She felt drunk when she woke up so she drank her beer + Clamato concoction hoping to counter an impending hangover (it tastes better than I expected, but... it's beer and Clamato and that's just wrong). To make her feel not so alcoholic, I had a beer myself. It was 10:30 AM. She estimated that she'd be fine around 1:00 PM and so I just waited it out playing Wii, surfing the internet, and working. When she finally got up feeling mostly recovered, we got ready and headed out. We were running a little behind schedule, but Carol claimed that it'd only take two hours or so for us to see everything. We'll see...
Even from the outside the aquarium looked huge:
From the inside it looked bigger:
The aquarium was separated into separate wings based on themes and we decided to traverse them in clockwise order. The first area called the Georgia Explorer had petting pools where you have the opportunity to touch rays, sharks, crabs, shrimp, etc.
Carol actually shrieked out loud like the little girl she is when a shrimp she tried to touch darted away. An aquarium staff member reminded her, "yes little girl, they move." Next was the River Scout area where they had freshwater animals:
They had some impressive exhibits with one of them running along the ceiling:
Afterwards we headed toward the Coldwater Quest area which starts with a kelp forest exhibit (fobby pose ftw):
The beluga whales are in this area which is one of the aquarium's main attractions:
They're very graceful animals. The rest of the exhibits were of seals, otters, and penguins that weren't as graceful making the task of photographing them in action extremely difficult. After many failed attempts at taking their photos, we headed on down to the other main attraction, the Ocean Voyager exhibit which starts in a tunnel view with a conveyer belt to pace you along:
I've been through other aquarium tunnels before often featuring sharks and rays, and the sheer variety of life they had in this one was impressive. When we rounded the corner, I was thinking to myself, "is that it?" when we reached the main viewing area:
It's actually bigger than it looks and I wish I had taken a picture of the seating, audience, and the exhibit to capture its enormousness. Although we saw it swim by in the tunnel, this is also the best place to view the largest inhabitant of this exhibit, the whale shark:
That was definitely the highlight of the trip. The last wing was the Tropical Diver which featured reef life. The website says, "we have saved the most relaxing for the end: tropical coral reefs," but I found it very anti-climatic. The last exhibit of the area was pretty good though featuring a large tank that curved overhead with artificial waves crashing over you simulating life in a coastal reef.:
Overall I wasn't as impressed as I thought I'd be, but it was still a very good experience that nobody should skip while they're in Atlanta.
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