Challenge Number 30: Take Charlotte To An Aquarium.

I actually completed this challenge a few weeks ago but haven’t managed to make time to write about it until now. I love aquariums (aquaria? Wikipedia says both terms are acceptable, but that doesn’t make it true). As I can’t even swim breaststroke with my face in the water (and no, you don’t need to tell me how rubbish that is), I know I’ll never be a deep-sea diver, so the opportunity to see exotic marine life while breathing normal air is one I relish. Over the years, I’ve seen some very cool aquariums in some far-flung places – Baltimore, Genoa, London, Singapore – but Charlotte had to make do (at least for now) with The Deep in Hull. 

Oh, but she loved it. She didn’t stop running from the moment we arrived until the moment we left. The place was one giant ramp as far as she was concerned, which is currently her idea of heaven. (Really, we could have taken her to a building site and she’d have been just as happy.) But she was running around making her (unaspirated voiceless bilabial plosive) fish noise so must have been noticing at least some of the tanks as she raced past. Chasing Charlotte means it’s all a bit of a blur, like the photograph, but I’d definitely score The Deep very highly on an aquarium ratings system. It has a glass tunnel under one of its tanks and a lift that rises up through another. It has sharks and information about environmental responsibility. It has a nautical themed soft play area. It serves fish and chips in the restaurant.

Technically, The Deep calls itself a submarium, which I believe is because a lot of the action takes place under the River Humber, but what the heck, it’s an aquarium. And we took Charlotte. And I hope we can go back to see some more very soon.