Four days into our vacation, Joe and Nicole had to go back to work. Luckily, Nicole only had to work half days, leaving her, Andrew and I the afternoon free to hit the aquarium. I was excited to see the otters, and those little guys didn’t disappoint. Apparently, they love visitors as could be see by the one that just did laps in the water, swimming up to the glass, doing a flip and going back before starting the whole routine again. We stood there for a good 15 minutes just enjoying the show before moving on to the alligators. They were the complete opposite of the friendly otters, with one deciding to attack one of the turtles it shares a habitat with. Luckily for the turtle, he could just crawl up in his shell, but I was a little worried about him for a minute and stuck around until he was able to crawl away.

From there, it was into the kiddie area for a brief visit to lock Andrew up in a miniature shark cage before heading into the aviary to see some pretty birds, crabs and even a turtle dad with his turtle teenager. We also saw fish who lay flat on the sand to hide, an octapus, a starfish, a giant sea turtle, sharks and jellyfish. Once we were done with the water-life portion of the aquarium, we went to the lobby to discover a beautiful bald eagle that the aquarium rescued and adopted. He’s fairly new the aquarium, so his habitat was small, but I assume they are working on something bigger for him. Nest there was a spot where you could actually pick up crabs and such and pet them, which, while very cool, was also a little gross, so I opted to take photos rather than touch them myself. Then it was off into another kid area, this one with owls and (de-scented) skunks.

By the time we were done at the aquarium, it was time to head home to rest up and get ready for our evening plans, a meal at Cypress. Since it’s a nice place, we all were able to get prettied up for the night out. Seriously, check out the site and their menu. The food was amazing, as were the drinks I allowed myself to have First up was the Violet Martini, a blue concoction tasting of blueberries. Feeling adventurous, I also ordered the Coming Up Roses martini, made with champagne and rosewater and tasting just like roses smell. So yummy. Dinner consisted of an amazing bottle of wine, scallops appetizer for me and Joe (and fried Brie for the non-seafood lovers), dry-aged steak (so amazing) and molten lava cake for dessert. All in all, a really great dinner with really great friends.