Day 1: Como Park Zoo and Rainforest Cafe

The first stop on our Minneapolis adventure was the Como Park Zoo. Como Park also has a conservatory, a theme park, a carousel and a mini-golf course. Its a pretty cool place! The zoo is small like the Madison zoo, so we figured it would be a great place to start our adventure. In reading about the zoo, I was glad we went on Friday afternoon. Apparently it can get pretty crowded, but on a Friday afternoon in the fall, parking was plentiful and it wasn't crowded at all.

First stop was the primate house, where Allie was delighted when this tiny primate came up to her and ran along the glass. We had to convince her to go see the rest of the animals instead of just camping out here!

She got up super close to this gorilla! He didn't move much though so Allie wasn't as interested. I don't think the gorilla was interested in Allie either.

The seals are a favorite display in Madison, but this big pool only had three of them! There were a couple other seals in a different pool.

 Allie and Dada were delighted to watch the zebras.

And she really liked when the giraffe came up to the fence.

The big cats had huge enclosures. Allie liked watching the tiger go for a dip in his pool.

While we couldn't get too close to the big cats in Como Park, we got close to the polar bear!

Como Park was the perfect place to spend a couple hours outside on a beautiful Indian Summer October afternoon. It wore us all out, but even as we were heading out to the exit, Allie was still running strong.

But about a half hour later while sitting in traffic, she got a little shuteye. The ride to the hotel was supposed to only be 20 minutes, but in the traffic it was an hour! We didn't mind though as Allie hadn't yet napped. And Allie without a nap is pretty unpredictable.

 Once we got up to our hotel room, Allie was on the go again exploring the room and having some snacks.

We went to the Rainforest Cafe in the Mall of America for dinner. Silly Mama thought this would be a highlight of the trip. 

Well... I felt like a terrible parent when Allie got scared of the gorilla dances and thunderstorms! She seemed into it at first, but went downhill after this picture was snapped. I was asking her if she was having a good time and with her face still in my neck she kept nodding her head "yes."

It had been a long day and I do wonder if she would have liked it better if she'd been better rested. We headed back to the hotel where we were sure Allie would crash... but she didn't. She always came back to life whenever we got back to that hotel room! We had some of the most fun times in the hotel room! Allie finally went to sleep around 8:45 and day 1 of vacation was complete.