Swim

Aquariums are usually my favorite kind of "tourist" destinations. When I was in Boston, I went at least once a semester to escape from the stress of architecture. Everything is just so calm and relaxing (if you ignore the screaming children) and I'm always fascinated by the life that exists in the sea.

Yesterday I went down to Long Beach to go to the Aquarium of the Pacific. LA is definitely a city for cars... it took me 2.5 hours by bus to get to Long Beach, and according to Google Maps, it would've taken 34 minutes by car (50 minutes in traffic). That is still less than half the amount of time it took me to get there. So I wasted five hours yesterday just sitting in buses. I attempted to read, but after the bus made one too many stops, I finally felt sick and had to stop. But enough of that.

The aquarium itself was pretty impressive. It was bigger than the New England Aquarium but smaller than Chicago's Shedd Aquarium. My favorite part was that you could actually interact with the animals. They had tanks where you could touch the usual starfish or horseshoe crab, but then they had ones where you could touch stingrays and sharks. They also had one section where you're in a cage full of birds, and the birds could just perch on you if they felt like it. This was the first aquarium I've been to that really tried to connect the people with the animals. If only it weren't so difficult to get to... I would love to go back, especially since my camera battery died early on during the trip.