Can you say fish?

Today, my parents, Eammon and I attended the grand opening of the Georgia Aquarium. For all of you who have asked where I get my dark complexion, check out my father!

We arrived just before the doors opened at 9:00am to find hundreds of people in the queue. After having our bags inspected and being checked with the security wands, we entered the aquarium. Right away you enter through two wall aquariums filled with beautiful fish. Of course this is only a taste of what is to come. The aquarium is divided into five galleries. For me, the best exhibit was the Cold Water Quest which contained an 800,000 gallon habitat for the Beluga Whales. The picture above does little to show the beauty of these animals. They seemed to dance in the water and seemed so playful.

Speaking of playful, I tried, but couldn't keep my parents off the kiddy rides...Those playful kids, getting ready for their grand-daughter!

After we dragged the parents off the mermaid, we entered our second gallery, Ocean Voyager.

This gallery was awesome with a tunnel below 30 feet of water. In this six million gallon saltwater gallery, there were approximately 100,000 fish including the ocean's largest fish, the whale shark.

After seeing all the big fish, we then went to the food court, where my father got up close and personal with the biggest fish of all, Bernie Marcus, founder of the new Georgia Aquarium.

After lunch we continued our visit going into the Tropical Diver gallery. Here we saw the largest living reef of any aquarium in the United States.

We also saw a mesmerizing display of jelly fish, with the Sea Nettle Jellies being my favorite.

Our next gallery was River Scout. Here again there were fish above and below. It was neat how they showed the river above us, check out the catfish in the display above everyone's head.

The final gallery was called Georgia Explorer. Here they had a large play area for children with numerous touch tanks full of horseshoe crabs, stingrays, sharks and conch.

They also had a tube that you could crawl through, going over some of the large tanks. My favorite part of this exhibit was the Georgia Sea Turtle.

Our visit ended with us waiting in the parking garage for the arrival of AAA. On our way to the aquarium, we got a flat tire. We realized this just before we were exiting the highway, and decided to put the problem off until our visit was complete. AAA came, replaced the tire and we were on our way home.

If you are planning a trip to Atlanta, make sure to visit what is now the world's largest aquarium.