I know you’re both out there, waiting with baited breath for the next installment of The Cleveland Trip. But really, I’m just living in abject fear that I’ll always be four days behind in blogging and never catch up, so here goes.
On Sunday morning we slept a bit. JediBoy and I were up around 8 and BabyGirl woke PisecoDad around 9. We had planned to go to the Natural History Museum which opened at noon, but in browsing the local paper and the tourist brochures from the lobby, we happened across an ad for the under-renovation Museum of Art. It happened that the Museum of Art (which is on University Circle with the Natural History Museum) opened at 10 and it did have just one exhibit open now.
The exhibit was Arms and Armor from Imperial Austria! PisecoDad and JediBoy were beside themselves. JediBoy in particular thought it was amazingly cool to see real armor and real weapons, a suit of armor for a horse and a “real lance they really used in a real joust!” He liked the different kinds of helmets, the black-and-white armor, the two-handed swords, the crossbow, and a very cool display of pikemen’s armors on mannequins set up as if for battle. Unfortunately, no photography at all was allowed inside the museum, but we did pick up the postcard book from the exhibit.
After the art museum, we headed back to the Natural History, where we’d parked. The kids played outside on the stegosaurus, which made JediBoy think of the book, Can I Have A Stegosaurus, Can I, Mom, Please? and made me think of The Enormous Egg and Mr. Beasley on the Mall.
We went inside, and JediBoy was beside himself to find the juvenile t-rex, Jane, right there! (Or is she a nanotyrannus? It’s up for debate.) For him, this was the absolute best part of the day.
JediBoy did greatly enjoy other parts of the museum - the first hall looked like this:
We spent a very long time in there as JediBoy was fascinated by the animals and wanted to read their names and talk about them. He was also captivated by the dioramas - something he’d seen in the movie Night at the Museum but which our local museums don’t have. Each habitat area had at least one diorama with animals (and occasionally people) which we pored over in great detail.
From there we headed into the hall of dinosaurs (and other fossils and prehistoric stuff). Again, JediBoy was absolutely loving it. We looked at all kinds of dinosaurs and the skull of a full-grown t-rex. BabyGirl spent a long time (and lots of luscious energy) racing around, and around, and around the allosaurus display.
When we left the hall of dinosaurs, we went two separate ways. JediBoy and I wanted to see a planetarium show, and PisecoDad agreed to stay with BabyGirl elsewhere. JediBoy and I enjoyed the planetarium show - his first ever - which was geared towards kids and spent quite some time on local (to Ohio) star positions and constellations for this time of year. JediBoy was very impressed when the planetarium drifted to full dark.
While we were in there, PisecoDad took BabyGirl on the outdoor path, which had native animals on display. She particularly liked the turkeys.
In case you’re wondering why she’s spending so much time in the stroller… it had to do with her deep interest in removing any and all footwear whenever possible!
Both museums were very interesting and we had a delightful time.
We returned to our hotel room about 3:30, surprised that my cell phone call to a friend who had hoped to come up and meet us hadn’t been returned. We checked our messages at the hotel, the messages on our home phone, even my email (via my DS browser) but had no luck.
The kids were wiped out and we decided to take the time for a siesta, not pile anything else onto the day. By that time, PisecoDad said, if our friends were in Cleveland, they would get ahold of us, and if they weren’t, it was too late to start the trip! I was a bummed, but snuggling with JediBoy and watching movies on tv helped.
We headed back to the mall area that evening to have dinner. We wanted to go to the Border’s Outlet bookstore but it closed at 6 and we were just a few minutes too late. We drove around instead, checking out the other stores in the area and taking a main road (but not the highway) back to our hotel.
Sunday was a much more solitary day than Saturday, which seemed to fit PisecoDad’s temperament better, and we went to sleep that night tired but not exhausted.
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