what we saw at the vancouver aquarium

We saw the beluga show. They don't do much of a show, really, just some smaller jumps and waves, but they were very pretty.

We saw various sea creatures in small tanks. We thought we'd experience more... magic. Like, dark caverns and rippling blue shadows and quiet, but really it was more like screaming kids, rooms that were bright enough not to be magical yet dark enough to make it hard for pictures, and wall-sized tanks where only about 1-5 people could look in successfully. That made it lose some of its appeal.

We saw a bunch of birds and animals that kinda didn't have anything to do with an aquarium. Let me describe them for you:

little monkeys that were having so much fun together but would. not. look. at. anyone. I also have four more of these monkey-back pictures.

two of the largest parrot species (the hyacinth macaw, I believe) who also could really care less that anyone was around them.

ibis in trees just out of a good viewing zone

and this guy who was extremely pissed off.

oh and bats flying around in a cage in the dark so you could kinda tell they were bats, but they were going so fast there was no point to even trying to watch them.

We saw one sea otter. He was pretty adorable, eating on shrimp. They're a lot larger than I thought they were. I don't know where I got the impression that they were a little larger than a gopher, but they're like a medium sized dog.

We saw penguins sleep. It seems like everyone's getting penguins these days. These guys just arrived at the aquarium and were in need of names. We just caught the end of their "show" which I think consisted mostly of them sleeping. At least they chose to do it near the glass. (I wanted to touch him so badly.)

We also saw porpoises and dolphins (and about the last 5 minutes of a dolphin show, actually), but I don't have pictures because all they did was circle their tanks. We saw sharks who did the same, so I got a video but I don't think it's worth it to post. Ho hum.

We did see some amazing jelly fish. I went back for more pictures because I loved them so much.

I think they were by far my favourite part and they were one of the first things we saw when we came in.

Here's a little video because this one is kinda magical (I think). I wish there'd been seats by these. I could have watched them all day.

I want to recommend the aquarium so badly, but, like, don't drive to Vancouver JUST for the aquarium and Stanley Park (both are together) or I think you'll be a little disappointed.