Yet another out-of-order late arrival. Apparently, we’ve found Nemo!

Another out of order late arrival.

… to all my family. We’re leaving! They are going to the airport and home to frozen Long Island. I am going to a hotel for the night so I can attend some meetings in our Tampa offices tomorrow. I’m sad! But I shall see them again in New York at Christmas time.

An out-of-order late arrival, this is a photo of a book in the gift shop.

Walking back to the parking lot, we saw the trolley go by!

Yes Dale, you would love this, but I think it’s a bit bigger than the picture implies. Picture a toddler straddling it; I had to wait for one to move before taking the photo!

Part of the play area, as viewed from the balcony.

On the upper level, there is a nice outdoor balcony; here’s the view. The balcony features benches sprinkled among lush container gardens, and a raven in a cage who was making quick work of a flash-frozen chick. Um, also ashtrays!

Entrance sculpture to the outdoor play area (with water features – Nieceling got soaked, which greatly displeased her parents) was donated by Publix, as witnessed by the white plaque with the black “P” on it.

This is done in bronze. There were some turtle sculptures that seemed to be done in polished copper – they were just stunning, but I could not get a clear pic of them because they were TOO well lit, and they just came out as this big gleam. Wish they had the sea horse in the polished copper; I would have bought that in a heartbeat.

Don’t recall which kind he was. There were other kinds with spots and round heads that I liked a lot, but they were too fast for me. This one is sort of grinning.

All along the passageways of the aquarium there is art work, art work, and more art work. I liked this one because it seemed to be painted on ceramic and then glazed over. I’ve provided a pic of the placard with the artist’s details, below.

I dunno what this is, but it was blending in with the rock pretty well.

He was quick, and about 10 feet long!

This little guy wasn’t even as big as my thumb nail, and he was hanging on to that grass for dear life with his tail.

Sea horses! Yes, believe it or not, that thing in the pic above is a sea horse that disguises itself as kelp. There were signs everywhere that said not to use the flash (camera phone doesn’t have one any way) because it scares them.

I was very intrigued to see what was in this little alcove…

I don’t know what they are really called, but they were bright little bits of rainbows swimming around in their tank.

… if you were sitting in those rocking chairs.

Every now and then, you find a spot in front of a tank that has some rockers and/or benches set up. Can you imagine if you could have a huge tank as one of the walls in your living room? You would not need TV for entertainment; just plop down and listen to the tank and watch the coral waving and the fishes doing their fishly things… ahhhh!

A battle ship is parked outside the aquarium. The name on the side is American Victory, and there was a sign advertising tours. I will post a bigger pic of it later, on my website.

It looks like a grouper, but if it is, the pics are out of order again…. I LOVE grouper! I think he was at least 4.5 ft long, if not 5 ft. He was swimming in a huge tank with rocking chairs and benches set up in front of it.

He was SO fast! Between his speed, and the damned plexi-glass, it was really impossible to get a good shot of this guy. Y’all know how much I LOVE the otters! We went back after lunch to see a demonstration of his training. He’s really quite clever. He cannot be returned to the wild; he’d been raised by someone who thought it would be cool to own a river otter, and then decided it wasn’t so cool. So he’s probably got to live at the Aquarium for the rest of his life. The reason he is trained is because he is so quick, the veterinarians cannot examine him properly. So they train him to do tricks like run and jump and swim/dive and hold still for as long as they want him to. In this manner, they can observe if he is functioning normally, and maybe treat a wound here and there. They reward him with little fishes (dead).

I see some of the pics arrived out of order. Anyhow, we started in the Wetlands section, and saw those cool Florida soft-shell turtles, which are the ones that hang out in the lake out back of my house (formerly known as The Tinkness Monster).

Yes, we’re getting here at noon-ish. It’s funny. My brother used to be the one getting up at some gawd-awful, commando time of the morning on vacation, waking my ass up by either phoning me or sending the Nieceling to pound down my hotel door. Now it’s the other way around. I’m the one waking up spontaneously at 6:00 or 7:00 am, and he’s the one taking his sweet-ass time getting a move on in the mornings. Go figure! So anyway, here we are, finally arriving at the Florida Aquarium.