National Aquarium, Baltimore MD PTR/VTR

[violakat03]

Since I randomly can't sleep, time for another TR!

When my brother (Brian) invited me to come down a few days earlier than I'd planned for my coaster trip, he sweetened the deal by saying that he and his wife (Stacey) were planning on going to the aquarium and zoo on their long weekend, and my sister-in-law really wanted me to come along also. I got down there on Saturday night and we got up bright and early Sunday to make the slightly over an hour drive to Baltimore from my brother's place in Alexandria VA.

Memorial Day brings Rolling Thunder to the D.C. area, meaning there were motorcycles. LOTS of motorcycles.

The entire left lane was motorcycles for easily two miles. They also filled the carpool lanes, which were shut down to all traffic except motorcycles.

After an hour or so of driving...

Hey look, it's Baltimore!

This bus stop ad made me do a double take. Then I had to take a picture of it because it was just that bizarre!

Once we got parked ($20 for the garage - ouch!), we walked through the harbor area. The water stunk, very very badly. It was also a nasty brown. They had peddle boats available as well as harbor boat tours but we all decided that none of us wanted to come that close to that nasty water, especially considering Stacey is 23 weeks pregnant and who knows what kind of contaminates were in there.

However, there were some upsides to the harbor, such as getting to see this:

This Coast Guard ship is the last remaining Pearl Harbor surviving ship. The rest have either been sunk or scrapped throughout the years, but this one is safely (or as safely as is possible in that nasty water) resting in an enclosed area of the harbor and open for tours.

The aquarium did timed entrances, so you couldn't get in before your assigned time. We knew our time was at 12:00 and we got to the will-call booth a little before 11:30, so we decided to kill some time by browsing the Barnes & Noble and the Hard Rock Cafe gift shop. The Barnes & Noble is inside an old power plant, which still maintains it's interior brick walls, some of the old steam pipes and a lot of other internal structures, which made it very cool.

Finally it was time for us to get in line to enter the aquarium. I've never seen an aquarium so absolutely packed, but, it was Memorial Day weekend and most likely a lot of families had the same idea we did. Unfortunately, the National Aquarium is not cheap! It was around $40 each for our admission, which included the dolphin show and 4D immersion theater, plus the $20 for parking. We skipped the gift shop for this reason, even though the merchandise prices were way more reasonable - an average of $15 for a t-shirt, with many on sale for less than that. One of these days I want to go back to the aquarium with some more money and on a less crowded day, because I really want to do the guest diver program.

Back to the trip report. The aquarium is laid out so that there is a specific flow of traffic. Your first stop is the shark tank, where sharks and manta rays play and coexist peacefully. I've always found rays to be spectacularly beautiful, and was absolutely stoked to have seen one in the wild on my first ocean dive. I took a lot of pictures of these guys. I believe the larger ones are skates and the smaller ones are rays. I may have that backwards though.

Then we wandered through the rest of the exhibits. Due to the sheer size of crowds, it was difficult to do more than just press in, get a quick glance at everything in the tanks, and be shuffled past, so I didn't get a whole lot of pictures of the smaller exhibits, though there were definitely some cool ones, such as this shy turtle:

The neon tetras (just like you'd find in a pet store!) and another turtle:

And this lionfish:

The escalators took you ever increasingly upwards, and just as we reached the top, we found one display with a lot of life, and more than just fish.

The frogs didn't seem to mind the observers.

Somewhere in this picture is a green snake! It took me a minute or two of staring into the tank to finally find it, it blended in so well.

After going all the way up, the path led into a large glass-topped rainforest environment. You walked through it and interacted with animals with no glass or cages between you. Of course, due to the crowds and noise, they were hiding for the most part. I have a slight fear of these walk-through exhibits because it never seems to fail, I always seem to end up getting pooped on by a bird. Luckily, we survived this trip without that misfortune!

The vegetation and waterways were very well done, as showcased by this fantastic waterfall.

The only wildlife we really saw up close. There was such a huge crowd around it that I had to stand on tiptoes and shoot this over someone's head before we were shuffled on by the crowd.

Look carefully and you'll see a furry monkey butt. He was sleeping, or at least trying to.

