Spring Break (Part 3)

Our final day of vacation began with yet another trip to Old Town San Diego. That same yummy Mexican place we'd been to the night before also serves breakfast. Their chile relleno omelettes are fab.

The candy shop there also sells Brazil nuts covered in chocolate. Not that I would know about those, you understand, because while nuts are allowed on my diet, chocolate is not. Even if it was just a small amount of chocolate. Ahem.

Anyway, we got to Sea World shortly after it opened.

Judah was excited, but you could sense a bit of trepidation in his tone.

He'd heard of this place before, but didn't know quite what to expect. He kept asking things like, "Do we hafta get in da water wif da sharks?" I got the impression he thought we were just going to go stand on the edge of the ocean, and all the scary underwater documentaries he'd ever seen were going to suddenly unfold before us.

To calm his fears, we headed straight for the Arctic helicopter simulator ride but found that Judah was too little to ride on it.

So while daddy and brother went on that, we took the short cut to get down below and see the Polar Bear, many types of fish, and these cuties...the Belugas.



"Awww, Judah...look at the Beluga whales!" I said as they swam past so slowly and serenely that he was able to get a really good idea as to what they looked like. He was delighted, "De're wookeen at us, Mama!"

This was a tank that held several varieties of cold-water fish. "Hey...wookit da Judah fishies and dere mama!" he yelled when he saw a couple of smaller ones swimming beside a larger one.



Jericho asked to go see the Killer Whales.



Judah is here in the foreground, where he'd run to be closer to daddy when that ginormous black and white creature circled around and came towards the viewing window. Something about that word "Killer" Whale kinda freaked him out.

So we used their other name and exclaimed, "Awww, look at the beautiful Orca."

He finally got close enough to see.



Next, we scouted out the Shark exhibit.

I neglected to get a clear photo of this exhibit, but it involves a large, thick plexiglass tube that folks can stand up in and ride a conveyor belt through so that you can spend a few moments looking up and around as sharks and rays and Nemo and Dorie swim past without holding up the line behind you.

At first, Judah was a little bit fearful, clinging pretty tightly to daddy's neck.



He soon warmed up, however, and got right up to the glass to get a better view.



So much so, in fact, that Daddy had to hold him back to keep him from crawling in with the baby sharks.



In retrospect, it probably wasn't the best idea that we said, "Awww, look at the cute little baby sharks" to encourage him to take a closer look.

From that point on, he was all about reaching into the open tanks and touching whatever he could.



The Bat Rays were his favorite. They kept popping their heads up out of the water as though to say hi, and Judah just couldn't resist giving one of them a little scratch on the wing like he might do to our dog Raisin's ears. That's a good Bat Ray.

His fingernails came up with this nasty slimy gunk under them, and so daddy took him off to wash his hands.

We needn't have bothered, however, because not far away were the tidepool tanks with star fish in them.





Ewww, what is he holding?!



Oh, no...he's eating it!



Oh, wait...that's just a funnel cake daddy bought for him at a nearby snack shack.

Throughout the day, we again passed some fantastic, colorful flowerbeds.









That afternoon we caught the Shamu show which has always been one of Jericho's favorites.

It is spectacular to see the trainers surf around the tank on the back of a large creature that is at the top of the ocean food chain.



Creatures that toss sea lions and sharks around like rag dolls. (And yes, I do use that decription often, lol.)



I'm pretty sure Shamu is thinking, "Mmmmm....lunch!" in this one.

Here is one of my favorite parts of the show. A little thing I like to call Shamu's Revenge.

(For some reason, as I type these captions, I suddenly adopt an upper East Coast accent. Like say Danny DeVito or Joe Peschi.)

"You think it's funny to tap on my viewing windows, huh? Take THAT!" These people are makin' me crazy!

"You think it's okay that week after week, month after month, year after year all I get for my efforts in this tank are a mouthful of day old fish? Well, take THIS!"



And the crowds get soaked. Again and again.

After taking in a couple more shows involving dolphins and super well-trained pets (rescued from local shelters), and getting a pretty bad sunburn on my forehead, we decided to head out a bit early and go out for Italian at one of our favorite little places in San Diego...Luigi's at Mission Bay. Mmmmm...Eggplant Parmigiana. Yum.

Afterwards, we took a little stroll on the nearby beach.



It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.