Between our time in Boston and Philly, we’ve been hitting the historical sites pretty hard. So today, we decided to do something a little different. A quick 10-minute drive took us over the river to New Jersey and the Adventure Aquarium.
We saw upon our arrival that a Hippo feeding would be occurring shortly, and so we decided that would be our first stop. (I know, hippos!) The hippos were doing their thing. And then some unknown thing seemed to let them know that it was almost chow time, cause one of them came over and just hung out. And she waited there. For a good long time. We were totally digging it. We got some great pictures.
And every time someone new came up, Evie would tell them: “It’s a big fella.” It cracked us all up.
Eventually, the caretaker came out and told us a little bit about the care and feeding of hippos while she fed them some Bok Choy.
Next up, we walked through the jellyfish section. The jellyfish section is always one of my favorite parts of any aquarium we go to. They’re mesmerizing. One of the habitats had some floating produce bags in the aquarium with some jellyfish. At first we didn’t realize that was what we were looking at, because the bags look SO much like jellyfish. That was rather sobering to think about.
After the jellyfish section, we found ourselves in the shark section. We walked through the acrylic tunnel and got to walk on the shark bridge: a rope bridge that goes over the sharks’ tank so you can check them out from above. That was pretty fun.
To get to the next section that we wanted to see, we had to walk through the gift shop. And Logan found a little froggy friend there.
The next area that we went to was called “Piranha falls” which was all about the Amazon rainforest. Every 15 minutes, a “storm” would happen in part of the exhibit to simulate what it is like in a tropical rainforest. And as you would expect, there were some animals of a more exotic nature. There was even a parrot (Oh, excuse me, a Blue and Gold macaw). Once Clara saw the macaw, she didn’t really bother checking out anything else. She pretty much stayed there for the entire time that the rest of us were wandering around. In the end she got him to dance (by demonstrating what she wanted him to do over and over) and she got him to say “Pretty bird” (She enjoys watching parrot training videos, and it seems that she has picked up some techniques.)
Eventually we were able to tear Clara away from the parrot and we went to the touch pools. There were several different pools, and we visited all of them. We got to pet some small sharks, some rays, starfish, anemones, and horseshoe crabs. Jonas was pretty nervous to pet the sharks, but he summoned up his courage and did it. We were proud of him. Way to go bud!
Next we went and saw the 3D movie. While we were standing in line for the movie, the gal ahead of us started talking to us. Because she noticed we had lots of kids. She is a mom of six (although she was just there with her mom and her son). So you know, moms of big families unite! They were up from Louisiana and were just the nicest people. We saw them several other times throughout the day, and we really enjoyed chatting with them. (Hi Laura!)
Next, to Logan’s delight we went and checked out the frog section. There weren’t NEARLY enough frogs to satisfy him. But I think that would have probably been true no matter what. He just loves frogs.
The frogs were adjacent to an area dedicated to a small kids’ play area. Our kids enjoyed that. And Jonathan and I appreciated the chance to be old and sleepy for a minute. Just keeping it real. It’s cruel that kids have so much more energy than their parents. 😫😫
The final part of the museum was the Pirate’s passage. Which is a tunnel with a bunch of different exhibits with piratical elements in them. There are lots of tropical fish, seahorses, lobster, jellyfish, eels and more. And of course, at the end, there’s the pirate booty.
The aquarium was closing at this point, so we decided to walk up the riverwalk for a moment, and we once again enjoyed the views of Philly.
And then we made our way home.
On the way home, we dropped by an Amazon locker and picked up a package: yam shoes. We came home and put them on. They were so dang excited about their new shoes. And especially that they are matchy matchy.
Jonathan and I went out for dinner again. And because the food was so amazing the other night, we decided to go back to El Camino again. Let’s be honest, when we’re with the kids, we never get to have Mexican/BBQ cause that’s not really their jam.
Once again, the food was amazing. And we went home happy.