After exiting the rain forest, you take a winding ramp back down the 4 floors you ascended, going right through the middle of a coral reef exhibit. The exhibit surrounds you as you go down and is filled with all kinds of great fish swimming in a circle. Most of them were moving like it was the Indy 500 and in the low light my camera just could not catch them. Some, however, were moving at a more leisurely pace, such as this barracuda:

This one was having a staring contest with my brother.

Reef fish are usually quite colorful, like this guy.

I liked this one. It looked funny.

Look, more rays!

Swarming school of fish.

There's actually a whole bunch of fish in this picture, but the orange one is the only one you can see really well.

Also in the coral reef exhibit were several kinds of sharks. I like sharks too, not quite as much as dolphins or rays, but I think they've got an unfortunately bad rep and are really quite amazing animals. There was one in the tank with us at Epcot's DiveQuest and his attitude was sort of "eh. You're there. Don't bug me too much and we're cool." The giant sea turtle was more interested in us than the shark was.

After leaving the coral reef cylinder, you entered the underwater viewing area for the shark and ray exhibit that we earlier saw from the top. I think they were showing off for visitors.

I'm not a hundred percent certain, but I believe that's a baby hammerhead!

After we left the main part of the aquarium, it was time for our dolphin show. I absolutely adore dolphins and am still trying to figure out how to make a career out of that love without working with them in captivity. While I love watching dolphin shows, I'd rather work with them in the wild. Sandals in the Bahamas does wild dolphin encounters and that sounds just about right up my alley!

We decided to sit in the splash zone because Stacey and I wanted to see if we'd actually get wet, not to mention there were more seats available there than anywhere else in the auditorium. Apparently most people want to stay dry. So boring.

I bet you were wondering if there were going to be any videos.

We had a ton of fun at the dolphin show and actually did get pretty wet! About the same as you get on a mild water ride, like Wild Thornberry's without the elephant. From there it was time to move to the 4D immersion theater. None of us actually enjoyed it. It was basically an episode of the BBC series Planet Earth, with 3D glasses and effects such as spraying in the face with water or air, a 'snake' (piece of soft plastic tubing) slapping the backs of your legs which I defeated by grabbing it and holding on through the show, and a 'punch' in the back from an air powered mechanism in the seat that managed to nail me right in the tender spot in my back from a car accident. That muscle was tight and painful for the next several hours and I spent most of the movie sitting on the edge of my chair to avoid it. When we got home, my brother pulled out his Planet Earth Blu-Ray discs and we watched it in a more enjoyable setting.

After the theater show, we decided we were pretty much done for the day. We poked around in the gift shop a bit but didn't see anything we absolutely had to have (I want a Dive the National Aquarium shirt, which they had prominently displayed with other dive flag merchandise, but I'll wait until I've actually done it!) so we headed out. We were all hungry (and Stacey said the baby was violently proclaiming such) so we decided we'd make a day of it and go to the Hard Rock Cafe. At least we were expecting it to be expensive. The food was actually pretty good - not the best hamburger I've had (Five Guys is better), but above average for sure. Brian had a pulled pork sandwich and Stacey had fajitas.

Ouch. And that's before tip!

They had a lot of cool stuff on the walls, such as a guitar from the Butthole Surfers. Brian and I were really surprised to see that beacuse it seems like we're the only two who have ever heard of them and both like them. I still think they win the award for best (or worst?) band name ever.

We're also both big Pink Floyd fans, so we enjoyed seeing that they had some of their stuff too.

Gold Record for The Wall.

And to close the day out, we decided that hey, since we're in Baltimore, and my other sister-in-law (husband's sister) is a cake decorator and absolutely loves the show Ace of Cakes, we needed to drive past a certain bakery!

It looks just like it does on TV, but you don't realize that it's plopped at the end of a residential neighborhood. It's also almost at the end of a dead-end street. Still, it was really cool to see the building. I was hoping we might see them loading up a cake or something, but no such luck!

So with that, we headed back to D.C. After a quick stop at Six Flags America to purchase and process my season pass, we were home.

[Tom76257]

Great trip report, Kat. Love the pics of all the underwater life. My friends have been to the aquarium and also saw the dolphin show. Very entertaining from what I hear. I've heard of the Butthole Surfers and I too like their music. They're not too shabby actually!