Back in San Diego--Sea World

Because of the medical evacuations, we arrived in San Diego one day late. That meant we only had one day for Sea World. We were off the ship at 9am, hopped in a cab to our hotel, checked in and dumped our stuff and were in a shuttle to Sea World by 930am.

Sea World Orlando is one of Marcia's favorite places. We've also been to the one in San Antonio. San Diego is a lot smaller. Most of the seating areas for the shows are about half or less of what we are used to seeing AND worst of all, none of the shows are covered. More about that later.

Our first stop was what used to be the bard for the Clydesdale horses. They now use it as an educational center. We got to pet the llamas, and no they didn't spit.

Then it was off to the Wild Arctic. They have lots of Beluga whales, including a 6 month old baby named Pearl. She's the grey object in the pic.

The walrus was just swimming and the polar bears were sleeping, so it was off to see the penguins. We enjoy watching them and did so for a while. When we came out of the Penguin Encounter, it started to rain. Off and on for a bit, but we headed for Shamu. We bought rain ponchos for all the good it did--remember the part above about no covered seating anywhere? Shamu didn't care that it was raining, but we got wet and were cold. The show was good though. By now it was pouring, but we headed to the Pet Show (Marcia's favorite), but found out that it was also an outdoor show and all they would do in the rain was allow you to meet the animals. Marcia wasn't really interested in seeing a wet dog, so we went in search of hot drinks. Once we had warmed up a bit, we felt a little better.

We found the seals and sea lions. This fellow was just posing so nicely.

He was rewarded with a whole tray of fish for himself.

It had stopped raining by now, so we did the Clyde and Seymour show (different from the one in Orlando) and then did Blue Horizons (which is my favorite). No pics from those as you can't time to the camera as to when an animal is going to do something.

We had seen all but the pet show and we still damp and cold, so found a taxi and headed back to the hotel, found something to eat, took some hot showers and watched tv before crashing early. Had to be up early for our taxi to the airport and our flight home the next day.