San Diego Zoo

The next day, we drove to San Diego and spent the afternoon and evening at the San Diego Zoo. 

Elizabeth and I loved the koalas. They are behind us in the trees in these pictures. 

Koala close up. 

She just thought they were SO snuggly!

Giraffes. 

We liked the baby giraffe. The babies wouldn't stand up!

Some big rhino

Camel

Elephant

Lion!

Nathan got stepped on by an elephant! 

We rode on this gondola later in the day. I didn't take any pictures from up there. 

Nathan and the polar bears. (And blue lips from his snow cone). 

Universal Studios

We spent most of our time at Universal in the Harry Potter area. However, here are a few other pictures from the park. 

They had a big mall you had to walk through in order to get into the park. Very smart of them! 

The Universal Globe. 

The kids walked on a red carpet!

They rode a Despicable Me ride. 

They had a little street from Paris set up. I sat and waited here while they spent time in line for the Despicable Me ride. 

It was very quaint here in Paris!

We took the studio lot tour. We saw where they film a lot of things for TV and movies. This was the famous clock tower from Back to the Future. 

They did a Water World show that featured all kinds of stunts. 

At the end of the Water World show, they crashed a plane through the gates and a bunch of stuff burned up. Nathan thought this was just great! 

These are just some pretty pictures of palm trees inside of Universal. 

That's our Universal post! On to San Diego!

Hogwarts and Hogsmeade at Night

In the summertime, they do a laser lights type show on Hogwarts castle so we made sure we were back for that. Elizabeth ran around and around riding the Hippogriff ride and Nathan rode the Forbidden Journey ride. 

Hogsmeade looked pretty as the sun was going down!

Hogwarts when the show was just starting!

I took some pictures of what the streets of Hogsmeade looked like at night. 

We said goodbye to the magical world! I did not want to leave.