Aquariums and Such

Can you handle one more day of vacation? I hope so!! A week ago today was our last full day in Gatlinburg, and I wanted to tell you about our adventures! We started out with breakfast at the Wood Grill Buffet, which was right next door to our hotel. Food was good, but I always feel bad at buffets...I can't eat enough to get my money's worth!

We decided to be tourists on our last day and have some fun back in the heart of Gatlinburg. I really wanted to go to the aquarium there, so that was our main agenda for the day. I cracked up when we found our place in a parking garage, and Ryan made a big deal out of where we put our ticket. {If you missed this story...when we went to Chicago for our anniversary, we misplaced our parking garage ticket and I thought we were going to have to spend the night IN the garage...}

We did a few photo opps in town just for funsies....

That would be Ryan getting a little closer to the bears...

Our first stop for the afternoon was Ripley's Aquarium. We might have been the only people there without kids, but we had a blast! Wanna see a few pictures?

It was such a fun place! They had sharks and had huge turtles and all kinds of fish. We had a great time touring through that.

After the aquarium, we walked through town a little bit, and it began to rain, so we took a lunch break. The Thursday before we left, we talked about pizza on BLT, and multiple listeners mentioned a place in Gatlinburg called the Mellow Mushroom. We love pizza, so we decided to try it out. It was on the second floor of a building and had open windows...so we could watch the rain fall while we ate. A delightful lunch!

It rained pretty hard the whole time we ate, but it let up about the time we were done, so we headed to our next attraction, the Ripley's Believe it or Not Odditorium.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect in here, and parts of it were fun and parts of it were NOT. It's essentially a museum of strange things - like the guy with the biggest nose {boy did we feel better about ourselves after this!!}

There are many things to read and just look at, and then there are some parts that are interactive, which are fun:

{Sorry that one is blurry - lighting was terrible.}

In full disclosure, because I wish I would have known this before going in, there were a few rooms that were just downright almost like a haunted house. There was also a bridge that had barrel all around it rotating. I had to close my eyes and hold onto Ryan's shirt to get through that without getting dizzy. I didn't care for those parts, and if you go and are easily afraid, it just might be helpful to know those rooms exist in there. Still, overall, it was a great time.

And when we were done there, we went to the Ripley's Guiness World Records museum and walked through that too. Some of the things were the same as the Odditorium, but there were other things as well, and it was just fun to see.  

Ryan tried his hand at crushing cement blocks....

And I, in true Bekah form, took the typing test. I did really well on the first part - so it let me take a second test, but I got distracted during that one and misspelled some words. That killed my score! {Also learned that typing with autocorrect for the past several years has just taken my skills down a notch or two.}

After we left there, we did a little shopping and then headed out for our last Gatlinburg dinner. We tried a seafood restaurant, per Ryan's request...a nice place with outdoor seating called Harpoon Harry's.

And that did it for our trip...just a few highlights for you tomorrow to recap random moments and our trip home. Thanks for visiting Gatlinburg with us!!