Holidays...part 12

Gloomy fish

Wednesday

Tom finally got to sleep and the coughing stopped – phew!  We woke up to another blue sky – yahooooo!  Today we decided to head to Brest to go to Oceanopolis which markets itself as something unique in Europe – the most amazing aquarium you will visit.  After our Cerza visit, we were keen to do another animal based activity.  We got up a little earlier than usual (we have been having long lazy holiday mornings which are ace), had a quick breakfast and were on our way.  The hour long journey didn’t take too long at all and luckily the aquarium was on the edge of the city, nearest us.

Polar Bear 

We paid the €50 to get in and went straight to the polar exhibit where we saw a fantastic panoramic film full of penguins and seals and then had a look around the exhibits.  There was a penguin colony of Macaroni and Emperor penguins.  You could watch them darting around underwater which is always a favourite.

The next exhibit was the seals, including the bearded seal, which was my favourite – a big fat seal with a face full of whiskers.  We watched them for a while before moving on.  The rest of the polar exhibit concentrated on expeditions to polar regions and consisted of videos of scientists doing their thing.  There was a real stuffed polar bear and plenty of footage of polar bears trampling along watching the scientists from afar.

Urchins

Next stop was the Tropical exhibit, all the usual brightly coloured fish and some – including a Napolean which are always fun (big, grumpy and blue).  I can remember coming across lots of these when diving in Egypt.  There were some sharks in this exhibit too: some with nasty looking teeth, a long toothed sawfish (which has what looks like a chain saw sticking out of its nose) and some small classic looking sharks.  Tom liked this tank, although he did cling to me each time he saw a shark – pretending to be scared.

Bright fish

By now we were all starving (the early start making our tummies rumble early).  We headed to the cafeteria where Tom had chicken nuggets and frites, I had roast chicken and frites and Matt had calamari and frites.  All at very reasonable prices.  We have really struggled to get vegetables here – they don’t seem to feature on any menu.  I can understand moules frites having no veggies - where would you put them, but nothing seems to come with veggies in a restaurant.  I have therefore majored on them when cooking in the campsites, in an attempt to have some healthy food.

Once refortified, we headed to the temperate aquarium, ie to see fish from around here.  All very well, but temperate fish are boring – just grey, silver things.  Not much to look at, not playful.  From there we had a look around the very large shop and came out with a birthday present for a friend back home.  We then went to see the otters (we couldn’t find them) and walked around an exhibit for 6-10 year olds, which was ok, but not amazing.  Tom then asked to go back to the polar exhibit to see the seals again.  They were my favourite animal of the day so was quite happy to do so.  After that we called it a day.  It was a nice day out, but not worth €50, there was a definite tired feel to the place, you got the feeling that once it was amazing and the must go to attraction, but now it was down on its luck.  I hope it manages to get itself back on its feet again.

The BBQ King

We got home in good time, played some games of boules (Tom lost and cried – I mean really?!  We told him not to be such a bad sport!)  Then the last bbq of the holiday: sausages, steak hache and ebi brochettes, with taboleh and a big bowl of salad with home made garlic mayonnaise, served with cidre of course.  It was a fabulous meal.  Up until now the day had been quite cold (we wore jumpers all day) because the clouds were hiding the sun.  Now, however, all the clouds disappeared, it got hot.

Playing velcro tennis

We decided to head to the beach for an after dinner stroll.  When we got there, it was high tide, so we decided to walk around the headland away from Benodet, and found a very long spit of sandy beach from the other side of the bay heading across to the beach we were on.  All very lovely – especially when shining in the sunshine.  We stopped to watch some people fishing and to play velcro tennis and then headed back. 

Golden sunlight

We got back to the cabin, washed Tom’s sandy feet in the kitchen sink, he then went to bed.  It was still 9pm before he got to bed – it is going to be a shock to his system when we get home, going back to 7pm bed times (although when you think about it, he hasn’t really adjusted to the hour’s time difference – waking up a good hour later than usual and going to bed an hour / two hours later than usual which is the normal time in the UK.  It is  us who will need to be more organised about it all to get him in bed at the right time when we get home).  I must say, I have really enjoyed our evening strolls this week - will miss the close access to the beach when we get home and lack of urgency to get Tom to bed ready for school in the morning.