I have a thing for zoos. I love them. Every time I visit a new city, the first thing I look for is whether or not they have zoo. As it turns out, Boston does have a zoo.

As it turns out, I chose to visit Boston during Snowmeggadon, and the thought of visiting a zoo in 8 feet of snow made me want to cry a little (okay, who am I kidding, it made me want to cry a lot). Monday in Boston was a whopping 3 degrees, and that made wanting to be outdoors for an extended amount of time impossible.

Luckily Boston has an alternative to the zoo that is just as good.

According to the website:

The New England Aquarium, which opened in 1969, is a global leader in ocean exploration and marine conservation. The Aquarium is one of the premier visitor attractions in Boston, with over 1.3 million visitors a year, and a major public education resource.

As it happens, the exhibit right now is all about my favorite animal.

I love penguins. My cousin is a marine biologist, and works for an aquarium, and I am constantly begging him to bring me home a penguin. So far, he is saying no, but I am optimistic that I can change his mind.

The New England Aquarium is on the warf, and on any other day, I would have loved to see the view, but seeing as being outside hurt my face, we only stayed outside long enough to buy tickets and run inside.

I loved the aquarium. The penguins were adorable, the staff friendly, and fish colorful and exciting. Sus is naturally curious and had me cracking up at all of the questions that she was asking. She was worried about being eaten by a starfish, wanted to know what everything ate, and made the men feeding the penguins laugh at everything she wanted to know. The marine biologist feeding the penguins was mighty cute, so I let her ask as many questions as she wanted.

When we had gotten our fill of fish (and sadly abandoned our plan to bring a penguin or two home with us), we trusted lonely planet and went off to Chinatown for some dumplings. Chinatown was amazing.Having never been to China, I imagine the layout here is very similar to a city in China.

The Gourmet Dumpling House was easy to find, and before we even sat down, the waiter presented us with a pot of hot tea and some menus. While we were deciding what to eat, we snacked on scallion pancakes that tasted like little bits of heaven.

We ordered chicken wanton soup and vegetable dumplings. The last time I had Chinese food this good was when the lovely Sophia made dinner for us in Edinburgh. The restaurant had more staff than diners when we were there, and there was rapid fire Mandarin being spoken everywhere you turned. The staff was laughing and teasing each other while they sorted and cleaned fresh produce, and wrapped some sort of dumpling (The waitress was nice enough to tell us what it was, but I have since forgotten).

This was by far the best meal that I have ever had. There were 10 dumplings in the bowl, and I kid you not, I ate seven of them. I’m not sure if it was all the walking, or the fact that it was my first meal of the day, but everything about this meal was amazing. Sus had to roll me back to the hostel. I would go back to Boston just to go back to the Gourmet Dumpling House.