Chattanooga

I found one of those deals on Goupon that one just cannot pass up. It was for a stay at the Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel in TN. I booked it for two nights in January. The hotel is the old railroad station that has been revitalized. The lobby was just amazing! I was to awed to take many pictures, but here are a few.

It is a grand and impressive lobby.

Beautiful detailing all around.

There is a lovely garden restaurant in the lobby. There was a restaurant on the grounds that offered all the shrimp you could eat from their salad bar. We decided to go there for dinner the first night. It was right next door and connected to the above restaurant. They had live entertainment all night. The servers were the singers. Many of them could have won American Idol with no problem. They were amazing. So not the food. The shrimp was over cooked, and everything else was down hill from there. I talked to our server and told her just how awful the food was. I asked her if the cook was really a cook. She was wonderful and offered to replace all our food with another selection. I declined because I knew it too, would be awful. She was going to charge us but I told her to go ahead. Instead, she gave us free dessert. Now the dessert was something else. Delicious!! She asked us to come back and try them again. I don’t think so.

Above is the stage with the servers singing. They really were all very good. Well worth the price of dinner.

We went back to our room for an early night because we had a big day the next day. We went to the Tennessee Aquarium. What an amazing adventure. I recommend this to every one! The aquarium is in two separate buildings. One building is the River Journey and the other the ocean. Another building had the I Max theater with a wonderful movie about the coral reefs around the world.

The cutest sea horses.

Can you find the sea horse in this picture. There was one entire room for the sea horses.

I kept a notebook with all the names of the fish we saw. Guess what? Can’t find the notebook. So just enjoy the unique looking species and imagine their names. These were among some of the most unique looking fish we saw.

This fellow, too, was a strange sight.

Notice the fat looking star in the background. That is a fish!

I hate that I lost my notebook.

Beautiful coral. Looks like Chuck’s fish tank. Not.

You could crawl under this tank and pop your head up inside. Buddy’s hip wouldn’t allow him to crawl on the floor, and my knee was not too cooperative.

We stopped our tour to sit in on a teaching moment with some unique birds.

The following pictures were taken from the top floor of the aquarium.

Here we are entering the butterfly section. Lots of butterflies, however, very difficult to take a picture.

Cute turtles.

He’s watching you!

Look at the size of those fish!

They were big!!

That is a beautiful dotted fish. Looks like a stingray.

Beautiful fish.

Now looking at these birds, one would think they were fake. We stood and watched them for several minutes before they moved. I really didn’t think they were real. They were motionless for such a long time.

Their eyes made them look fake.

This was another exhibit where we thought the creatures were fake. They weren’t. What were we thinking? There is nothing fake in an aquarium.

They’re real.

Enormous crabs.

This was one of the tanks where you could crawl under and pop up inside. It was off the floor a bit higher than the other tanks, so I made Buddy crawl inside. That is not some exotic fish, that is Buddy!