The Maritime Aquarium

This is what started the whole thing. We'd originally gone to the Aquarium mainly to see Penguins on the Loose, which is an event that lets people see one of the African penguins up close, without glass, waddling around a taped-off square as he or she pleases (under the supervision of handlers). This was a terrible idea on a Saturday during school-year summer vacation. We went to get in line 45 minutes early hoping to be seated right on one of the edges, but there were already tons of people in line with their kids. We ended up skipping it because it would've been really crowded and hard to see all that much. Fortuntely if you just go to their exhibit you can be a foot away from one and the glass just protects you from splashing. Maybe we'll try again on a week day.
Fortunately there's lots of stuff to see. There's a reptile exhibit that's really neat, and includes these little guys. It's probably not a surprise to anyone, but I love the blue ones with little black spots.

The seals were really cute and amazingly graceful. We watched them for a while and then came back to see their first feeding of the day from the floor above.

The jellyfish exhibits are strangely hypnotic. You can watch some of the larger jellyfish swimming about here. There's also a video of seahorses that I think someone in particular will enjoy.

Otters are adorable. I think that says it all.

And the sea turtles. Yes, we all know how I love sea turtles. I was expecting to see the smaller Hawksbills because my sister brought back pictures of them when she went. I was in complete awe to discover that they had a Loggerhead and that she was easily 4-5 feet long. In the above picture she actually looks much smaller than if you were standing in my place. She was also quite shy, and I'm sorry to say I've no videos of her.