Today was the perfect day to spend in the sea. The Newport Aquarium is one of our favorite places to visit. Bryan and I were impressed the first time we went, long before we had children. Today was Zachary's third visit and Eli's first. If you're ever in the Cincinnati area, we highly recommend you visit here.
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| Eli fell asleep on the way there. He woke up as we waited in line to buy tickets. His shirt has an octopus wearing an eye patch. The other eye is one of those googly eyes that moves as he does. Zachary decided Eli had to wear that shirt to the aquarium. He actually decided most of Eli's outfits now that I think back! |
Zachary touched some sea stars (there's no such thing as starfish, we were told). He also touched horseshoe crab and another type of crab. Those are things he used to be very timid about but he's really starting to outgrow some of that as he gets older. Eli didn't want to touch any of it but he loved watching the fish and other creatures swim in their tanks. He points a lot and yells at one of us just to make sure we haven't missed anything. Zachary loved showing Eli some of the different creatures and asking if he liked them.
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| Playing a drum in the first area we entered. |
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| Laughing at some of the fish swimming in their tank |
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| Zachary touching a horseshoe crab |
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| Watching sharks, stingrays & other fish swim in a large tank. They have divers in this tank to show some of the different creatures. |
I think Eli's favorites were the Japanese Spider Crabs (they were enormous) and the penguins. There were three crabs in a tank and two of them looked like they were climbing the glass. Neither one was moving when we first walked up but when one did Eli almost jumped out of my arms. I told him they were just waving at him and he started waving to the crabs. That lasted a long time. He also liked watching the penguins dive in the water and swim across their tank.
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| Japanese Spider Crab |
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| Me & the boys checking out the spider crabs |
I think Zachary's favorites were the gators and the sharks. They have a new exhibit called Gator Alley. Their main resident is Mike, a 15 foot long alligator. I couldn't even get a good picture of him because he's so long. His information board said it took 10 men several hours to get him into the environment they set up for him. One of the last exhibits is a small, open shark tank with several small sharks in it. Surprisingly, Zachary loved this last time and today was no different. You're able to lean over the edge and pet a shark as it swims by. You have to wait until its eyes are past you before touching it with two fingers. Zachary spent a long time here and by the time he was done his shirt was soaked and stinky! How does a shark feel? Pretty soft, actually.
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| One of the gators just hanging out |
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| Eli making sure Bryan saw something interesting |
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| Eli wasn't so sure about sitting on the big frog statue at first but he decided he liked it. |
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| Zachary on his frog. The boys did pose together on one but it's so hard to get them both looking at the camera and that's when the camera was dying. |
Unfortunately, our camera battery died halfway through the aquarium. It doesn't take regular batteries, this one is a square battery that recharges. It's like a cell phone battery. Actually our cell phone chargers will charge the camera battery & vice versa. We had our video camera & cell phones with us so we did get more pics of the second half of our visit, but they've not been loaded here yet. Just know that we had a million gallons of fun and Zachary's already planning our next visit.
After we left the aquarium we met my friend Brandi for supper. We had more good food (La Rosa's Pizza) and good company but we had to get back to the hotel. Zachary smelled like an aquarium & both boys were past tired. We also have to start packing up because tonight is our last night here. Tomorrow we hope to visit the zoo and then head to Indy. More to come on that later!
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