Baltimore, MD - The National Aquarium

The main reason that my boyfriend and I went to Baltimore was to go to the National Aquarium. If you're planning on taking a trip there, there are a few things you should know. First, it might be best to go during the week (although there may be school groups then so I'm not quite sure how accurate that statement is). We went on a Saturday, and during a holiday weekend, so it was packed. We bought our tickets around 11am and the next entrance time we could get was at 1:15pm, the next dolphin show we could see being at 3:30pm. I think this is common practice there, so be prepared to have some time to kill between buying your tickets and going inside unless you go really early in the morning.

When we got inside, it was often really hard to see anything because every aquarium had a swarm of small children pressing their faces against the glass. So a lot of the smaller aquariums were very hard to see. Note: There are ledges for kids to stand on, so be careful when approaching the aquariums if you are trying to get in close - I banged my shin really badly trying to get close to take a picture of some anemones and not seeing the ledge in the darkened room.

One cool part is the sharks and rays that are in an ovular 3-story tank, and you start at the top (on the inside of the oval) and work your way down and around. The rays are really quite beautiful in an eerie/not-of-this-world kind of way, and one of my favorite discoveries was the sawfish, which is bad ass (and is actually a ray, and not a shark, though it looks more like a shark at first). We also got to see the rays being fed, which was quite cool. Two scuba divers were in the tank and the rays just swarmed them and were swimming all over them. I imagine that would be a little freaky at first, having rays swimming on your head.

The rainforest exhibit was kind of disappointing in my personal opinion - it was really hard to see anything with everything hiding in the trees, although we did see a few different types of birds that I hadn't seen before. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the Australian exhibit, which we both really wanted to see but after a long day and not seeing any signs for it to remind us, completely forgot about.

We ended the day at the dolphin show, which was a bit underwhelming compared to the Miami Seaquarium's shows, but still fun. Dolphins are just so amazing - so smart! Seeing these shows makes me really want to abandon my film career to be a dolphin trainer and swim with the dolphins every day.

The Miami Seaquarium

I have to admit that when we first decided to go to the Miami Seaquarium, I thought it would be cheesy and I thought I would feel sad for the animals. It was a little cheesy and maybe I did even feel a little sad for the animals (not to mention it was EXPENSIVE) but overall I thought it was actually quite cool. The dolphins seemed pretty content (they're fed quite well, probably much better than dolphins eat in the wild). We saw the sea lion show and the Orca show. Plus we got to see the bottle nose dolphins being fed. The shows were definitely a little cheesy but still really fun. The seal show was by far the cheesiest, but it was cute. The orca show was actually pretty cool - I was always obsessed with whales and dolphins growing up and orca's were my favorite so it was pretty awesome for me to see one up close and personal like that. And he seemed to be treated well although his tank did seem kind of small for a creature of his magnificent size.

Overall, I would say it was worth the cost of admission, especially if you're obsessed with whales and dolphins like me. In the end, this was definitely one of the highlights of my trip.