The city mouse and the country mouse - which one are you?

New Year's Day we were on vacation and the day took us to the aquarium in downtown Dallas, of all places. We had visited the area before and been to the aquarium at Fair Park and not been very impressed and thought surely a city the size of Dallas would have something better to offer.

Well, they do - the Dallas World Aquarium - a hefty price tag, but enjoyable and a wide variety to see there - it's not your ordinary aquarium, I mean, come on, what other aquarium has a jaguar?

Anyway, back to the title up there - we parked in one of the downtown lots near the aquarium and proceeded to start reading all the different signs about how and where and who to pay for parking. Yikes. They could make it a little more complicated...I wish I had pictures of the signs. Don't do this, make sure you do this, etc. etc. etc. The signs were contradictory and a tad confusing. We don't frequent the downtown areas of large cities often...can you tell?

Well, as we headed to the sign to squeeze dollar bills into the tiny slot next to the number for our parking spot, we were intercepted by a friendly guy wearing an orange vest and some sort of badge on a lanyard around his neck, quoting the price for the day and so forth. We paid him for the parking and then, shortly after...we knew we'd been had. ARGH. CKB was not happy. I was not happy either, but what do you do - chase the guy down and tackle him, risking your life possibly for 5 bucks? Well, maybe, but just in case it got ugly, the children didn't need to see that, so...No. Instead, we paid for parking at the sign and got our ticket for the dashboard and went on to the aquarium. Did I say, argh? ARGH!!!!

During this time, we watched the guy saunter off to another lot at a pretty rapid pace....ARGH.

After the aquarium visit, we were navigating our way out of the downtown area and on to other sites when we noticed there were lots of folks walking along w/folding chairs....people were selling cotton candy...we were about to be in the middle of a parade or something - yikes - as we were almost to the interstate, the police were barricading the very road we had just come down - help! We made it out alive....the cat didn't get us too badly...and we're back in the country now...

So how about it, are you a country mouse or a city mouse?