South Carolina Aquarium

Well, our first night in a hotel with a baby didn’t result in as high-quality sleep as we had hoped, but I don’t think Nora is to blame–her latest ILLNESS, on the other hand, is totally the culprit. Stupid cold/cough/congestion. Ugh.

After putting Nora into the hotel-provided pack ‘n’ play last night, it became clear pretty quickly that she was not going to last. She kept waking up and coughing or crying, and she was so miserable and pitiful that I gave up fairly quickly and brought her into bed with us. For the first half of the night, I slept with her cuddled up next to me, sharing my pillow with her so that she could sleep with her head semi-upright to help with the congestion. I also had the humidifier (which Dave and Lynsay so helpfully brought from home for us to use) blasting in our faces, which seemed to help. Michael took over holding her during the second half of the night, so in the end, we all ended up with at least some half-decent sleep. Come morning, we were all still pretty exhausted, but we had enough fuel to rally in order to do some sightseeing.

After we were all showered and ready, we started the morning eating breakfast in the lobby of our hotel. Free breakfast is included with the room price, so it is REALLY convenient for us. And the food selection isn’t half bad, either–waffles, eggs, biscuits, sausage, bacon, cereal, oatmeal, yogurt, fruit, bagels, muffins, donuts, etc. Niiiice.

From breakfast we hit the streets with the kids in strollers, heading to the South Carolina Aquarium at the Charleston Harbor. The morning was overcast and still pretty chilly, so we figured it was a good place to spend our morning–INDOORS! We were able to print out a coupon that gave all of us a slight discount, so we each paid $16.95 for our tickets, and the two babies were free. Michael and I were interested to see how the aquarium here compares to Shedd Aquarium, which we visited in Chicago in September 2009.