Travel Diaries: Zoo De Champrepus, Bastille Celebrations & World Cup Victory

This is the last travel Diaries blog of my trip to France this year. I know this one is quite a bit later than the others but I’ve been busy with work and then I came down with a really bad cold which I’m still recovering from. But anyway, let’s jump right into the blog post. 

In France on the 14th of July, is what is known as Bastille Day. This is a day which is celebrating the storming of the Bastille (a military fortress/prison) in 1789 which helped to kick off the French Revolution. I actually don't know too much about the full background, but I do know that in most areas of France on this day will put on fireworks displays. My family and I went to a display in Saint Hilaire and it was one of the best fireworks displays I’d ever seen. The festivities began in the town with markets stalls and food vans. After a while, some sort of show began involving blow up horses with people in them and a lady leading them all around the market square. I was very confused when it first begun as I had no idea what was going on, but it actually turned out to be pretty cool. I think it was telling a story of some sort although I couldn’t see some parts and I wasn’t always fully sure what was going on. 

Everyone followed the dancing horses to another area where the fireworks display was going to be held. It was in a sort of park which also had a little lake in it. It was a really cool place for a fireworks display to be held. The actual fireworks went off along with music and it was an amazing display. 

Another highlight of the trip to France was going to the Zoo De Champrepus, especially because I absolutely love animals. 

The zoo itself was actually pretty cool. It was split into two different parks and both sides of the zoo and it’s parks were separated by a bridge which went across the main road and I had never seen anything set out like this before.  As well as having two separate parks, there was also separate areas for each type of animal. These included an Asian area, tropical, Madagascar and African area. 

The first park had a petting zoo which where I completely fell in love with goats. You got to walk into the area where the goats were and they would come up to you and you could stroke them, feed them and play with them. The part where they were was split into two sections; a part for human and goat to be together and a part that was just specifically for the goats so that they had a place to go if they wanted to get away. A wooden fence type thing was what separated the two and the goats could duck under the fence to get to us/ away from us whenever they wanted. There was a vending machine that sold popcorn specifically for the goats and as soon as they even heard the bag rustling, they all came straight up to you and the little baby goats would jump up on you like dogs. They were such lovely, friendly little animals so there was no worry of them hurting us. We were able to hand feed the goat popcorn straight to the goats. They all went mad for the stuff and started trying to push each other out of the way to get to the food. 

The first park also had other animals such as guinea pigs, rabbits, red pandas, gibbons, donkeys, fish, and a tropical area for birds. I really enjoyed going to the tropical area because I finally got to see a real live Blue Macaw bird which I’ve always wanted to see in real life ever since that cartoon movie ‘Rio’ came out, so I got to experience a childhood dream. There were also tigers which my mum was really happy about as they’ve always been her favourite animal. 

After seeing every animal in the first park, (even going back and seeing the goats a couple mor times) we then headed over the bridge to the second park. 

The second park of the zoo had quite a few more animals than the first park. These animals included meerkats, lemurs, little monkeys, otters, penguins, zebras, ostriches, lions, prairie dogs, and my favourite from this park - giraffes. There were three giraffes and they looked to be mum, dad and child and they were such lovely big animals. They came over to where we were standing when they saw us. The three of them walked around together and followed one another wherever they went. 

After visiting every animal, we went to the little gift shop to get some souvenirs to take back home. Overall it had been a really great day. 

 I know that zoos aren’t for everyone, for a number of reasons, and I myself don’t always particularly enjoy zoos for the simple fact that I believe animals should be free and aren’t meant to live for the entertainment of humans. However, I do also find zoos to be very informative. The animals in this zoo were all very well looked after. 

The day I went to the zoo just so happened to be the day that France were playing in the FIFA World Cup final against Croatia. I’ll be honest, I don’t follow football nor would I be described as a huge football fan. However, I couldn’t help but be swept up in the excitement when France won, especially as I was out and about in one of the little towns when it happened. Everyone was out in the streets celebrating and tooting car horns and there was just a general excited/happy atmosphere which was really fun to be a part of.

So that was all for this years France adventures, I’ll be back in uni again before I know it and the holiday will probably fade like a dream. But it was one of the best holidays I’ve ever had. 

Bye for now, xo