Our second day at West Ed Mall, we went to the aquarium. It’s quite large, and entirely underneath the mall (though the tanks lie right on the edge of the water that holds the Santa Maria). And it’s cool!
Both kids especially liked the penguins. One penguin in particular, named Deyo, keep swimming up to the screen to say hello. He’s the black and white image behind the glass, making eyes at my daughter (though a little hard to see through the reflection of a display).
We stayed for the talk on penguins, which was quite interesting. I didn’t realize, for instance, that only a small handful of penguin species live in extremely cold regions. It seems my views of penguins were largely shaped by the magnificent Emperor penguins from Antarctica, but those are apparently odd birds indeed.
We stopped by the tide pools. The sea stars and anemones, even the sea cucumbers, were glorious.
You could pet the manta rays, which are astonishingly soft.
Our kids were a little hesitant, but they did put their hands in the water, and sure enough, the rays came swimming over to check them out.
I wanted to try the three-story high Ropes Quest, but my sandals — wonderful as they felt after a couple of months of snow boots — really weren’t suitable. Guess I’ll have to do that later.
Instead we went miniature golfing — at Putt ‘n’ Glow, notable for the fact that you’re putting in the dark under blacklights.
This was Mad Scientist’s choice, but it was a lot more fun than I expected it to be because you couldn’t see the hazards in the dark.
The holes were painted bright colors, so you could see where you were aiming, but you couldn’t see if, say, there was a slight hill right in front of the hole, or if the slope was just painted board rather than felt-covered. So it was more challenging that miniature golfing usually is.
We didn’t keep score. Heck, we didn’t even stay together! Mad Scientist was always at least one hole ahead of us, and Girly Girl got bored about twelve holes in and quit.
But I hit par or below for most holes. It was fun to see the admiration in Mars’ eyes. Hmm. Maybe we should miniature golf more often!
Next, we hit the sea lion show. I wasn’t that interested, but we’d gotten the tickets in a package from the hotel. Well, I’m soo glad we went. The sea lions were fabulous, as were their trainers.
Girly Girl didn’t want to go either, and she totally copped a typical teen attitude about it — which lasted exactly until the moment the sea lions appeared. Then a huge grin split over her face.
And over mine too. The sea lions were adorable — dancing, and rolling and spinning (both underwater and on dry land), climbing steps, diving up to hit a ball hanging high over the pool. I was utterly charmed and came away with a total fangirl crush on the trainer, Christina. I would love to have her job, even if I did come home smelling fishy every day.
The video shows a specific technique called porpoising that allows sea lions in the wild to escape from sharks. I missed the best part, where the sea lion literally did a flip in mid air, but it’s still fun to watch.
Afterward, you could have your picture taken with them, but nothing we could say would convince Girly Girl. I wish I’d thought to have a picture taken of all of us. She might have been willing to do that. And heck, I would have let the sea lion kiss my hair, rather than just posing next to me!
After the sea lion show, I went to the Apple Store to have a minor problem fixed with my phone, and the kids ate lunch.
We were planning to go to Galaxyland for the rest of the day, but Girly Girl was done, and Mad Scientist said he really wanted to just play with his computer.
So we found a hot spot (that happened to have karaoke) and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening snacking on wings while Mars and I set up their computers and downloaded all the software they needed (plus a few games) — while getting up to sing every little bit as our turn came up.
All in all, it was a very relaxing couple of days, and it felt like we were a heck a lot further from home than thirty kilometers!
Tags: 12 Days of Christmas, aquarium, miniature golf, Sea Lions, West Edmonton Mall
