French people make reeeeeally good food! No surprises there.

This past Saturday was my friend Erika's 21st birthday so we decided to celebrate! She's not that big into partying or surprises so what do we do? Plan a day of surprises for her and a dinner/party of course! She actually knew about the dinner and going out afterwards because she really dislikes surprises so the only real surprise for the day was the trip to Fota Wildlife Park:

 Fota is really close to Cork, only about a 20 minute train ride. I knew that this was very close after visiting the Dublin Zoo but honestly I think this was waaaaay better.

This part was actually supposed to be a surprise for Erika and we did a pretty good job considering there were about 9 or 10 of us going...until we had to give her a train ticket. We all thought "oh well now the gist is up! She knows what we're doing!" Turns out she didn't know what was in Fota anyway so it didn't even matter that she knew where we were going!

When we got there we quickly realized that unlike a zoo, this place was technically a "wildlife park" so there were animals of all sorts just strolling around:

I'm not sure if the animals are trained or they're just very used to humans but boy do they have to be as careful of us as we do of them. Fota definitely attracts very many family and is actually extremely family friendly with lots of things at kid height and playgrounds all over. However, most of the wandering animals are also kid height and I saw more than one small child either chasing or making a grab at an animals. I only saw one succeed in getting one of these guys' tails:

But they would just slip away or climb a tree. and not really care that much Even after a long time of children proably making grabs at them, they'r not afraid to get extremly close to people of their own choice:

Like I said, REEEEEEEALLY close.
One even scared my friend Christine as it was strolling along and I managed to catch it on video. Unfortunately, I just figured out how to get the videos from my camera to my computer so it might take while for me to figure out how to put them up here.

Anyways, the park was pretty cool with lots of other animals:

I don't know what gripe this one had with me. Maybe he thought I was stealing his soul by taking a picture of him.

We really lucked out because the whole day was GORGEOUS, which, is actually a little weird for Ireland standards. Most days that are considered "nice" here usually are only half a nice day. You'll wake up and the sun will be shining and you're like "Wow! It IS a good morning! This is going to be a great day!" and then by lunchtime you're in a generally miserable mood and cursing mother nature for raining all over you when you don't have a raincoat. The reverse is much better and easier to handle, but usually it's one or the other when someone says "it's a nice day." This one was an exception, the whole day was really bright and beautiful. My pasty self was even worried about geting sunburn.

The park is also surrounded by really pretty hills as is usual of the Ireland landscape:

You can see Amanda taking pictures of animals here. I'm pretty sure I have more pictures of her taking picture of animals than I do of her not taking pictures of animals. She's in school to be a vet so that a pretty legit excuse.

The park actually has a disproportionately large number of cheetahs there.

They've bred I think over 200 since the mid 80's. We were joking that Ireland's exports were the color green, whiskey, and cheetahs. The cheetahs are thankfully not one of the animals allowed to wander freely throughout the park:

This was, in my opinion stupidly, placed right outside the cheetah area. They're cheetahs of course they bite. But they're not going to be biting any of us anytime soon thanks to the triple barrier, so unless some numbskull tried to climb all three fences (one of which is electric), the sign is a bit unnecessary. Of couse, if someone was to climb over, I'm not sure this sign would do much anyway.

 But the cheetahs do still need exercise and incentive to run around a bit. Therefore, they have "cheetah runs" where in order to get their meals, the cheetahs have to chase their food as it flies along a zip line. I did see cheetahs when I was in Tanzania this past summer, but those ones were either lying about or just walking but boy can these guys run fast.

We walked around the whole park I think:

I really want one of these just to cuddle with when it's cold out. Red pandas are not only incredibly cute, but they just look like the epitome of warmth/huggable stuffed animal. They also seem to have an uncanny knack for defying the laws of gravity when they go climbing.

We eventually were typical tourist and conned some stranger into taking a picture of the whole group for us:

And to finish out our trip, it wouldn't be complete without one more picture of Amanda taking more pictures of animals:

We finally headed home and had dinner later that night. Amanda and Erika's roommate, Melanie, is from France and offered to cook dinner. I was excited just because someone else was cooking for me. I don't really remember the name of it (it started with a 't' and had a lot of letters after that), but it was a french dish and it was sooooo incredibly delicious. It sounded really simple: potatoes, onions, ham, cheese, and probably something else I'm forgetting/didn't know about/can't actually pronounce. It honestly just made me more excited to visit France this coming summer and get fat eating lots of their good food.

She also made crepes for dessert which were equally delicious. I kept thinking "really good, real French food, made by real French people!" There was a funny moment where I saw a jar of stuff that was written all in French but I was thinking "Gosh darn it! This looks SO familiar!"Melanie then told me "It's from France I brought it here with me!" And then it clicked that I had seen a jar of the stuff before. The wonderful Kristen Hochreiter had brought me back some from France when she went this past summer. Only, I never opened that jar at home (whoops) because I didn't really know what it was. But I can tell you now, it's getting cracked open the second I get home cuz that stuff is good! It's kind of like a chestnut version of nutella without the coco. Super yummy, especially on homemade crepes.

After we were all stuffed with French food we followed with birthday cake of course. The makers warned us that there was a lot of "love" in it due to the complications during its creation, but honestly it tasted awesome. When we finally finish eating, we went out to a pub. I had heard from someone that the pub we eventually ended up at attracted the "older" crowd. They were a bit older but it didn't show at all because they were just as rowdy at this pub as any other I've been to while here. The Irish definitely don't let age get in the way of them having fun and it's my goal in life to be just like them! Don't worry though, I will never try and keep pace with them when they drink.