Florida Aquarium

Today's day trip was to the Florida Aquarium. It is rated one of the top 10 in the country,  but I couldn't help comparing it to the Monterey Aquarium. That beautiful space is integrated into Monterey Bay and it feels very open and, well, part of the bay itself. Bob commented that the glass could be a little cleaner and he was right. In fact, we did see a glass cleaning device in one of the aquariums, moving methodically up and down from some height above the exhibit.

I liked the sea turtles and stingrays best. The alligator was lethargic, as alligators tend to be until some interesting prey catches their fancy. Human divers who paid a premium to swim with SCUBA gear seemed to be enjoying exploration of a big tank, diving all the way to the bottom and swimming among the fish. The energetic otters are a crowd favorite, but they're hard to follow because they're so fast and into doing their own thing, whatever that is, not playing to or for the crowd.

We arrived at the aquarium just in time for the noon dolphin watch boat ride, branded as an "ecotour" as is the custom with such excursions. We did indeed see dolphins, and they were much more crowd aware than the lively otters. They even moved from one side of the boat to the other, as if to please all their fans. It really was fun to watch them.

We used the GPS (Bob's birthday gift from the boys last June). What a great device! The major challenge was getting Bob to have faith in the directions! Now I know why he doesn't use the GPS  himself: I think he argues with the disembodied GPS voice the way he does with me. In the end, he followed my directions verbatim and we arrived safely, in both directions.