Feeding the red pandas - aka the best birthday surprise ever

I know what you're thinking, you already posted a "what I did for my birthday post".  Well my friends here is part two.  RED PANDA DAY!!

It all started at the end of January when Michelle text me this -

 

Her, Sean and Ryan had booked this big secret birthday surprise. I know, I am truly spoilt and have the most amazing people in my life. But ... I absolutely hate surprises. Me being me, I thought I would 100% be able to find out what it was before we went, apparently I was very wrong. I sent constant annoying messages trying to find out what on earth it this surprise was and bugged Sean on a weekly bases.

The surprise day started by Michelle and Ryan picking me and Sean up at 7am from our house. We had coffee, sausage rolls and a banging sing along playlist ... the Pitch Perfect soundtrack. At about 10am we rocked up at Longleat Safari and they'd booked for us to feed the red pandas!! I LOVE RED PANDAS, I have one tattooed on my arm. They're my all time favorite animal, so cute, so dumb, so fluffy and just the perfect cat / dog / bear / panda hybrid. ADORBS!!!

The experience itself was about 30 - 40 minutes. We met our zoo keeper at 11:15 who took us to the enclosure, she then let us in around the back and into the red panda's house, inside there was a little red floofer named AJ. As soon as he clocked the food, he came straight off his little perch and sat as close to us (the food) as he could. We then took it in turns to feed him chopped up apple and panda cake which is smooshed up bamboo and something else, it looks like poop. AJ was so so sweet, he took the fruit so gently and even let us pet and stroke him. I showed him my tattoo, which I think he approved off.

We then went outside to see if we could see the lady panda, she was hiding as she's recently had 2 little cubs and is looking after them. The zoo keeper told us that she probably wouldn't come out to say hi. AJ followed us outside where we fed him some more and got to see him in all his glory. We went around to where the lady panda was hanging out in her house and she came out to see us, she was absolutely lovely. I didn't pet her too much as I didn't want her to think I was coming for her babies, but she was a little stunner. We had gathered a lot of crowd attention by this point as well. 

After our experience we spent the rest of our day walking around the Zoo, looking at the animals and going on the safari, which I will get too later. Longleat is the most interactive zoo I've ever been to. You could touch the sting rays, walk with a penguin, feed the deer, hold snakes and insects, walk with the birds, feed the giraffes and walk with the Lemurs. Obviously I did everything apart from hold any insects because they're grim. HARD PASS!!

The Safari was so so so so so good. We were given an CD to listen to while we drove around which was super cute. We started with the monkeys who climbed all over the car, one even hitched a ride and just sat on the roof for like 5 minutes. Thankfully they didn't break anything and were pretty well behaved, which is why most people skip them but they were so worth it. We also saw lions, tigers, giraffes, flamingos and so much more. I would 100% recommend doing the safari, it was a such fun experience.

The only thing we didn't get time for is the boat to the gorilla, so if you plan do visit Longleat then I recommend doing that as early in the day as possible. The queue was insane and we would have been waiting for over an hour. 

I had such a good day and I fully intend to book the experience again. For anyone interested it's £60 a person and Longleat is one of the only places near Brighton that let 4 people enter the enclosure.