London Day 39: Claire's 21st Birthday!

Here is another incredibly out-of-order post that I've been meaning to get around to writing. So... flashback to February 26th!

February 26th was the date of Claire's 21st birthday! Woohoo! In honor of it, she wanted to have a zoo-themed day, so we did! We started off by going to the London Zoo in the morning and seeing tons of cute animals. All my favorites were there including giraffes, meerkats, penguins, tigers, and lions (missing, unfortunately, were Boston Terriers). The zoo was really big and also wasn't very busy, so we had a chance to really explore everything. It was set up by regions of the world, and had special exhibits for some animals such as the gorillas. We also made a point to visit the children's section of the zoo, where you could climb into these tunnels and pop your head into the exhibits:

After the zoo, we headed back to our flats to get the boys and get ready for dinner. We also gave Claire her birthday presents: 21 tulips (her favorite flower) and tickets to see Wicked!! Yayy for presents!! At 6:00pm, we went out to a restaurant called 'Giraffe' by Russell Square tube. It was really delicious. Afterwards, we headed back to Claire's to pregame while we waited for everyone else that was going out with us. We had bought jungle masks at the zoo, so we put those one while we pregamed. I was a giraffe, Claire a zebra, Christine a lion, Alex an elephant, and Ramon a monkey. Yeehaw! While we waited we played a cute game that Christine came up with called '21 Questions'. Basically, a tradition in the United States when you turn 21 is to take 21 shots, however, this is incredibly dangerous/no fun. So, '21 Questions' is a take on this that makes it more fun and more safe. Basically, you put 21 shots on the table, and you ask the birthday person 21 questions, some which they know the answers to, and some which they don't. Any question they get right, they get to give away a shot to someone else in the room. Any question that they get wrong, they have to take. This way, you're keeping with the 21 shot theme, however, one person isn't taking all 21 of the shots. There were lots of people there at the time, too, so we each only ended up taking 2-3 each, which was perfect.

After everyone arrived, we headed out to the club we were going to for the night: TigerTiger (do you see the recurring zoo theme?). All of the floors had different themes, and we spent most of our time on the '80's floor' which was really fun, and in the basement where they were playing popular dance music with strobe lights, fog machines, etc. Personally, I liked the 80's room the best because it was well-lit and everyone was more focused on having a good time than dancing, but that's just me.

A few hours later we left the club and Christine and I had a sleepover at Claire's as the epic end to her 21st birthday. Overall, I would call it a success!