Cincinnati, Or Close Enough: Part 2, Saturday Morning

  I'd heard there was a wonderful aquarium in Cincinnati and so I suggested to Theresa (Phill, battling a cold, decided to stay home) that we make that our first stop on our tour of the city's downtown attractions.
    Turned out that there is a wonderful aquarium.  But it's not in Cincinnati.  It's across the Ohio River from Cincinnati in Newport, Kentucky.
    In fact I was to learn that day that along with the aquarium, the whole tourist section of downtown Cincinnati is located across the bridge in Newport, Kentucky in an area called Newport on the Levee, which is none the less considered a Cincinnati attraction.  Go figure.
    Go figure as well that, not only are Cincinnati's aquarium and tourist attractions not in Cincinnati, the Ohio River isn't in Ohio.  Ohio begins on the shore of Cincinnati, so Kentucky owns the Ohio River as well as all Cincinnati's good stuff. 
    But anyway, if all this is all right with everybody else than I guess it's all right with me, too.
    So while in Cincinnati we did what Cincinnatians do and crossed the bridge into lovely Newport on the Levee:

...and admired the Cincinnati skyline from the other side:

    We also crossed the walking bridge between Newport and Cincinnati called the Purple People Bridge:

    See, It's painted purple, and it's for people, hence, The Purple People Bridge!  8)
    Intriguingly, along the fence of the bridge many locks have been fastened, many of them engraved with the names of persons or couples and a date:

    There was also a planter contest going on along the bridge, one of the requirements being that the planters contain edibles as well as ornamentals:

     After kicking around for a while on the Levee and the bridge  we headed for the Newport Aquarium.

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    Which was so crowded that we almost felt like we were in a human fish tank:

    I think I would hesitate to recommend a visit to the Newport Aquarium on a Saturday in summer to anyone who is the least bit claustrophobic.
    That being said, if you're a claustrophobic who likes aquariums it just might be worth it, because this was one awesome aquarium:

   The above is a rare shark ray, part sting ray, part shark.  This aquarium has the most shark rays in captivity in the world.  
    But along with the beautiful displays of fish, sharks, jelly fish, snakes, turtles, crabs, alligators, penguins, and every kind of aquatic animal imaginable, there were wonderful, enthusiatic young volunteers stationed throughout the aquarium brimming with seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of the critters in their respective sections:

    This young lady supervised the petting of the starfish,

...while this biology student was a storehouse of interesting information on creatures of the Amazon as well as alligators and crocodiles:

    And then there was the dedicated girl who was stationed at the tank of the aquarium's only baby octopus,

...and whose mission at the aquarium merits a post of its own, so tune in tomorrow and I'll tell you  what we learned from the octopus girl and also about a very thoughtless and inauspicious event that happened at the baby octopus tank before our eyes.
    To be continued...