Early start today as we were heading over to Tampa Bay to visit the Florida Aquarium. Â But wanted to get a good breakfast first so headed into Perkins for our usual breakfast. Â They had someone in doing balloon animals and hats etc so as Rosemary was being such a good girl with her food she got a balloon dog as a reward. Â Of course the moment she got it the eating stopped as it was such a massive distraction. Â Oh well, she’d had a lot up to that point.
(Unfortunately he was left in the car while we were at the aquarium and it was such a hot day a couple of the bits popped, which was a shame).
We then got in the car for the drive over to Tampa, which was a bit slow (a bit of traffic along the way) but uneventful and the sat nav took us straight to the right place through all the Tampa backstreets. Â We got there just in time for lunch which we had in the cafe.
Arriving at the Aquarium we couldn’t resist a photo under the giant Manta Ray.
The aquarium is excellent and is laid out by different regions. Â If I remember rightly we started off in the Wetlands.
Some parts are a recreation of the Everglades.
In one tank there were some crabs which got a lot of interest.
After that there were more tanks which reflected the fish which are found in more open waters.
The fish were really spectacular, although my photos weren’t so good from this day for some reason (lots of blurred shots) and as Rosemary needed to be held up to see into some of the tanks I didn’t have both hands to take the shots. Â Enough excuses, here are some pictures of the fish themselves.
We found him!
There was a really massive open water tank with lots of sharks, rays and fish in it. Â Unfortunately all my pictures came out really badly of it, and it was really busy as it was feeding time when we reached it. Â So just got this one shot of a ray.
Just around the corner were some really nice jellyfish tanks. Â The tanks were round and the jellyfish were swimming around inside them. The lights changed colours slowly as well to make a really nice effect.
There were some really big shells for the children to play in and Rosemary enjoyed exploring them.
We finished off exploring the aquarium.
Rosemary was getting pretty tired by this point so the promised ice cream had to make an appearance and we got her a Dora the Explorer ice cream in the cafe.
We decided to start heading back to Orlando at this time so we could be back there for some dinner. Â Traffic back through Tampa was pretty bad as a lot of streets had been closed off for an event but the sat nav got us back onto the freeway with only one false direction (due to a road closure).
As we were coming into Orlando we saw Red Lobster and decided to pull in there for some dinner. Â A certain someone refused to sit in her high chair though and decided she was going to sit in the booth with us.
Rosemarys Travels 