Confessions of a Fitness Instructor

Well friends, we’ve finally made it to my last Florida post!  Today’s post is going to be all about our trip to Seaworld.  As you’ll recall from yesterday, we ditched our last session halfway through in order to get a little extra time at Seaworld.  You may also remember as soon as we got outside it started raining – again.  I’m really starting to wonder what this "Sunshine State" business is all about.  Of the days we were there, at least 1/2 of them it rained for all or most of the day.  But we were determined not to let the rain fall on our Seaworld parade so we got changed and headed over to the park.  Only a few minutes in our walk (yes we walked – we really did know where we were going this time!) the rain stopped!  And the sun came out – yahoo!

First stop was to the Polynesian luau we had reservation for.  We thought perhaps they were going to want us to go up and show us our moves, but clearly that hadn’t heard of our newfound skills   They did invite anyone who wanted to come learn a short hula dance to come up and Holly did but I stayed and tried to record her performance (which didn’t turn out since she was in a sea of other people).  While the food was great and the show was really cool,

we had a date with a bunch of animals to keep so we bailed right after we are our dessert.

Since we only had a few hours before the park closed we burned rubber from one section to the next.  First up we saw the dolphin nursery

then we had to stop and admire the exotic baby ducklings   it’s not like we could see one of these any day of the week back home in Nova Scotia! lol

they’re just so darned cute!

After the ducklings we realized we were missing the sea-lion show, we booted it as fast as we could to the stadium and got there just in time – for it to be over :S at least we could still go see the sea lions and seals although they had, had supper and were quite tired and just chillin’

new yoga pose? upward facing sea-lion?

My dad always calls Ollie his little Seal kitty (or Otter cat depending on the day).  I don’t know why he’d ever say such a thing, I certainly see no resemblance

seal kitty

After the sea lions and seals we went to see the penguins.  Unfortunately I have no photos of them because it was dark inside (it was night already for them) so my camera couldn’t pick them up, but they were really neat.  YOu could see them zipping through the water swimming and boy do those guys ever move!  When we left the penguins we noticed it was getting close to show time for Shamu Rocks and after missing the Sea lion show we were taking no chances!  We got there just in time to get pretty good seats, it was hard to believe just how many people were there!

I mostly took video during the show, actually this is the only whale shot I got the whole time

But if you go to the bottom of this post you’ll be able to watch a short video of the show, and we may or may not have been seriously splashed by Shamu, and it may or may not be in the video – just sayin’

Once the show finished we realized how little time we had left, and how much we still wanted to see so we hauled out our favorite expression, "it’s okay we’re fitness instructors" and started running from exhibit to exhibit in our dresses and flip-flops getting frequently lost because it was dark and we didn’t know where we were going.  Even still we managed to get to see the arctic exhibit with the polar bear

and also the beluga whales and walrus (which you’ll be able to see in my video below).  When we left the arctic we started sprinting around because it was 9:30 and we still hadn’t seen the sharks, manta rays, manatee exhibit or the dolphins.  We made it to the sharks (in the video) and then decided since we’d seen the dolphin nursery we’d skip the other dolphins if we had to and started heading towards the manatees.  We ran and ran and ran and we got there just at 10pm.  Closing time.  We were a little winded and when once of the Seaworld expert girls asked us if she could help us Holly said, "Can we….see the….manatees?"  "Of course!" the employee said, "But we thought you closed at 10pm?" Holly asked, "Well we do officially but nobody is going to kick you out." she responded.  Oh.  Right, so we just ran all over the park for no real reason – did I mention we were in flip-flops?  And that my feet hated me all the next day because of it?  Oh well, we are fitness instructors after all

The manatees were cool, but not doing much so we left the exhibit after 10 minutes or so and headed back to the underground viewing for the dolphins.  Again no photos because it was too dark but they were SOO cool.  They kept swimming so close to us, it was like we could almost touch them, so amazing.  We thought for sure they loved us because they kept coming so close to where we were standing.  Then we went up to where the above water viewing (and I suppose dolphin touching) takes place.  It was roped off and the girl there told us they had to do that because the dolphins were sleeping.  "But we just saw them swimming around from below," we said, to which she responded, "they only sleep with half their brain so they continue to swim while they are asleep." Oh.  So they didn’t love us after all, in fact they didn’t even know we were there…we got shot down but the dolphins.

But lucky for us the Manta Rays were wide awake and ready for action!  Just look at the tail on this one!

You’ll be able to see more of the manta rays in my video – along with some crazy puffin action!

Once we were done playing with the Manta Rays we started heading towards the exit, on the way we saw some cool flamingos

Then it was back to the hotel to start on the overwhelming task of packing.  We were so concerned our luggage would be overweight that we got the front desk to bring us up a scale so we could weigh our bags.  Then of course at the airport buddy didn’t even weigh them, we even asked him if he was going to and he was like, "nah they’re fine."  But you know if we hadn’t taken the extra time to make sure our bags weren’t overweight they would have weighed them in a heartbeat!

The rest of the trip was uneventful, we flew into JFK, sat there for 3 hours or so then flew into Halifax and drove home.  It was a super awesome trip, but does anything ever feel as nice as getting home after a long tiresome trip?  I don’t think so.

Well, I’ve gotta go throw some food down my throat and get ready to teach double Zumba (5:30-6:30 and 7:30-8:30).  Check you tomorrow!