Day at the Zoo

Couples experience - Going to a wildcat park

The day after my exam my boyfriend sent me a link in Facebook and told me to have a look at that. It was a Groupon offer for cheaper entrance into some kind of zoo. It was a park with wild cats like lions and leopards etc. in Beauvais, about 1 hour away from Amiens by car. I asked him why he sent that to me (I had never thought about going to a zoo with him in fact, he always gave me the impression he didn’t like things like that), and he told me that if I wanted, we could go there at the weekend. I was happy that he planned things we could do together before I left, so I bought the tickets and was really looking forward to having that experience with him. Usually we were just having lunch or dinner, drinking coffee together, going to the cinema or learning English, but we had never (except the day in Lille) done something like that, like a real couple experience. That also made me believe even more in a future for our relationship – I had some more hope again, after some days of doubts about how serious he was thinking about the thing between the two of us.

The evening before

Even if he had a lot to do, we decided to go to that park that Saturday. I was looking forward to the day with him and was excited about the week to end. On Friday I picked him up from work as usual and we had a pizza for dinner before we went to my apartment. We watched a French movie with his laptop but as usual I had problems to understand everything – the French speak so quickly! I fell asleep next to him and the last thing I could think about was how much I would miss those evenings with him. I need a lot of time for myself but sleeping alone was definitely not one of my favourite things to do. For the next day I had set several alarms from 9 a. m. to 11 a. m. – I knew my boyfriend and a knew quite well that he could sleep until 2 p. m. as well if nobody wakes him up. But he was also quite good in ignoring alarms and continuing to sleep. Finally, at 10:30 a. m. I convinced him to get up, because it wouldn’t make sense to go to a park only for one or two hours. Both of us took a shower and we had a (very) small breakfast, before we finally left the residency and entered my car.

Entering the park

It took us about one hour to arrive at the park that was situated next to Beauvais. The weather was very nice, the sun was shining, and it was already so warm outside that we didn’t need a jacket. We bought our cheaper tickets and entered the park. Most of the animals there were lions and there would be a large show a bit later in the afternoon. We took a lot of pictures and laughed about the behaviour of some animals – we had a lot of fun after only 30 minutes already. There were also horses, chicken (some of them with a lot of fur), sheep, goats, rabbits and even a llama and his baby! After we had crossed about half of the park and had just seen the ostrich, we decided to have a short break. As it was quite a warm weather, we just lay down in the grass and enjoyed the sun. It was such a beautiful moment – one of those where you wish that they will never ever end. We stayed there for quite a long time until we finally continued our way.

The lion show

We saw some other animals that were more than common – in my opinion that family administrated park has either just started or is about to close its doors, because it’s very small and there are not quite many animals. As we had had a very late breakfast, we didn’t have anything for lunch and went directly to the lion show. Usually I don’t like shows like that one where you don’t know if the animals really want to do unnatural things like jumping on platforms or through rings. But as we had already paid the entry and I had never seen something like that we decided to try it. We were almost the unique couple in the tent, there were almost only families with small children. At the beginning they showed some very cute baby lions (they were white) and then the real show started. It was like the shows you know from the circus – jumping on platforms, playing with huge balls, jumping through rings etc. It was interesting, but I was not too enthusiastic about all that, so I was also happy when it was over, and we still had some time before we wanted to leave. We went to some of the animals a second time and finally I took a picture with the llama baby. I was happy about all the pictures we took together – usually we didn’t do things like that, and I definitely wanted to have photos of us together for the time when I would have to miss him so much.

Dinner in Beauvais

After we didn’t want to stay in the park anymore and had seen everything, we decided to have a coffee and relax a bit. After that we went to the car and I drove direction Beauvais because we wanted to have something to eat in that city and I had never been there. It didn’t take us long to arrive, but the usual discussion started when we were looking for a parking. My boyfriend would let the car at any place where it was just a little bit possible, but I always thought 2 hours about whether I can park at a place or not. Due to that differences in our attitude the subject parking led to discussions quite often, about every time when I wanted to park my car. Finally, we found a parking in the city centre where we didn’t have to pay anymore as it was already Saturday evening. We let the car there and walked to the cathedral and a bit around the shopping zone. We had something to eat in a weird kebab restaurant where one whole family was making so much noise that it was incredibly annoying. Finally, we went back to Amiens but didn’t go via the highway as you have to pay for that in France. We took the normal streets what took us about 45 minutes more than the highway, but we saved 8 euros. When we arrived at the residency, he wanted to stay with me again and we watched an historical movie in French that I hardly understood, and so I fell asleep quickly and didn’t see a lot of it. I was just happy about that beautiful day and that wonderful person next to me.

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