Museum Hopper

my last, but definitely not least post from my peruvian museum hopping!  i am going to combine the huaca de la luna y del sol and the museo huacas de moche for the blog post since they are affiliated and very much interlinked.  this is where we had our last bit of peruvian sightseeing up in trujillo.   stephen, my sister's new brother-in-law, highly recommended visiting the museum and the huaca.   the museum reminded me a lot of the museo larco , but this one was only focused on the moche people , which inhabited trujillo.  the museum had all the spanish descriptions translated to english, which was great.  the information was very engaging.  we also enjoyed not being reliant on a guide and could move around the museum at our own pace.  the moche people were one of the most sophisticated civilizations for the time period with sophisticated rituals, art and engineering.   Here is some of their pottery: once we wrap...

the day after visiting el museo larco , we as a large group went to huaca pucllana .  this is a large pyramid in the middle of lima!  here is an arial view of the huaca .  restoration and preservation of this huaca began in the early 1990s if my memory proves correct.  up until then, it had been used as a soccer field, motorcycle track and just a general gathering place! the huaca was used as a ceremonial and city center for the lima people who were living in lima (coincidentally) between 200 and 700 AD.   we had a guided tour for the huaca with a few other groups.  the tour guide was a little more robotic in her delivery and also was not as able to answer our questions than our guide at the museo larco.  that being said, her english was still waaay better than my spanish!  they also had llamas and alpacas on site.  here is a picture of an alpaca from another place we went: we found out more about the limas.  this nicel...

the first place we went to when we arrived in lima, peru was the museo larco .  my family, boyfriend, grandfather and aunt were all down in peru for my middle sister's wedding.  it was quite the trip with a beautiful wedding, but it also let me see some new museums!  always a big plus when i travel!  the museo larco was a great place for us to start.  it has a great overview of pre-columbian art work, textiles and ceramics.  most (if not all) of the pieces were purchased and found by a single family who had decided to create the museum to preserve the pieces.  the museum flows through time and seemed easy to follow.  my sister had arranged a guide for us since most of the explanations were spanish.  our guide seemed very well knowledgeable and spoke much better english than i speak spanish!  we were a group of about 20 people and she handled all of our questions and inquiries with grace.  it can be hard to keep a large group like...

i have been sort of waiting to visit the seattle art museum until some of the new exhibits opened.  it seemed fitting to do it my last weekend in seattle, which coincidentally ended up being a mildly rainy sunday!  perfect activity. i was very excited to see the beauty and the bount y after walking by the publicity signage every day.  it was pretty magnificent.  the best part though, which was key, was that the exhibit was not crowded.  each painting had plenty of space around it.  this was so important for setting the mood of the entire exhibit.  they grouped the paintings (from what i could tell) by geography and sort of ending with the westward expansion.  landscape paintings are always so peaceful.  even the scenes with huge storms blowing through seem to have some tranquility to them.  this exhibit was no exception.  it reminded me a lot of j.m.w. turner's work that i saw at the metropolitan museum of art and the tate brit...

on the first thursday , my classmate, priscilla, and i went to the burke museum of natural history and culture up on the university of washington campus.  it's considered one of the better museums in seattle. we headed up after work on the bus to check it out.  priscilla has been living up near the UW campus and knew where to go.   it was an interesting combination of stuff like the royal bc museum .  the artifacts and exhibits definitely overlapped between the two museum.  i enjoyed the photographs of the owls .  i would have loved a little more details on how many hours or shots they had to take to get some of these amazing action shots.  the wolves exhibit was pretty neat, a little simplistic, but interesting to learn about the wolves.   the downstairs is the "culture" part of the museum.  it had a section of the "first nations" that had a number of the same or similar objects from the royal bc museum including a sectio...

on the fourth of july, my boyfriend and i rode the ducks of seattle .  i booked the tickets in advance and we left from the westlake location in downtown seattle.  i figured it would be a good way to get us around seattle, end the weekend and get on the water for a little bit. we arrived at the stop a half hour early like we were supposed to and waited in a line a bit to get on the duck/boat/bus.  we were a little late taking off since two ticket holders arrived late to westlake.  this was the beginning of a not so great ride with these two.... we headed directly from westlake up towards the north side of lake union, hopped in the lake there, boated around, then headed down on the pier, up 1st avenue past pike market to wrap up the ride.  we spent about equidistant time in the water and on land, which i was really happy about.  it was great to be on the lake on the 4th of july.  we could see everyone gathering to watch the fireworks as well as the ...

over the long weekend, my boyfriend and i went to the san juan islands off the coast of washington state and vancouver island.  while we were there, we stopped at the charming whale museum .    the museum is on the edge of town, so about three blocks from the ferry.  it had a nice sized gift shop on the first floor and then the museum is on the second floor.   the topics in the museum covered are the history of the whales, behavior and data about the whales, and then what is threatening the whales and what we can do to preserve them.  it was very well done and gave enough information.  i liked how they focused and gave details about the three pods that live around the san juan islands.  it definitely added fuel to the fire; we did not see the whales this trip and now, i really want to see them.  the museum was very spacious.  the usual problem with these museums is that they seem to get tired and run down.  it was obvious ...