National Aquarium–Baltimore

Today we headed out to Baltimore again to the Aquarium.  We had heard it was a great one and we both love to visit them.

For our friends, Jesse and Ginger who are from Baltimore:

I got online last night and found a coupon for $3 off on parking.  I also found out from their website that they sell out of tickets in the summer so I chose to purchase ours online.  $25 for me and a whole one dollar off for Rod being a geezer.

We had no idea where to park and the coupon didn’t say so we pulled into the first one we saw after the aquarium.  This is what we were greeted with.

The coupon said we had to stay at least 3 hours so I guess it’ll be $17 to park if we make it back in time.  First we had to take our coupon to the Information Desk and exchange it for a voucher.  The information desk wasn’t easy to find but we did and the lady took our coupon and asked for our parking ticket.  Apparently we parked at the wrong one so no voucher for us!

Nothing is included with that $25 fee either.  If you want to see any of the movies or shows that’s another fee for each one.  They are definitely trying to make money here.  There are gift shops everywhere you turn.

This aquarium was very confusing and hard to find our way around.  It’s a huge building with several floors.  It’s not all aquariums either but I have to say, the Australia exhibit was pretty cool.

It was packed with people too and a lot of the aquariums you couldn’t even get up to the glass to see what was in it.  I know that it’s summer but I swear all the kids we saw in D.C. last week decided to come to the aquarium today.  LOL

I wish I could remember the names of everything we saw.

I loved the jellyfish

Upside down jellyfish

The Australia exhibit

Poisonous dart frogs

Turtles

Crocodile

Seahorse

Anemone

They have volunteers who come and feed the stingrays and the rescued turtle that had its flipper amputated due to an infection

More fish

This fish was swimming on its side

Sawfish which is also known as a Carpenter Shark

We stopped at one of the cafes in the building to buy a water for me and a soda for Rod ($5.82 total!!) and then left for the parking garage which ended up costing us $22 since we were there for just over 3 hours.  Whew, very expensive day for us.

We got turned around leaving and ended up in “Little Italy” and saw some restaurants that we’d like to try so we figured we’ll just have to come back up to Baltimore tomorrow for dinner!

The upside of the day was that I marinated a flank steak before we left so that was waiting for us to barbecue when we got home.  Along with a salad, fried potatoes and baked beans we ended up with a GREAT meal!