I went Pokémon catching at London Zoo and it was the best day ever
LONDON -- Ever since I downloaded the app on Monday, I've been dangerously obsessed with Pokémon Go.
I've been playing it on my lunch break, playing it on my commute, and just generally risking all of my close personal and professional relationships by banging on about it non-stop.
Then, on Wednesday, something magical happened: my colleagues -- probably realising they could get rid of me for awhile -- agreed to send me to London Zoo for a glorious day of Pokémon catching.
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Basically, I thought I could kill two pidgeys with one stone: take some pictures of Pokémon hanging out with genuine, real-world animals, and also find out if there are any rare/unusual creatures to be caught in a place like the zoo (Pokémon Go is pretty sophisticated, so I thought there was a good chance they'd have factored this in -- sort of like the safari parks of the old Pokémon games).
With all that in mind I set off to Regent's Park with a generous supply of Poké Balls and a borderline-unhealthy quantity of excitement...
As I neared the zoo, I spotted plenty of Pokémon hanging around.
As I'd hoped, there were no shortage of Pokémon inside London Zoo.
As I wandered around, I noticed some enclosures appeared to have been labelled incorrectly.
My favourite bit of the whole morning, though, was definitely the hippo enclosure.
After a hard morning of Pokémon-catching, I ducked into a restaurant for lunch. Even inside I wasn't safe, though.
After lunch, I decided to test out just how tailored the Pokémon locations were to the actual zoo itself.
I was actually a bit surprised by how accurate some of them were. Early on in the afternoon I tracked down a Doduo to Blackburn Pavilion (which is a large indoor bird enclosure), and later I found a Psyduck hanging out in the middle of the Penguin Pool.
As the day wore on and my level increased from five to nine, I began spotting some rarer Pokémon.
London Zoo is actually divided into two sections; the main bit and a smaller area that runs along a stream, and is accessible through a tunnel under the road. It was here that I found Poliwag and Rhyhorn (there seemed to be a small herd of the latter wandering about that section of the zoo).
The final icing on the cake was that I did so much walking my 10km egg finally hatched.
Final thoughts on a Pokémon catching trip to the zoo...
The whole day would probably have been better if I hadn't been on my own -- I'd certainly have felt less self-conscious about photographing Rhyhorns, anyway -- but it was still a hell of a lot of fun.
I got to see a bunch of cool creatures (both the real kind and the virtual kind), and my Pokémon Go stats improved loads in the process.
Over the course of the day I caught 12 new Pokémon (two from hatched eggs, a handful from the surrounding park and the rest in the zoo), I grew by four levels, and I covered a total distance of around six-and-a-half kilometres.
I'm not sure whether all the Pokémon I found were congregating there because it was a zoo or just because they happened to be in the area, but I think some -- Rhyhorn and Doduo in particular -- probably weren't there by accident. The terrain helps, too; because there tend to be streams, lakes and other bodies of water within a zoo, there's always a strong variety in the types of Pokémon you encounter.
Ultimately, If you fancy a nice day trip and you're as hopelessly obsessed with the game as I am, a Pokémon hunt around your local zoo makes for a fun (albeit unconventional) afternoon out.
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Topics Pokemon
