Moody Gardens- August 14, 2010

I had never been to Moody Gardens before, so I thought it would be a good place to start on our weekend to Houston/Galveston. We looked forward to the exhibits and Loryn wanted to do two things on this trip: Ice skate and swim! My priority was to shop at IKEA. Bedstemor and Bedstefar were happy to go along for the ride and Benny was going to drive us there!

We usually let Loryn Ice Skate at the Galleria, but I found out that the Moody Garden Hotel had an Ice Skating rink indoors! So the first stop was to pick up our tickets we had bought online using our new iphone during our lunch stop. Loryn and Bedstefar each laced up a pair of skates and they were the only ones brave enough to go on the ice.

We then walked in from the heat to the Aquarium Pyramid. We walked through all of the exhibits and realized we missed the best part, the penguins!
We had missed an entire section so we walked through again. It was rather confusing, walking around is circles, and they did not give us a map!
The penguins have always been my favorite, but the seals were fun to watch, but they were too fast to photograph well.

All of us except Bedstemor, who gets motion sickness, rode the simulated ride Film Theater Extreme Log Ride, toured the Discovery Pyramid exhibit of the Port of Galveston as a historical primary port for immigration.

The tent in back held the Amazing Butterflies . Loryn liked hunting for the butterflies, but to be honest we saw more in the outside gardens and in the butterfly tent. Most had seemed to escape. There was a maze that you had to pretend to be a caterpillar changing into a butterfly and had to travel the maze to see what threats butterflies face daily.

We ran out of time to ride the Colonel Paddle Wheel boat, but did get to watch it in the bay.

We just missed the Rainforest Pyramid by a few minutes as it shut down to undergo a massive enhancement project( Hurricane Ike damaged this exhibit and it really needed a major overhaul), but got to see a wedding about to get underway!
We had reserved seats to see Shrek Forever After in IMAX 3D at 7:30 and had time to catch the
4D Happy Feet Experience before hand.


After the movie we drove into Houston, had dinner at IHOP, and scrounged around for change to pay the tolls, since the Hilton Garden Inn I had reserved a room for us was on the Beltway 8!
Everyone slept well but me since I had a nasty cough, and I am not used to sharing a small bed with Benny, since we have a king bed at home. The nest Morning Benny and Loryn had a nice breakfast and spent all morning in the pool and hot tub and let me sleep in! We then headed IKEA, where we spent several hours, had a nice lunch of Lax, Meatballs and Lingonberries, and bought a huge bunch of Scandinavian foodstuffs.