I Take a Grandson to the

This is the one on the Kemah Boardwalk. The downtown Houston location is much more spectacular but Grandma doesn’t take on the high-speed maze of crisscrossing Interstates unless absolutely necessary. I owed him. Before his big brother Mikey started Big School (kindergarten) I was always snatching him up and heading for the Rainforest Café in Galveston. Such a cool place.  Now it’s Gabriel’s turn.

But the Rainforest is filled with trumpeting elephants, roaring apes, and indoor thunderstorms. Since I wanted to at least try to get in a chat with my daughter-in-law, I elected to check out the Aquarium.
Bear in mind that even in the dullest of settings, kids never eat at restaurants. They’re too busy looking around and demanding trips to the bathroom. Given the overstimulation of wall-to-wall live, swimming fish, you can totally save your money. Oh, they might grab a fry or something off your plate in between the piranha tank and the one with Nemo and Dory, but they certainly won’t do any serious eating.
We adults were most mesmerized by the main tank. Interspersed with three sharks, a tiger and two smaller reef sharks, were several enormous groupers. The waiter said they could get up to 800 lbs. Most surprising to me were the two long, green moray eels. I had no idea they were so big.
The food was top quality and elegantly presented, but way overpriced. Here the usual dinner salad was extra. Like, $5.99 extra. So not an everyday lunch spot.

After the meal we went down to the stingray pool. Yes, we petted the stingrays. Very smooth, rubbery and slippery. They’re friendly to humans but not so much with each other. One slapping set-to sent me scrambling aside to wipe off my camera and eyeglasses.

We capped off our adventure with a train ride around all the Boardwalk attractions. It was a good time. But now I feel I owe Mikey again…