The Trip to Santa Barbara and the "French Festival"

Yesterday we went to Santa Barbara - the Museum of Natural History has their "Butterflies Alive" exhibit. It is a small garden, and the different species of butterflies are released in it, hundreds of them. To make sure they do not fly away, the garden is surrounded by a net. We were told to be careful and not touch them, but they, apparently, can sit on us if they choose.
Vera kept trying to persuade the butterflies to sit on her, sticking out her fingers and putting them in front of the flowers. Rita, on the contrary, kept ducking every time a butterfly flew past her. She said she did not want them to land on her head.
After the exhibit, we decided to go to the French Festival - the poster said it was something good and educational. Well, it turned out to be noisy, hot, and expensive. It was filled with vendor trucks from all over, and it had "Authentic French BBQ" Are you kidding me? French do not have "authentic" Barbeque, I don't think the word is even in their vocabulary! And their "French Ice Cream" was nothing but your regular vendor 7-11 ice cream, only the price was $4 a pop. "Authentic French Bakery" had French Bread, the kind they sell at Vons, and crepes like at IHOP. Ridiculous. Even the bounce house was $3-5 for 5 minutes. And the books on the stands were used, but sold at the price of new....
In short, it was one big attempt of the local vendors and artists to sell their stuff with the French theme as a cover up. The only thing that was mildly amusing was the group of girls -six or seven of them - dressed up as French dancers. They were posing, and Joe took their picture.
So, after this hot disappointment we went to the Aquarium - right on the pier, it's an extension of SB Natural History Museum. There the kids had some fun: they looked at the snails, the hermit crabs, starfish, and they were even allowed to touch them. We saw the baby sharks in one of the tanks. Now that was fun.
I learned that some species of sharks start hunting before they are even born. When the eggs get hatched inside the mother's body, there is no placenta attached to the baby, so it has to eat the unhatched eggs and smaller siblings inside the mother to survive until it is born and out of her woom. So, the survivors of these species are born ready to hunt and have death of their siblings on their conscience, so to speak...