Giraffes and a weekend in Rhode Island

This is Kenya. She is a darling baby giraffe at the Roger Willams Park Zoo in Providence, RI. I believe she was about one month old in this picture, give or take a week. Isn't she beautiful? Back in January, Matt M invited C and me to visit him in Providence, and we had a fabulous time. I can't wait to go back, perhaps over the summer when there may be another tiny giraffe at the zoo, and we can go to the beach. The first night, we ate at Hemenways, a wonderful seafood restaurant. I had stuffed shrimp, and the boys had lobster. Yum! On Sunday we braved a snow storm to visit the zoo (which is half-priced in the winter), and we were 3 of 16 guests that day. Most of the animals were in their warm and cozy houses (who could blame them), but we (well, I) really only cared about the giraffes, and their warm and cozy house is open to the public. But before we get there:

Map of the zoo

This is where the elephants hang out when it isn't winter. Pretty nice, huh?

Yeah, it was cold

After wandering around for a bit and not finding anybody, we finally made it to the giraffes:Inside, we were met by this fellow:This is Griffy, the daddy giraffe. In a separate area there were some elephants:I also love elephants, and these three ladies were quite beautiful. Alice, one of the elephants, had a strange quirk. She spent a lot of time rocking back and forth, which the keepers likened to a child sucking her thumb for comfort. BUT, while watching the elephants have lunch was certainly entertaining, we were anxious to see Sukari and Amber (the female giraffes) and the tiny Kenya. So was Griffy, apparently:Can you imagine walking by the door and seeing that peering back at you? And finally, this tall skinny door opened and in came the ladies! I am going to just throw a lot of pictures at you now. Sorry to those of you who don't love giraffes as much as I do (crazies), feel free to skip down to the other animals at the bottom.I'm not going to caption those, because there are SO MANY, but if you have questions about any of them feel free to ask. Whew.

Once we had our fill of the giraffes, we had roughly one hour to see the rest of the zoo. And see it we did.I can't wait to go back when it's warmer and see all of the rest! Also, I should mention that the cow up there completely ignored the boys, but looked up and mooed at me. They really do like me!

After all that excitement, Matt took us to a wonderful Italian restaurant for dinner, Caffe Dolce Vita. We shared the antipasto and a bottle of wine, and I got the chicken parmigiana, which was the best I've ever had. And a delicious dessert of tiramisu.Yum!

Thank you to Matt for hosting us for the weekend and showing us around your wonderful city. We had a great time, and we'd love to visit again sometime soon!