Day 6

This morning we did a lot of wandering. We were trying to find a museum or art gallery to go to, but were having trouble following the signs. We just kept going around in circles, so we decided to wander around the Mississippi waterfront instead.

There we found the Audubon Aquarium and IMAX. First we visited the aquarium. It was amazing! When you walk in, you go through this tunnel where people are feeding stingrays. There were huge fish too. We saw so many types of fish, seahorses, stingrays, penguins, and jellyfish. One of the neatest fish was definitely the Lionfish. It was white and brown poisonous fish with a lot of little fins coming off of it. We also saw an alligator gar which was a big fish with huge scales and a nasty looking jaw. It was interesting to see how fine a jellyfish’s tentacles were. It looked like the older jellyfish got, the more tangled up they got.

For lunch we went to “Bubba Gump” which was a Forrest Gump themed restaurant. It was a fun place where they come up and ask you trivia about the movie and the waiters are very attentive. Too bad we haven’t seen Forrest Gump for at least 5 years. We tried some shrimp etouffe in Louisiana-style gravy, and “Bucket of Trash” which was a mix of fried shrimp, fish, and crab claw. It was great.

Next we saw the IMAX film “Hurricane in the Bayou”. It was all about people trying to save the wetlands rolled in with Hurricane Katrina happening. It was interesting and sad. The wetlands are currently eroding away due to levees that were built to stop the Mississippi from flooding its banks like it does naturally. When they talked about Katrina, they showed all kinds of sad things like a family watching their house getting demolished right in front of them and stories from the people that were trapped on their roofs for days. There were lots of people in the audience crying. We figure that emotions about that are still pretty high in New Orleans.