The past few years we have made a habit of having Christmas day at our house here in Louisville, Ky, going to my parents house, and then heading straight for Florida. It may surprise you, but the drive down has been quite easy each time as there are very few people traveling on Christmas day.
Every year we try to explore a different part of the state. The choice for this year was south Florida. We started off day two of the trip by making our way down to Miami. Now, Miami isn’t the largest city we have been to, but it may be one of the prettiest. Unfortunately, we did not get to explore the downtown area or South Beach but we did get to check out some nice views of the downtown from the highway and on our way to our first destination.
Our first stop on the trip was the Miami Seaquarium.
As you can imagine, the Seaquarium has all manner of water loving creatures. But it is not your normal aquarium that is indoors…this place is completely an open air facility. I guess you can get away with that in Miami where it is warm year-round and the sun is always shining.
At the front there is a touch pool and some flamingoes.
And there is a large tank for dolphins. They have some shows/information sessions there but we missed them.
We did make a different dolphin show, however. Have you heard of the television show “Flipper”? It was recorded at the Miami Seaquarium and they have a Flipper show everyday.
From there we wandered the park some more. We came across some seals, sharks, a lizard…
And this poor turtle who was hit by a boat.
We saw some penguins during feeding time.
And a few manatees floating lazily about in their tank while eating some lettuce or cabbage.
Finally, we caught a seal show that was both educational and entertaing.
Afterwards we made the short drive to the beach at Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park on Key Biscayne. We had all intended to do some swimming, but after dipping our toes in the water myself and Andrea felt it was a bit too cold. Of course the boys didn’t care at all. It was a bit windy that day too.
Later on we found our hotel for the night and some great pizza at Mike’s Pizza of Kendall.
Hollar if you see Us 