Lions, Tigers and Lords? Oh My!

We headed out early this morning to Longleat. We started off with the safari park and it was a ton of fun! Geoff was amazed that you could drive through all the cages, and we took our time making sure we spent long enough in each enclosure that the animals came close! We first went through where the giraffes, zebras and camels were kept, then onto the monkeys, rhinos, and deer (which we got to feed as they scrambled to get in the car window!). Then we went onto the tigers, unfortunately we couldn't get too close to these as they were three new ones from France and were in quarantine. Next were the lions - this was the best part, the male lions were all sleepy, but the females were playful and we came around a corner to see one jump into a tree, as we snapped photos we realized there were about 4 or 5 others in the tree already! We spent a good half an hour just watching them as we were parked right next to the tree. It was really cool, just like being on a real safari! Next we saw the wolves, flamingos, gazelles, and vultures, and then headed onto the next part of the park.

We took a safari boat along a river in the park and went past gorilla island to see their old silver-backed gorilla, at the same time a bunch of sea-lions were swimming along-side the boat begging for food. We went past a couple of sleepy hippo's and then headed back to shore.

Next we went to pets corner to take in the parrot show. This is where the 6 parrots show off their skills by talking, driving mini cars, rollerskating, playing basketball and a variety of other tricks! It was fun, and we got front row seats so the parrots were right up close! Then we headed onto the steam train ride around the house grounds, saw some pelicans and pretty gardens, this ended up at the butterfly house which we then walked through before heading to the old Joe's mine. This was something I don't remember from past visits, it may be new, or maybe I blocked it out... you walk into a room filled with fruit bats flying over your head and are told not to scream.. YUK. Needless to say we didn't spend too long in there and we jumped on the flight simulator on the way out to 'visit' gorilla mountain. Then we went to the hedge maze.. the largest hedge maze in the country, Geoff said he had heard you take all right turns to get out, he proceeded to do this and got out in under 10 minutes and then was disappointed so went back in to get lost!!!

Longleat house was our final stop, we walked around the big manor house and saw all the paintings and state rooms. It was mainly all pictures of Lord Bath, and not that interesting, but Geoff enjoyed seeing the staged rooms!

We started heading towards our hotel and on the way realized that we were 30 minutes from Stonehenge, so we made a quick detour to take a look around. It was nice as there were not too many people there as it was the end of the day, so we snapped some pictures and walked around, and then went to the hotel. We had some really awful Chinese food at a small place in town, and attempted to find somewhere to get online, but no-one's Internet was working.. we ended up spending $10 (5 pounds) for 15 minutes to jump online and book a hotel, then we came back to the hotel and are about to hit the hay for the night!