Sea World

On Monday we enjoyed our first full day in San Diego. It was a great experience. We headed over to Sea World first thing in the morning and hit the park full swing. We had all been pretty excited for this leg of our trip. We started out at the Dolphin show which was a good way to start. We got to watch the dolphins jump higher than I thought was possible and play lots of tricks on the audience...including soaking a good portion of the front rows. They had a family from the audience participate, but the mom was actually a sea world trainer. They had her do a lot of goofy things to make you believe she was just a regular audience member, and then she fell into the tank at one point and started screaming. The huge pilot whale swam toward her and she stood on his nose and road around the tank. It became clear that she was not just a regular mom, and she showed us a bunch more tricks. We also caught the sea lion show and visited some of the shops (I'm beginning to think this is Lucy's favorite part of all theme parks). The highlight of course was the Shamu show. It was amazing. It was short and sweet, but it was definitely amazing...and hot. We all got a little sunburned that day. San Diego is deceiving in that there is always a cool breeze, but the sun is HOT. Lucy felt the effects of that much sun the next day as she got sick at the zoo. More about that later.
We headed home for afternoon naps and then came back to the park for the last bit to be able to see all the exhibits we had missed while watching the shows. We went to the polar bear exhibit, the penguins and the shark tank. The shark tank was definitely my favorite as they had a tunnel that went right through the shark tank and you were able to look at sharks all around you. We've decided to go back on Wednesday to see a few more things. So we walked away with sunburns, memories and Lucy got a stuffed dolphin.
In the evening we drove around San Diego a bit and by pure luck fell upon this little shopping district right by the ocean front called Seaport Village. I had been there before, but had no clue what it was called or how to get there, so we were pleased that we had stumbled across it. We spent the evening checking out all the specialized shops. Lucy and Max each got some sea shells and we enjoyed looking in the stuffies shop, the surf shops, and the kids shop (where Lucy got some sunglasses). There was pretty much a shop for every theme you could think of...all centered around 'beach' fare. We got some late-night McD's for dinner, and then called it a night. Little did we know that the fun we had today which come back to haunt us the next day!