Friday we went to the Melbourne Zoo first thing in the morning and spent a few hours there looking at all the animals. They had a bird sanctuary that had lots of weird birds I'd never seen before, like a blue-billed duck. We saw the usual giraffes, elephants, zebras, and gorillas. And of course, we saw kangaroos, emus, wombats, and koalas! They also have a butterfly house that you could walk through and have the butterflies fly all around you and land on you! It was so cool. I'd never been in a butterfly house like that. There must have been thousands of butterflies in there of all colors and sizes.

Butterflies at Melbourne Zoo on Vimeo.

One of the things I wanted to see the most was the snow leopard cubs that were born there recently, as I mentioned on the blog a few months ago. They were the first thing we went to see and they were both hiding far back in their cage, but we went back to see them right before we left and they were both awake. It was really cool seeing them since I don't think I've ever seen one in person. Every time we went to see the snow leopard at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, it wasn't anywhere to be seen. So I was really happy to see them at the Melbourne Zoo. I also enjoyed seeing their other big cats, like the puma, tiger, and lion.

Snow Leopard in the Zoo on Vimeo.

It was probably one of the best zoos I've ever been to. The coolest thing about it was being able to get so close to the animals. For example, they had several giant tortoises in one area we could have easily just walked into because the small wooden fence was so low on the ground. It just seemed like they were a lot more relaxed and not as concerned about safety as the zoos in the US. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't unsafe, but I could have easily touched so many animals I wouldn't be able to even get within 20 feet of in the US.

After picking up a few souvenirs at the zoo, including a stuffed baby snow leopard and a Melbourne Zoo magnet with a snow leopard on it, we headed over to the Queen Victoria Market for lunch. Sofia had to go to work though, unfortunately. The Queen Victoria Market is similar to Pike Place Market, but has more stuff to buy such as clothes, suitcases, and live animals. There were several isles of produce and tons of meat, cheese, nut, and pastry shops. We had some bratwurst at the Melbourne Bratwurst Shop and they were really good. Unfortunately it was already 3 in the afternoon and most of the market was already closed or in the process of closing. So we decided to come back the next day.

After the market, Adam had to go do some apartment hunting, so he left Troy and I at the DFO (Direct Factory Outlet) mall to look around some. There wasn't much there and even though it claimed to be an outlet mall, prices didn't seem to be any cheaper than regular stores in the CBD.

Since we were still hungry from only having brats for lunch, we decided to have an early dinner at a Thai food place on Lygon Street, which is actually the heart of the Italian district. Adam met back up with us and we headed to the Thai place. I had the Pad Thai, which was surprisingly not spicy at all. They didn't ask any of us for a spiciness level for some reason, so I was afraid our food would be spicy. We also shared the coconut jasmine rice, which was really good and really sweet. Thai food is one of my favorite foods to eat, it's so good!

After dinner, we somehow still had room for gelato. Troy and I shared three flavors: passion fruit, strawberry, and Snickers. They also had durian flavored gelato, which I thought was weird and interesting, because I've heard durian is a fruit that smells really bad. After that we decided to hang around the CBD a little longer and went to a pub at Melbourne Central for drinks. It was a pretty nice pub actually, with no smoking allowed inside of course. Troy and Adam had some Australian brewed beer and I had a glass of white wine. It was a lot of fun hanging out and talking to Adam at the bar. We went back to the house after that and played some more dominoes before going to bed.