The Madhouse kids were ever so slightly excited about it being Easter this weekend !
We started off on the Saturday morning with a very small scale Easter egg hunt in our local park.
It was only for 0-6 year olds so Pierre was the only one who could take part, but he was so happy his feet were barely touching the ground !
One egg carton full of half a dozen chocolate eggs and one very happy little boy !
On the Sunday, the Madhouse grandparents and Auntie Em were over visiting for the day so we decided to take advantage of the free weekend buses and head off on a little adventure.
I'm not sure who was most excited about standing in the middle of the bendy bus as we went round the corners - Pierre or Madhouse Grandad !
Our destination was the circus that was visiting our town for a few days. We never go to the shows (they cost a fortune !) but we invariably pop into the circus zoo to see the animals. France is way behind the UK in terms of animal rights so they still have animals and there aren't even any protests.
We started off with some very curious ostriches.
They were looking at us as closely as we were looking at them !
The camels were happy just lazing about in the straw.
In fact, pretty much the only animals jumping about like loonies were the wallabies. I'd never seen a white one before.
As we were watching, a baby popped his head out of its mum's pouch ! It was grabbing handfuls of straw to eat as she jumped about - very cute !
I always love how intricate the zebras' stripes are.
But they've obviously been breeding zonkeys at the circus too so they also have donkeys with stripy legs and this fabulous specimen with light grey shading between the black ad white stripes, which I'd never seen before. One of the zebras looked pregnant which made me think that the animals must be reasonably happy, as I'm sure they wouldn't breed otherwise.
How many times can you say you've stroked a zebra ?!
I'd purposely timed it so that it was just before showtime so the trainers were taking all the animals out of their cages to go into the big top. The llamas went lolloping through the tents on their dainty legs !
The horses had really wavy manes - I'm sure they must have been permed !
Outside we saw some tigers and lions, including some cute tiger cubs, a sealion and a group of elephants, but my camera had run out of battery. You can see our photos from last year though, when we got to feed bread to the elephants by hand !
I do feel sad for the bigger animals but they seemed relatively happy this time. Some of my friends went to see the show so I'll be intrigued to hear what they thought.
Ouah, vous avez visiblement passé un superbe moment ! :-D
ReplyDeleteJe suis toujours impressionnée par tout ce qu'on arrive à faire en une journée ! :)
DeleteSuch beautiful animals. I'm really not fond of circus animals though. I do think it's a bit unfair keeping them penned in all the time and training them. Hopefully they get a good run around when the circus isn't in action. They do look healthy though and I guess it was a good opportunity for your little ones to get up close and meet some beautiful exotic animals. Thank you so much for sharing with #whatevertheweather xx
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean, I'm the same and I find it quite hard to believe that nobody really bats an eyelid in France.
DeleteI feel bad for circus animals being caged, strange that no one in France bats an eyelid though! Hopefully they are well treated and occasionally get to race about in a bigger space. Great for the little ones to get up close and personal with animals though. Thanks so much for linking up with #Whatevertheweather :) x
ReplyDelete