Back to sleeping well again. I got up about 7:45. Sherri is sleeping soundly until close to 9. When she gets up, she makes us scramble eggs for breakfast. Now to decide what to do today. Thundershowers are in the forecast for this afternoon with some pretty good rain. We are not wild about having to spend time outdoors trying to dodge lightning bolts. It takes us a while to figure out that we can get to the Georgia Aquarium before the thunderstorm may hit. If we really feel threatened, we can Uber back to the AirBnB-it is just money after all.
By the time we leave, it is a
little after 11. We wait a few minutes until Google says the next bus
is in another 20 minutes. So we took off walking. A minute later the
bus comes. At least we get our walking in today. We then get to wait
another 15 minutes at the Brookhaven station for the Gold train. Then
it is off to the Civic Center station. Since it is not raining, we
decided we can walk another 15 minutes to the Aquarium. Our walk
takes us down Ivan Allen St. The route takes us past the
closed-for-renovations National
Center for Civil Rights.
Next to that is the World
of CocaCola.
The Aquarium is right beside there. So we go over and get our tickets
and get in line to go in. There is a mini-screening which we wiz
through.
Shark Tank gazing
The Aquarium is divided up into sections. The first one which we went into was the shark tank. Well, not into the tank, but around the tank. The area is called Predators! There is a single tank holding over a million gallons of water and with many windows to view. In the tank were an assortment of sharks with a school of small fish in it. What kind of sharks? Great Hammerhead, Tiger, Silvertip and others. It was fascinating to see them swim around each other. The walk ways are crowded. There is a short talk given about the sharks, but with the asides to keep the walks available for movement.
There have been announcements that there is a 2pm dolphin show. This means going up an escalator to the dolphin tank. After the shark tank, this is a bit disappointing to me. There are maybe four to six dolphins with a single viewing panel. While the dolphins themselves are interesting, they are a poor second after the sharks. Sherri mentions that I swam with the dolphins though. These are bottlenose dolphins, I swam with spinners.
The Georgia Aquarium has designed their building as a set of interconnecting areas. As you leave one area, you follow a hallway, sometimes level, sometimes including or declining. In the hallways there are additional exhibits.
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| Connecting Hallway |
Leaving the dolphins, we go through a hallway of insects which leads us to the Gator Crossing. Kell talks about the differences between alligators and crocodiles, their habitat and how their teeth are structured. I do not think I want to meet up with either a gator or croc. They have three albinos which they got from St Augustine. We are able to look down onto a number of fish as well. I do not know what they are.
We head back down to the base layer and into the River Scout area. The first thing we see are some piranhas. They look so cute and all they would like to do is to have a bite with you! Those fish we saw with the gators? We are at a level with them now and see them swimming beside us. Something which the Georgia Aquarium does well is bring the kids into the exhibit. They have built little tunnels which allow the kids to pop up and be inside the tank, giving them a 360 degree view. While not being able to interact with the fish, they are right there with them. Fun to see their expression of wonder.
Then it is on to the Cold
Water Quest
.
The first thing we see is a Beluga Whale. Rachel did a report on
Belugas when she was in 5th grade. So we stayed and watched them for
about 15 minutes. I believe we were told there are five of them, with
one being a young one, and they keep three or four out all the time.
Electric Eel
We moved on and there are the California Kelp beds-why have we come 3,500 miles to see what is right off of our Coast? Then there is an Alaskan Coast exhibit. The star is the Great Pacific Octopus. Why the star? First he crawled down the glass right in front of us, then went in the far upper corner. He (she?) must have been fed there. Pretty soon we see a hand come down and pat and rub its head. I am thinking when David has gotten close to an octopus, he has been inked by it. Impressed. Note: When we got back to Fresno, I started reading the Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.
In the Ocean Voyager section. There is a stingray petting area plus a green sea turtle. My comment to Sherri is, I have swam with those as well as manta rays. About this time I am wondering if she thinks I should have swam with some piranhas or sharks-actually David and I did swim over a couple reef sharks at Two Step once.
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| Beluga Whale |
There may have been a few other sections, I cannot remember. But we are getting a bit tired. And it is about 3:30. The exit is through the gift shop where we dutifully look through their assortment of stuff. After leaving the Aquarium, we sit down on a planter in Centennial Olympic Park and have some smoked almonds I have been carrying for a week, along with some potato chips and jelly belly's. A CocaCola vending machine is calling to Sherri and she gets a bottle of Coke.
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| Things go better with Coke |
Afterwards we are feeling a bit better, so we decided to retrace our steps of this morning, back to Civic Center Station. The station is mostly empty and very quiet. We catch the Gold train back to Brookhaven and decide to walk back to the AirBnB. A woman asks us if we know where to pick up the shuttle to the Cherry Festival. We can answer that question and told her to walk with us. She is rolling some luggage and I offer to roll it for her to where we will part-it is heavy. We point her in the right direction and continue on our way.
We decided to stop at Krogers and pick up a salad and milk. We think we have enough food for the rest of our stay. We get back to our AirBnB about 4:45. We rest until 6 when we have a lasagna and salad dinner. Then more resting. And then taking a shower as I am stinky. We stayed up till 10:15 and had our Family Zoom call at 9:30. David and Steven were on it. But went to bed pretty quickly afterwards.
Breakfast |
Lunch |
Dinner |
Snacks |
Scrambled eggs and toast. |
|
Lasagna |
Smoked Almonds |
Extra Photo's
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| Beluga Whale |
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| Beluga Whale |
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