We maintain strict criteria for choosing a place to eat on vacation. First, it can't be somewhere we can eat at home - which narrows our list of available restaurants by half. Second, we have a list of "must eats" that we have to get in at some point. Of course third is our list of places to avoid, which currently only contains one restaurant solely because of the price. On Wednesday, we decided to try out a new place for lunch - Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. But first . . . breakfast and the aquarium.

Breakfast was at one of the two Shoney's restaurants in Pigeon Forge. The Shoney's breakfast buffet is a memorable experience from all our childhoods that hasn't been possible in a while since all the restaurants around our area closed down. We enjoyed the breakfast, and I especially liked the strawberries! By the time we finished, they were clearing out the breakfast items to switch over to the lunch buffet.

Carter's had a nice sale, including a $4.99 and under warehouse sale upstairs. Ella bought enough clothes to last through next Summer, at an average of just over $4.00 per piece - a steal for baby clothes!

If you've been to Gatlinburg in the past decade, you know that Ripley's is buying out the whole town, building their museums and attractions, and all but changing the name to Ripleyburg. Or maybe it will be Ripley's Gatlinburg in keeping with the naming tradition of the rest of their empire. The largest Ripley's attraction is the Aquarium of the Smokies - a large, blue building in the center of town where two other streets intersect with Parkway. It's impossible to miss and, as I finally realized this year, just as impossible to avoid. At $19.99 per adult ticket, I had tried to avoid going because I thought it would be a waste of money that could be spent on EATING shrimp, lobster and crab . . . not WATCHING them!

The aquarium was surprisingly more enjoyable than I expected. While some of the smaller exhibits weren't that great, there was a fish that you couldn't see because its camouflaged color made it blend in with the sand, the orange jellies with the blue background were awesome, and there was one kind of dragon fish that looked like a floating bush - it had green things that looked just like leaves! The best part of the aquarium experience was the long conveyor belt that wound its way under a large pool of all sorts of fishes and lots of sharks!

After the aquarium, we were hungry for . . . seafood, of course! So we headed up the street to Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. A few weeks ago, I did some research about the area to see what had changed since we were here last year, and I found out that this new restaurant would be opening June 16. I had suggested that we try it out, and it passed our criteria, so we did.

From the time we walked through the door, we could tell that the service at Bubba Gump didn't even compare with what had happened a few days earlier across the street at Lineberger's. All the servers and wait staff work together to make sure customers' needs are met. In the middle of the table, they have license plates that say "Run Forrest Run" and "Stop Forrest Stop." If you have everything you need and you're enjoying your meal, you leave the blue "RUN" sign up. Any time you need something, you flip the plate over the show the "STOP" sign, and someone comes to your table - in our experience, within fifteen to thirty seconds - to see what you need. We used the sign for Jessica's meal, which was delayed in the kitchen a few minutes, and to order dessert. Each time, someone other than our particular server came over (she was busy with other customers) and they were more than happy to check on the food and place our dessert order. We were very impressed with the way everyone pulled together to get the job done, and with the attitudes they had about it.

The food at Bubba Gump wasn't quite as good as Lineberger's, but it was still great. I ordered Shrimper's Heaven - a collection of four different types of shrimp that I can't find on their website menu . . . oh well. Three of the varieties are fried and the other is chilled peel-and-eat. It was a lot of shrimp, and definitely worth the $16.00. Dessert, appetizers, our two meals and a meal for Ella was all the same price as our two meals at Lineberger's. The chocolate cookie sundae was awesome!

We finished our second day's stay in Gatlinburg by shopping in the stores we missed on the first visit. Wednesday's rain came as we were finishing our lunch, then slacked off but continued through most of our shopping. So far, it's rained every day . . . imagine that!

We headed back to the cabin to relax in the hot tub and get to bed.