Weekend in Newport

We took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Newport this weekend inspired by Will and Shelley (I was looking at her blog entry about their visit to Newport and I thought, "we could do that"-so we did!)
We drove over Friday evening when David got off work and since we were awake early Saturday morning, we went to the beach at about 9:00 am, when it was cold and damp. This is Nye beach, and Alexa loved it. She was so happy she would run a few feet, and then stop and laugh and clap for the joy of it. I could not get her to hold still for pictures.
The best part about the beach is that it is beautiful and amazing no matter what the weather is like. Well worth the cold hands and ears!
Then we went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium where we saw many beautiful and amazing things. They had this tank of swirling seaweed that was beautiful.

Most of the tanks had these beautiful glass sculpture things in them too, I could have spent hours if I didn't have a four year old and tired legs.
The sea otters were adorable.
Jellyfish are always amazing to me..so delicate.
The colors and shapes..
I think these were anchovies, also shiny and gorgeous en masse.

After the aquarium we went to take a nap, and then to the Aquarium Village area which was hysterically funny.
Like some sort of Disneyland imitation.
And then we had an amazing seafood dinner at a place called Local Ocean Seafood on the bayfront, with this view.

We stayed overnight and went to meeting with our friend Linda on Sunday. Then we ate lunch at a place that I call the crab shack, but I can't remember if it is actually called that or that it just looks like a crab shack. They have big pots of water and they boil those crabs out front. I ate half a crab for lunch..messy and YUMMY. Alexa had rice..we can't convince her to try new things at this point in her life. We are always torn between eating somewhere that has food we like, and eating somewhere that serves mac and cheese.. Saturday night she wouldn't eat anything at the seafood place, so we went to the grocery store afterward and bought yoghurt.

So here is a question for anyone who visits there..where are your favorite places in Newport to eat and stay and visit?

I recommend both the crab shack place and the Local Ocean Seafood place. We stayed at La Quinta Inn. It was OK, but they allow pets to stay there, and there were about 10-15 dogs who stayed there with us. I personally don't like to hear dogs barking when I am sleeping and honestly I kind of like outside dogs better than inside dogs. (I don't mean to offend anyone, that is just the way I grew up.) So anyway-the aquarium was incredible, the Aquarium Village was dorky, but had a cool yarn store. Nye Beach and the shopping area around it looked really neat. I would have loved to poke around, especially the bookstores, but again, Alexa is not really a fun person to shop with!