A Day of Just Looking At Fish

Yesterday, I took the boys and Madeleine to the aquarium. It cost about $47 for the three of us (Madeleine was free), plus $18 for parking (which turned out to be a "good" deal, when I went online afterwards to see if we could have found a cheaper garage. We have a Children's Museum membership, so we could have gone there, instead, for free, but Amy and I wanted to boys to have a special treat, so I splurged for the aquarium.

At the aquarium, I made sure they got to see the penguins being fed, a seal-training show, and a live lobster presentation. We went to the very top of the building to look down into the tank, rather than just looking from the side through the glass, and saw sharks, stingrays, and all kinds of sea creatures. We held starfish. We visited the jellyfish (now re-branded as "jellies", apparently); the exhibit showed the jellyfish in a phosphorescent context - lots of darkness and special lights to bring out their unusual contours and translucence/transparency. A lady who worked there stopped by specifically to show us a (real) shark's jaw and point out the shape and layout of the teeth...

As we were walking from the aquarium back to the garage after our visit, Ian put the whole thing in perspective:

"Daddy, couldn't we have gone to the museum, because why just look at fish?"

(November 20, 2009)