Sharks! Jellies! Then I ate some crab...

So, Wednesday, I didn't blog. Too busy. Went to the National Aquarium to get mah fish on. It had been like, eight years or so since I had last gone--it's still great fun. I was happy to see the manta rays and sharks on the first level--I love the rays. I don't know why, I just love watching the graceful, flapping way they glide through the water. And some of those guys are big. Tails as long as....me!

But they have this really cool exhibit about jelly fish right now:



Jellies always seem a little alien and unreal to me. Their bodies are something like 95% water, so they are very fragile and diaphanous, in one way, but so prolific and efficient in other ways. Seeing them up close in the exhibit is fascinating. The moon jellies almost look like "ghosts". The Leidy's comb jellies look like they are lit with rainbow-tinted fiber optics. They are amazing little critters. And I like seeing them so much more in the Aquarium, than I do when I am taking a dip in the ocean. I like wildlife, but once I was in Italy in June--and it was like there were thousands of them--small brown little medusas, everywhere. While I knew they didn't sting, I still didn't like the idea of them on me.

(But that's one possibility concerning the changes we might be wreaking on the oceans with our various "spills"--bad days at the beach.)

The spouse and I enjoyed looking at sea-critters so much, we had to straightaway go to Little Italy in search of seafood. It's a little odd in retrospect that pointing and "aaahh-ing" over critters only enhances one's interest in a plate of calamari (done just right with red sauce and with a nice, slightly dry Chateau Ste. Michelle Riesling) followed by some crab cake (mine) or salmon (his). But there you go.

It was a pretty nice day-trip--although traffic was simply awful. It's two hours under the best of conditions from Philly to Baltimore. We didn't exactly have that--but it was still worth it.