Vacation Part 2

Indianapolis is a pretty large city. I made a list of places that sounded interesting, but we really didn't get to visit many places since the weekend was short. I guess I will just have to go back in the spring. 

Friday night we enjoyed a nice dinner and evening with the stars of our visit who are beautifully represented here:

They are pretty awesome. If you don't know them, well, it sucks to be you.

We exchanged Christmas gifts so I can now put up the wreath I made for them. 

It's a bit sad looking, but I just haven't gotten the hang of this whole wreath making thing yet (and I probably never will).

Saturday we went to one of the local malls and followed it up with lunch at P.F. Chang's (Singapore Street Noodles, yum!)

Then we took a walk about Broad Ripple which was a neat district filled with yummy sounding food and shops. Chris' favorites were The Exchange and Panda(ology) and I liked those too as well as a little place by a cafe that I cannot remember the name of, but it had adorable hand-made gifts (I got a bat keychain that was precious with his little button eyes!)

Don't these look delicious?!   Too bad they are dog treats. 

When we finally had to pull ourselves away on Sunday morning, we stopped in Cincinnati on the way home with the intent of seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. Unfortunately, it was more than we thought it was (we saw the member price online, not the non-member price). So we opted to see the rest of the museum instead (as it was cheaper to see the all of the museum than to see the one exhibit.)

It wasn't as impressive as the Children's Museum in Indianapolis, but I got to watch bats fly! Bats!! 

They have a little bat flight thing where a guy lets bats loose in this screened in cage and once they wake up they fly around and he talks about bat facts. (Also peed in the kids' faces during one of his jokes and he thought the people were laughing at him; we'll let him continue to think that.)

Here are some pictures we got. Like I said, it wasn't the greatest museum, but it was a nice stop and BATS!

The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit is going on till April so we may go back. If you go, let me know about it.

The museum is divided into a world and natural history museum (which was good-bats and dinosaurs!) and an American history museum (we were speed walking through it, not really our interest).

Mummy!

 The natural history museum had a section of fossils and casts of various animals followed by a recreated forest environment. 

Example: Ground Sloths. Terrifying no matter what.

What would YOU recommend for a little vacation?!  Any recommendations for Indianapolis for our return trip? Any suggestions for other quick places to visit in the area? 

What was your favorite museum to visit?

Indy Vacation:Children's Museum

I hope you have all started your new year right! I started mine with a little vacation (the first "real vacation" since about 2008!) It was just a weekend, but I feel refreshed and exhausted all at once! We went to Indianapolis to visit my best friend and her husband (and dog, Dallas, of course) and enjoyed every minute.

Our original plan was to leave Friday and stop in Cincinnati for lunch and a look around, but after getting turned around and not being hungry, we pushed on. We decided to stop on the way back though because there was a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the museum!! (I didn't get to see that, but we will go over that later).

So our early arrival in Indy resulted in a visit to the Children's Museum. If you live near Indy and have not been to the Museum you need to go. Right now. Pronto! It is amazing. No kids? Who cares?! You don't need kids! I was so pumped when we decided to go that I couldn't stop smiling for an hour and I was not disappointed. They have changing exhibits (right now a holiday one which we didn't go to), a National Geographic hall, the Dinosphere and more.The Nat Geo section and Dinosphere were enough to keep me entranced all day and really overshadowed the rest. I took over a hundred pictures on my trip and most of them were from this museum.

I did combine some pictures for space-saving reasons. I also made many small so click to see the larger picture!

I will sort them by exhibit starting with ones that were just found around the museum not in exhibits.

General Pictures

When you enter (for now at least) you get to see the Bumblebee prop from the Transformers movies.

I couldn't capture the true size of this blown glass sculpture in the middle of the museum. It was about 4 stories tall and the bottom (on right) spread out to form the ceiling for the lower level. It was beautiful.

Rawr!

DINOSAURS!!!!

Everyone likes dinosaurs, right? (If you don't like dinosaurs you are probably broken and should get that fixed soon.)

 Fight, Fight Fight!

This next picture are two combined that are just silly. They had a section called "What dinosaurs did in their free time" which included going shopping, errands, visiting museums and robbing banks only to be stopped by super heroes. 

Paleontologists are on site in this section actually working and there is always at least one or two who will make themselves available to answer questions in between their work. I really can't put up all the pictures I got or truly express how amazing the exhibit was for all ages. There is an excavation site for kids to practice digging, eggs, insects and small fossils and so many tiny raptors and other details to enjoy. They play a soundtrack and have a lighting show to depict the sounds and environment through different types of weather and the displays are simply amazing.

National Geographic Exhibit

Archaeology in Egypt, China, and the Caribbean.

This section was my second favorite and I just want to thank the staff for not throwing me out for being over excited. Why you ask? This is why:

Yes these are props from The Last Crusade. My squealing was only silenced by the next image which almost stopped my heart.

Can you see my goosebumps from where you are?!?! It is glorious!

That's not all for the exhibit of course! This was just the icing on the cake for me, which I promptly rubbed all over my face.

MUMMIES!

For those of you who saw my canopic jars and are wondering what they are, but don't know how to use Google, above is your answer. As well as a mummified cat.

And if the mummified cat wasn't enough, here is a falcon and a shrew.

Unfortunately, they didn't have an actual mummy on loan when we were there, but they had a cast with a screen to pass over it for information about mummification. Cause mummies are freaking awesome.

The Caribbean exhibit was really neat and I didn't get enough pictures because there were lots of kids running all over. I also was distracted by terra cotta warriors and lost my husband who was talking to an archaeologist; this was maybe one of his favorite exhibits.

Also note these pictures may look weird because all of these items are on display in water for preservation.

Grape shot, bar shot and cannonballs.

Those are coins.

A freaking cannon! It was too big to get a picture of it all at once. Chris was super pumped about this part...

Terra cotta warrior replicas were EVERYWHERE.

Other sections

There were also sections for important children in history, real car-size Hot Wheels cars (neither of which we went to), more glass sculptures, and a section about Egyptian culture which was set up with houses and businesses (bazaar, coffeehouses, etc.) I can't put up many of them because they were constantly occupied by children playing server to their parents and cooking and whatnot (it was adorable).

Here is what I got though:

Well this post is huge and it is late. Back to work tomorrow, but I hope to post other pictures soon. If you have any questions let me know and I'll see what I can do to answer!

Happy 2013!!