Newport Aquarium

By -
Today I finally made it to the Newport Aquarium.  I went by myself, so I can only imagine how much fun this would be with people and especially children.

 The aquarium is set up as a route -- it does not have the ability to pick your own adventure.  The fish and animals are broadly structured in groups or clusters (e.g., seahorses, sharks, rays, alligators), but also a little bit around geographies.  


The path takes you through the entire aquarium with the cafeteria in the middle and you end in the gift store (feels a little like Disney World).  Great since you don't miss anything, but could be challenge if all your child really wants to see is the turtles.  

The aquarium has a variety of shows and interactive exhibits with plenty of options to touch different animals.  I took in the shark tank show involving divers in the tank.  


The signage was very appropriate and updated.  It definitely has been prioritized and is great for children.  The aquarium strikes a nice balance of conservation of animals and the planet and education about the animals.


So I need some more visitors to come visit me so we can go again!  I definitely think with other people you could easily spend up to three hours in the aquarium!

 Time in aquarium: 1.25 hrs
Times visited: 1
Overall: A-

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cincinnati Art Museum

By -
Image
A couple of weekends ago, I dashed into the Cincinnati Art Museum to see the Treasures of the Spanish World exhibit.  The exhibit was created by the Hispanic Society and very c learly, the descriptions were written by the Hispanic Society.  The exhibit spanned the typical exhibit hall and then also one of the other halls sometimes used for exhibit too.   With my annual membership, I had free admission to the exhibit. The exhibits starts much further back than expected, which if I had read the description closely, I would have known.  It focuses on the holistic Iberian peninsula.  The exhibit is set up chronologically and has a mixture of art mediums.  The exhibit had descriptions of the art in both English and Spanish.  As i mentioned earlier, the descriptions were definitely written by the Hispanic Society as a few of them were quite complimentary about their collection and its possessions.   So I did end up taking a bunch of photos during the exhibit. A miniature of a cr
Read more

lower east side tenement museum

By -
to take advantage of the beautiful day in new york city, i thought i would try to take the lower east side tenement museum walking tour. i hustled down there and got there right in the nick of time. i have been to the lower east side museum for their tenement tours, but wanted to try this 1 1/2 hr walking tour, immigrant soles: a neighborhood walking tour . i saw some areas of the lower east side which i had never seen before. the tour guide was very good; he did a great job pointing out the interesting architecture making us think about what certain architecture features might mean. for example, a building with only three windows, what does that mean? answer: that it was meant to have a single family live there as opposed to twenty, since there was no partition splitting the building in two. he also brought up some of the different political tensions running through the LES that had not been mentioned in some of the other tours. perfect for a beautiful summer day. times v
Read more

Vatican Museum

By -
Image
After we were in St.  Peter’s Basilica, we ran over to the Vatican Museum .  While you may think Vatican City isn’t that big, it is about a 15-18 minute walk to the entrance of the Vatican museum.  We did buy tickets in advance.  It guaranteed us entrance without having to wait in line.  We bought tickets for right at opening since we had the crypt tour tickets for 11:30 AM.  What a mass of people.  All of the tours seem to get there right at 9 AM too.  We did push our way towards the front, which was allowed, but getting through the museum was crazy.  If I were to do it over again, I would have gotten them for after opening e.g., 10 AM or something like that.  While still a long queue if you had not pre-bought tickets, it seemed like the lobby was at least under control when we left. I knew we did not have a ton of time to dawdle in the museum even though we had about two hours in the  museum.  It sure did take a long time to navigate the tour groups.  We (more or less) foll
Read more