Kids on the Go – New England Aquarium, Boston, MA

Children of almost all ages love aquariums, so since we were in Massachusetts already, we decided to visit the New England Aquarium in Boston.

It is pretty easy to find, if you do your homework and check on their website into which parkades are the closest and how to get there, since it is smack in the middle of Boston, on the waterline and with no direct parking. Several parkades offer discounts for visitors of the Aquarium, when exiting the parkade, ask what kind of ticket you should ask for at the Aquarium and get it at the customer service desk, you can get some considerable savings.

Their very complete website also has a full tariff schedule, which contains package deals with the adjacent IMAX theatre and they also offer whale watch tours, so depending on what you want to do, you should check and see, if you can’t save a nice amount of money by combining things. Depending on the age of the child and if you want to see everything that is on offer, you can calculate that it will take up pretty much the whole day.

The aquarium is set up in a surprisingly compact way, with a huge cylindrical ocean water tank in the middle, a spiral ramp ascending around it and everything else being along the walls surrounding the whole thing, so you do not have to walk for miles to be able to see everything, which is a nice change. The only things not in the huge tank or the tanks along the walls are the penguins, which have an open habitat around the big water tank and the seals and sea lions, which have their own areas outside.

At the entrance they will take a photo of you and your family, and outside of the gift shop, you can buy these photos in front of a marine background, nice memento, the gift shop itself is big and has a wide variety of plush, shirts, hats, cups, games and other trinkets to bring home for the to-be-expected price level.

The Aquarium overall is offering a wide variety of different species of fish and other ocean inhabitants, such as jellyfish, turtles, frogs, the already mentioned seals and sea lions, all of which are in nicely clean tanks, which you can’t always say about all aquariums out there. And on top of it you also get different things happening such as the training session of the seals, the feeding of the turtles etc., which you can check out ahead of time in their schedule.

It also houses the Harbor View Cafe, the in-house choice for food and drink and you can get a fairly wide variety of foods, burgers, pizza, soups, sandwiches, salads and more, giving you plenty of (also healthy) choices for also very reasonable prices, so you don’t have to break into the savings account to feed your family. There are three washrooms in total, two of which on the main floor and one in the cafe, they are big and well maintained, but I think that one on the higher levels might have been a good idea.

Children of pretty much all ages (and of course adults) can have hours of fun with the very clean and well done display tanks and just the opportunity to watch the majestic giant sea turtles float in the big tank is something to behold and the kids probably will fall in love with the penguins right then and there. There also is the Curious George Discovery Corner, where the kids can colour (among other things) and learn about preservation and stuff like that, which is not the only educational opportunity that the Aquarium offers, it has a whole string of educational activities, for children and adults, teachers and “normal” people, which is something worth checking out.

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