This past week I was lucky enough to have a visitor from Toronto stay with me, meaning that I would be in charge of showing them all that is Vancouver. I was really looking forward to this because the number one thing on my list was to visit the Vancouver Aquarium, something that I hadn't done in years. Also, as you may know, the aquarium is home to a brand new baby beluga whale, which sweetened the deal even further, so with high hopes of spotting the Amazon sloth and some neat underwater critters, we set out to Stanley Park.
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Because the newborn beluga is still very young and fragile, they were only allowing limited numbers of people to go underground and see the belugas in the tank from below. For all of you at home... check them out on the beluga cam!
Our first stop was the Tropic Zone... I just really really wanted to see that sloth! It's so cool! And also this is the section of the Aquarium that I remembered the most from my childhood- probably because it was (and still is) so warm in there.
I eventually spotted the sloth waaaaaay up in a tree by the roof, hiding from me and my camera. Instead, I took a picture of this cool bird... not only does it look cool but it also talks. Not sure what it was trying to tell me but I hope it wasn't too important because I didn't understand it.
These crocodiles look plastic and dead but apparently they just sit still and conserve energy until they need to eat. This is a picture of a crocodile blinking.
This guy just really loves CSI... I think he was here on official business.
These jellyfish were so beautiful.
They even had a kids zone! I wasn't sure how appreciative the parents would be of me taking photos of their little children playing, so I decided to take a photo of my brother instead. Probably a good choice.
The dolphin show was definitely a fan favourite. There were three dolphins doing synchronized jumping and wiggling and all kinds of silly stuff and it was pretty cool.
These people liked to take photos of the dolphins too. Look at all of them! They need to take a little visit to VancouverIsAwesome.com
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The dolphins seemed to be having an awesome time... they like to eat fish in exchange for doing tricks for the people with the whistles. Dolphins are apparently pretty smart and it was thinking the whole time if the dolphins would be making fun of me for taking pictures of them eating. Anyways, they were really awesome to watch.
After the scheduled show, we headed underground to see what they looked like swimming around.
We peeked over to see if it was worth it to get in line to see the baby beluga but apparently everyone who was just watching the dolphin show had the same idea, so we just checked out the belugas from the surface. The grey one is the baby. They didn't jump or do any cool tricks like the dolphin but they seemed very calm, swimming around as mother and daughter and it was a nice change of pace and really peaceful to watch.
This lady was very short and made of wood.
All in all, our trip to the Vancouver Aquarium was super super super fun and we got to see all kinds of stuff that we wouldn't normally be able to and I would definitely recommend going there sometime soon, even if you have been before. One thing that really struck me about the trip was how many old people and young people there were there. Everywhere I looked, there was either an awestruck senior citizen or an awestruck little kid... it really made me realize how special it was to be seeing all these cool animals, no matter how old you are. Post a comment and share your memories (old and new!) about the Vancouver Aquarium!
