travel: galveston & moody garden’s iceland

A few winter breaks ago, we spent a couple days to drive to Galveston, an island city on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Galveston’s not really known for its beach, but IT IS known for the Moody Gardens, giant glass pyramids that house sharks, monkeys and other animals.

The Moody Gardens are also home to Iceland, where sculptors have carved a beautiful undersea journey from two million pounds of ice.

Iceland first was constructed in 2014, and each year features a stadium full of beautiful sculptures under a specific theme — this year, it was “Caribbean Christmas.” Fish, turtle and submarines accompany you as you walk through the 9 degree Fahrenheit arena, and at the very end is a slide carved entirely from ice.

Although we went the day after Christmas, it was almost 80 degrees outside, but thankfully, the center provides parkas for visitors to wear. There’s not a time limit for how long you can stay, but staying there longer than forty-five minutes is probably not a good idea for your freezing hands and toes (unless you’re used to that temperature, which, unfortunately, us Texans aren’t, haha — like, today is January 2nd and I’m wearing a tank top because it’s 85 degrees…)

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