Starting with Adam's birthday on Friday, tasting on Saturday, and then Sunday we went downtown. I was going anyway to try on bridesmaid dresses for Meghan's wedding in August (in California!) and Adam and I decided to make a day of it and go to the Shedd Aquarium. Then Mom and Dad decided to join us too!
I am just IN LOVE with all things ocean. I love the beach. I love fish. I love snorkeling. I love scuba diving. I love dolphins. Swimming the the dolphins in the open ocean in the Bahamas was amazing. I am SO looking forward to our honeymoon to St. Martin to participate in all kinds of water activities.
I do have to *warn* you that this post is chock full of pictures of the aquarium. Definitely a photo overload and this isn't even a fraction of the pictures I took!
At the Caribbean Reef exhibit in the middle when you first walk in.
Adorable penguins and a HUGE sea lion that was posing for everyone
Seeing this first guy was my least favorite part because it required standing on a glass floor and looking down and even though the water was only 18 inches deep...it definitely freaked me out! 
They have recently changed the "dolphin show" to "Fantasa" (pronounced Fanta-Sea). First of all, I think the "s" should be capitalized to emphazie the "sea" part of it. But I am not their marketing person. Overall, it was really a disappointment! I was so bummed. That used to be the best part! There was very little animal and a whole lot of theatrics and lights. They teamed up with ComEd (to do the lights) and a theater major to design the show. The belugas and dolphins did a few tricks (the video shows pretty much all we saw of the dolphins), but mostly it was all lights, harnasses, floating people from the sky, weird costumes, and dramatic arm movements. We talked to one employee afterwards who explained the changes to us and said that the good thing is nothing is permanent and they are always making changes to it. I hope there are major changes before I see it again! Has anyone else seen the new one??
The last of our pictures. I really did love that huge sea turtle in the Carribean Reef exhibit! The video is of these crazy tiny eel things we saw. They poke up out of the ground, wave around, eat, and go back down. They were so funny looking!
It was an AWESOME day and we saw everything we could have wanted to see in the 3 hours we were there. I was worried we would be pressed for time, but we weren't at all. It was an awesome weekend!
