Monday, January 02, 2006

NAIB


Today we took our delayed trip to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. We've been wanting to do this ever since my mom purchased us a sweet membership there. In fact, we'd planned to take the whole extended family over Christmas break but due to illness, we had to slash the idea. So, despite Kt not feeling so great still yesterday we decided to go.

When we got up this morning Em was not doing so well. She was very tired, which is sort of unusual. She fared better than Kt with this particular stomach flu episode, so after two totally normal days for her I chalked up this morning to rainy weather, complete exhaustion from the past week or so. We got ready, picked up a friend of Kt's and went down to Baltimore.

For those of you who don't know, the aquarium just added on a huge addition. It's been in the works for several years and delayed it's open from last spring to this past December. I've been very interested in checking it out because it's all centered around Australia, which is a country I would LOVE to visit, let's say if I were rich. But I'm not, so the thought of visiting a piece of it 20 minutes away from my home is very attractive to me.

Probably the best thing about this new addition on the aquarium is the new members entrance - I'm liking it. As far as the exhibit goes, it was much smaller than I'd expected. There's an impressive waterfall that reaches the ground floor entrance, a small exhibit with about 5 large tanks and a few smaller habitats for native animals and sandwiched in between the two, on the middle floor, is (OF COURSE) the very large, new and improved gift shop. That was disappointing. From the size of this monstrous addition, I really had much larger expectations. It seemed smaller than the rainforest exhibit that is in the original aquarium.

Em made it through the Australia exhibit, ate nothing for lunch, then she and I went right for the dolphin show. They now open the dolphin arena all the time and don't assign shows, which is really nice. We held front row (well, right behind the splash zone!) seats for T and the girls and watch the dolphins play for about a half hour. Em seemed fine. She loves dolphins, so it was fun to watch them play without being told what to do!

After the dolphin show we decided to call it a day and went home. Em fell asleep in the car, no surprise. Once we were home she was transferred to the sofa, where she promptly threw up again. Basically, we just infected thousands of people on a holiday at the National Aquarium. Don't I feel great now? Poor Em. A second round of feeling awful, and only days after the first round. What a trooper.

I'm looking forward to returning to the aquarium at a less crowded time. Rudeness was at an alltime high today, which typically annoys me. We love to go in the evenings and wander around after most everyone else has vanished. We've gone before at night and had the whole place to ourselves! It's also fun to see the dolphin show when there's a gorgeous sunset out the back windows.

Again, if you have never been and are in the area, give us a call. We can take 2 free guests every time we go and we have some other passes, as well. It would be our pleasure to take you along!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

haha well i live in the area, but i'd love to tag along with you guys sometime! i haven't been to the aquarium in years, but i alwyas loved it growing up!
love ya!! em g-berg

deanna said...

Haha - it would be so fun to have you along! We'll call next time we go. See you Thursday!