Zoo View

I've been to San Diego for work many times before (usually for Comic Con), but I'd never been there to relax. I'd almost never gotten out of the downtown area. After all those past work trips, the first question someone would inevitably ask me upon learning I'd gotten back from San Diego was, "did you go to the Zoo?"

This time? Yes!

There's a reason people ask, as it turns out. The San Diego Zoo is immense, and beautiful. It would certainly be a highlight of many a vacation. We spent a long day there, arriving shortly after opening and staying well into the afternoon.

Arriving early is key to any summer/autumn zoo day anywhere. That's because if you're hot, the animals are hot. Show up before the sun is blazing overhead, and the animals are much more likely to be active and visible.

There's a bus tour that takes you around the enormity of the San Diego Zoo in about half an hour, so we decided to start there for a lay of the land. We got a memorable driver in Doug, who'd be right at home on the Jungle Cruise ride at Disney. He punctuated his best jokes ("best"? "jokes"?) with an "alright" that was part Quagmire from Family Guy, part Matthew McConaughey. Because we were his "#2 tour of the the day," he chose to pepper us with "#2 facts" about the animals. His favorite (and now ours): when a grizzly bear awakens from months of hibernation, it's first poo can be as long and as hard as a baseball bat. (Yikes.)

After the bus tour, we spent hours upon hours walking all over the zoo. It's as gorgeous as any amazing public park, with secluded trails intersecting in every direction, each with its own theme and animals to view. I could go on at length about the hundreds of things we saw and dozens of pictures we took, but it was quite simply the best time I've ever had going to a zoo. From the playful Allen's Swamp Monkeys to sneakily submerged hippos to the chatty flamingos to the unnaturally still crocodiles to the bright birds in the African enclosure you could enter... it was all amazing. (To say nothing of the zoos more "star attractions," the pandas, polar bears, and elephants.)

When we finally packed it in late in the afternoon, we grabbed dinner and hopped to a couple more area breweries, including one of the real stand-outs of the trip: Belching Beaver. They had an amazing variety, excelled at flavored stouts, and everything we had there was great. If they hadn't been blasting metal music, we would have stayed there until they'd closed. As it was, our taste buds demanded we linger well past the point where our ears were begging for relief. (I know.... "these kids today and their music....")

In any case, I now understand why everyone asks of San Diego if you visited the zoo. It's really as great as everyone says.