13/11/2016

Well,  you are ever too old to enjoy the animals at the zoo!!  We had a fun morning at Canberra Zoo - thank you everyone for the birthday voucher!!.   The red Panda was the special highlight, and it was a was an extra treat to feed the lion! .. by feed , I mean poke a piece of meat on the end of a pair of long tongs through the wires. 

Her name is Ailish ( sounds very Irish to me, not sure how she came by that - originating from the southern China and the Himalayas, but she was the sweetest thing!! She's very gentle and friendly -  she quite happily sat on our laps and was happy to be fed grapes.   She takes them from your hand, one by one, very delicately like a lady. She has soft fur ( which moulted all over us!!)

Canberra zoo was a surprise- quite compact, without feeling too enclosed for the animals.   Very good value for small children - you can see a lot of animals in much less time and seemingly cover a lot less distance than at Taronga.  I can't wait for Bean to be old enough to bring here!!

We saw, lions, cheetahs, sun bears,red pandas, giraffes, meerkats, and the usual Aussie animal contingent-but we skipped past them. When you can see echidnas  and wallabies 100metres from your front door, you get very blasé about native fauna.

If you want to see the red Pandas, here is a tip for you!- they really dislike heat, so you won't see them in summer- they'll be hiding at the top of a tree to keep cool.  Make sure you go in winter!! They're much more likely to be running around and feeding then .

Look at that little face!!!

 And here I am feeding the lion. - he was a bit of a pussy cat!!     He was more in a grassy enclosure, than a meadow.