Random Ramblings: California trip diary: Day 3 & 4

Day Three was spent in Sea World while Day Four was for chilling out without really going to any special place.

Sea World is an aquatic zoo combined with an amusement park. The Shamu show is the highlight of this place. Before we get onto that, I thought I'd show you this cute picture of a little girl we saw there, with her face painted (as a cat or is that a something else?).

Shamu is a whale! It's trained to perform stunts like dolphins. Actually, the show features Shamu and a few other of his mates. The show is fantastic, complete with the whales jumping out of the water and also splashing water on the audience.

We also saw white wales. They weren't upto any of the above antics and were swimming peacefully in a simulated environment.

The most-loved dolphins were there, of course. Some were in a pool where you could interact closely with them. The one below seems to be lovingly asking for food.

Of course, there was a show featuring dolphins, similar to the one with Shamu and company. There was some drama here, with a woman set up to fall into the water as part of the proceedings.

Another spectacular portion of Sea World was the penguin section. About 300 small penguins were kept in artificially created Polar settings, with one side open to public viewing through glass. The penguins and ice were a bit dirty.

In one of the aquariums, I saw some embryos. Though the photo is not of great quality, you can still see organisms forming inside.

One unique animal we saw was the manatee, an endangered mammal rescued by Sea World. They were funny in their movement and excessive consumption of lettuce.

The food at Sea World was quite bad for our taste. While coming out of the eatery, we were amused to see beef being cooked in the open.

As a whole, Sea World is a really enjoyable place to visit, if you don't mind shelling out quite a few bucks.

During our San Diego leg of our trip, we actually stayed in Carlsbad, an affluent suburb. The roads were practically empty and the superb houses made a pretty sight.