Tourists for a Day part 1

This Easter David and I went down to visit his family in Atlantic Beach, NC. We try to make it down there for at least Easter and Christmas every year (although we didn't get to go last Easter) This time, we brought a friend of ours, Bill, who was going to be all alone for Easter. Since he had never been to the coast of North Carolina before and it was going to be a nice day on Saturday, we decided we would all be tourists for the day. Now since we went to all the touristy places and did all the touristy things, I am warning you - I took TONS of pictures. I have tried to narrow them down to the best ones, but this is a warning, there will still be lots. So many, in fact, that I will have to make this a 2 part post. Here is the first part...

Ok, so the first place we went to is the North Carolina Pine Knoll Shores Aquarium. Now I have been there before, but it was long ago before they totally renovated the place. If you have never been, it is really nice now, and worth a trip if you are out that way sometime. However, this time because it was Easter, there was an Easter egg hunt going on at the aquarium. The staff had hidden little plastic eggs inside the tanks with the aquatic life, and the kids had to go around and find as many as they could to get a prize. I thought it was a very cute idea, but we didn't participate. We did, however each get our picture taken as the face of a giant hermit crab - a very touristy thing to do, but lots of fun too : ) Here are the best pics from the aquarium.

From there we went to a local dive, the Beach Tavern for a lunch of the best pizza around before heading into Beaufort to do the touristy things there.

See part 2 (above) for a recap and pictures of the second half of our day as tourists.