Philly Oct 2006

On Thursday, October 5th, 2006,  Alexandra and I loaded the car and headed south for a 'Mommy & Me' vacation in the Philadelphia area. Our first stop was the Adventure Aquarium, just across the river from Philadelphia in Camden, NJ. Before going into the aquarium, we took some pictures of the Philly skyline and the Ben Franklin Bridge ('The Blue Bridge,' as Alexandra called it.)

Inside the aquarium, we enjoyed the hippo exhibit, where you can see the hippos both above and below the water. In the shark exhibit, we sat in the tunnel while the sharks swam all around us. The touch pool houses small sharks and rays. I was a little nervous about letting Alexandra put her hands in there, but the staff member said as long as we used only two fingers, the animals wouldn't hurt us. Alexandra was thrilled to touch the creatures; she would have stayed there all day if I'd let her.

We rode the Spongebob 4D ride which I thought was pretty lame (the 'plot' really had nothing to do with marine life or the aquarium) but Alexandra got a kick out of it.

Outside, we watched the penguins for a while. One of them followed us from the other side of the glass, eyeing Alexandra's bag of Skittles. When one of the Skittles landed on the ground, he dove to the bottom of the tank and gazed longingly at the candy for several minutes.

We watched the seal show and then went back inside to see the tropical section.

Next door to the Aquarium is the Camden Children's Garden with rides, story-themed gardens and a butterfly house. In the butterfly house, the staff member let Alexandra hold one of the butterflies.

By this time, it was late afternoon and time for us to head over the river to our hotel in Willow Grove, PA. At the hotel, throngs of people were checking in for the three-day Susan Komen walk. We ran into many of them again when we went down the street to have dinner at Carabba's. Fortunately they had to be up at the crack of dawn for the walk, so they were a quiet bunch and the hotel was quiet that night.