Travels with Dan

Fishy, fishy, fishy, fish

Friday was a day full of things. The morning was spent working on different things, tidying the house and getting the ski stuff ready for Saturday. At 12 I left the apartment to go to my hair appointment.

New hair

My hairdresser (seems so weird for me to say I have a hairdresser because for so long I’d just gone to the cheap place down the road and was seen by whoever was available) had opened his own hair salon on Tuesday and I’d made an appointment to see him. My hair was starting to get fuzzy around the edges and I was beginning to look even more like Mum.

I got to explore a different part of the city as his salon was down near the corner of Queen St W and Roncesvaile. At least it was closer than where he was before. I’d been going to see him since just before the wedding and I liked what he was doing with my hair – his vision – so was happy to follow him to his new place.

Glen baulks though because he’s about three or four times more expensive than the cheap place down the road. And I do feel guilty for spending so much but considering I’ve had bad cheap haircuts for years, I think that now he’s actually doing something good with it, it’s worth it. (Yes, I’m trying to justify the expense and I’m just with that.)

His new place is nice, hasn’t yet got that lived in look which is fine, and I think it’s cute that his mum is helping out on reception. It’s just him at the moment but he’s hoping to grow the business with more stylists. Anyway, he cut my hair, got rid of the shagginess and tamed the beast. I think it’s probably the nicest haircut he’s given me so far.

Anyway, enough about hair. I went to the gym after I got home, then to the shops to make food for lunch for tomorrow’s skiing, and then Glen came home. We watched a couple of episode of Suits. Somehow this tv show has now become a regular fixture of our evenings. I think we’ll need to go back to Damages after it’s done.

Under the sea

In the evening we went to the Aquarium with Julian and his friends, Natalie, Tanya and Sean. We broke the cardinal rule of not going anywhere on Friday nights with minimal arm twisting. Seeing Ripley’s Aquarium hadn’t been high on my list after a friend went and said it looked really fake, but as others were going, I thought why the hell not.

We got there for 8pm. They have Friday Night Jazz on Fridays and the place stays open until 11pm. They also serve drinks. The aquarium was pretty busy with people of all ages in attendance, from kids to grannies. We got a drink on our way in and then went to look at the fish.

There were a lot of tanks and I was impressed that they had a Fish of Canada section. I’m sure plenty of Canadians don’t think much of them, and they’re definitely not all bright colours and cool defence mechanisms, but they’re still special. There were giant halibut and I mean giant. So big they couldn’t even keep themselves afloat. There were fleshy sea pens and wolf eels, cod of course and some menacing looking thing with a saw mouth.

The octopuses were a great hit. One put on quite a show as it moved around its tank. The travelator through the tunnels was pretty good and had the option of getting off and stopping for a while or walking at your own pace. There were sharks and rays and plenty of fish. There were also tanks of sea horses, leafy sea dragons, electric eels, lots of jellyfish, many different shark species and heaps of colourful fish (Nemo and Dory in particular).

We had fun going into the tunnels and popping up ‘inside’ the tanks with the fish. We got to pat horseshoe crabs and sharks, and then, probably the highlight of the visit for me was touching the big manta rays. So slimy yet firm yet soft. Gorgeous! And they also had a five day old manta ray swimming in a sectioned off area. He was so cute!

So despite my initial expectations, Ripley’s Aquarium really impressed me. I don’t think it looked as fake as I thought it would. They had a great range of species and did their best to educate (the only fact I remember, probably because it was the only one I read, was that 90% of predators have been taken out of the ocean already, so basically it’s a bit screwed). We paid $25 per person and I got my money’s worth.

We finished about 9:45 and people were hungry so we went to Baton Rouge for dinner. Considering we had to be up at 6:15 the next morning, it was probably not the wisest decision but people needed to eat (not just Glen who’d already had dinner, but Julian hadn’t eaten all day).

We ordered, ate a lot, talked, and left at 11, dropping Nat off home before the rest of us returned to the condo (we all live in the same one). We hit the sack at about quarter to midnight. A good day.