A Cookie is just a Cookie: Our Day Trip to Virginia Aquarium in Virginia Beach, VA

For Danielle's 34th birthday, Rob surprised her with some cash he'd been saving up over the past few months from working side jobs on his days off. Rob suggested that we use the money to do a day trip to a local aquarium or zoo. Danielle chose to do the aquarium because we've went to the NC Zoo in May 2011. So we researched the NC aquariums (there are 3 in North Carolina) and figured that going to the Virginia Aquarium would be an easier drive and more fun. The Virginia Aquarium is much bigger and has more species on display. Plus, Rob and Danielle went to the Roanoke Island aquarium in 2003. And Danielle has heard from numerous Mommy friends that the NC aquariums are just not that great (meaning, there are better ones nearby and are worth the drive!)

So we had just enough money for gas, 1 night cheap hotel stay found on Priceline.com, entry fees for 2 adults (Eliza was free), and a lunch or dinner at a fast food place along the way there or home. We packed a cooler with food and brought our crockpot along with us!

On our drive, Eliza napped almost the whole way there! We checked in and settled into our warm and dry hotel room. It was cold and rainy - yuck! Danielle put the pork sirloin into the crockpot by 4pm. We hung out all night in the hotel room and by 7:30pm, our pork sirloin was done. We brought along some Steamfresh veggies that we made in the microwave in our room. It was super delicious!

Eliza finally fell asleep at 10:30pm (yikes!) We had a king size bed and Eliza decided she wanted to sleep sideways, so both Rob and Danielle woke up in the morning, squished way over to the sides of the bed, almost falling off, while Eliza snoozed away, continuing to push and kick us off the bed! She woke up at 8am (not enough sleep, but oh well) and we read the books we brought with us:

Then we got dressed, ate our free hot breakfast in the hotel lobby and then packed up the car. Then it was off to the Virginia Aquarium!

We had a great time at the Virginia Aquarium!

Here we are at the entrance of the aquarium

Once inside, we got a wheelchair for Rob to use, since he figured that using his knee scooter for 4 hours would not be very fun.

But once we started pushing Rob around, we decided to take it back and just use his knee scooter. This aquarium is NOT handicapped accessible! There weren't any doors that were mechanically powered by the push button on the wall, so Danielle had to open the door while Rob rolled his wheelchair through the door opening that was 1 inch wider than his chair. So his hands would get "stuck" and he couldn't get through. We were kind of peeved about that. But oh well, there's nothing we could really do about it, so what good would complaining about it do?

Here's a huge lobster on display near the front entrance:

An up close picture of the giant lobster:

There were some amazingly cool displays, educational descriptions and volunteers at the aquarium. Here, we saw some Atlantic Sturgeons and got to feel the spiny top of one. We tried to get Eliza to "pet" it, but she was not too keen on that idea!

Eliza seemed to like all the fish displays. But here, we tried to sit her down in front of one and take a picture. She was not happy, as you can see!

There was a toddler play area in one section of the aquarium. It had puzzles, books and other fun toys to play with. Here's a few pictures of Eliza enjoying this area:

Upon leaving the toddler play area, Eliza got to see and pet a cute bunny rabbit!

Then we walked through this super cool mirrored area with lots of pictures of different animals. Eliza was mesmerized!

I won't post all of the pics from that mirrored walkway, but here's one picture, so you get the idea of what it was like inside!

Here's a slideshow of some of the pictures we took:

Near the end of our aquarium, Eliza began to get very sleepy! Here's a cute picture of her on Danielle's back!

We stopped by the aquarium gift shop, but since we didn't have any extra money to spare, we couldn't buy a souvenir. Oh well, here's the memory of what we would've bought Eliza if we had more money - it's a Harp Seal that Eliza thought was a pillow!