Museum Hopper

While in New Orleans, we visited two of the state museums.  This is the one we went to second.  We went with my parents, my sister, her husband and their two children (four and two).  This museum focuses on the history of New Orleans.   I will say overall, this museum was really beautiful.  I could imagine some awesome cocktail hours overlooking the square here! This museum seemed a little more tired than the one that Jason and I had visited the day before with the exception of the second floor.  The second floor seemed to have been edited.  It was also more interactive and engaging than the other floors.  My niece and nephew definitely enjoyed it the most.  My nephew wished that the video on the pirates would "have more" aka was longer!  They also enjoyed playing the drum.  I really enjoyed the large painting on the second floor of a battle -- on the painting, it was highlighted which were the key elements to pay attention to t...

Recently, my husband and I traveled to New Orleans for a wedding!  What a fun city for a party!  On our second day, we went to the Louisiana State Museum - The Presbytere .   This museum has two main sections: Hurricane Katrina and Mardi Gras, each on their own floor.  I will say overall, this museum was really beautiful.  I could imagine some awesome cocktail hours overlooking the square here! The first floor provided context and details about when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond .   It walks the visitor through the lead-up to New Orleans.  Unfortunately, the atrocities that occurred were due to a number of factors.  The exhibit highlights the construction, engineering failures of the levees.  It seemed as though bad decisions were compounded through more bad decisions (e.g., materials choice, design choices).   The lack of preparedness of the groups that should have been ...

Okay, so going to quickly skip over our trip to New Orleans to wrap up my Cincinnati blog posts! I headed to the Cincinnati Art Museum by myself on Friday to participate in the Cinco de Mayo Frida celebration.  While I would give the Frida celebration mixed reviews, I really did enjoy the opportunity to walk through the special exhibit, Tiffany Glass: Painting with Light and Color.   It is a special exhibit that was created by the  The Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass in New York City -- basically a private collection by the Neustadt family.  It appears that they also curate exhibits, which are loaned out to create awareness and interest in Tiffany glass .  The exhibit was a very manageable size -- about three main rooms.     I loved that the also had an guide available.  Bring your own headphones, use the museum wifi and watch the youtube videos that have been created to go with the exhibit.  As a preview, the videos are avail...

Just recently, my husband and I headed to the Cincinnati Museum Center to check out the Viking exhibit, Vikings: Beyond the Legend , before it left. The museum center is in the old Cincinnati train station, a truly iconic Cincinnati building.  As of right now, it is heavily under construction.  The only parts of the museum that were open were the children's museum and this special exhibit.   When we arrived, I said we had a Cincinnati Art Museum membership, which was supposed to get us a discount (almost half off our tickets).  The worker did not believe there was any discount with that, but had to be corrected by another employee.  I believe this has been in place for almost a year, so that's surprising.  She even made a comment that she had turned down someone before.  I was grateful for that as it basically halved the price of the tickets from $25 per person to ~$13.   I did not find exhibit warranted a $25 price tag.  While enjoya...

I recently took a job in Cincinnati, so get ready for a bit more of these about/from Cincinnati!  My husband and I just got a year pass to go to the   Cincinnati Art Museum . My husband and I went a couple of weeks ago as the start of the date night.  We went to two of the exhibits about Japanese culture. The first exhibit we went to was Dressed to Kill: Japanese Arms & Armor .  I was really excited about this exhibit since it had 11 Samurai suits of armor!  They even had one for a 13 year old boy.  Three of the suits of armor were the museums, but eight of them were from a private collection.  I was enraptured by the armor.  They had a box that was used to store the armor and I was shocked at how collapsible the armor was -- it folded up into the smallest box.  One of the samurai suits was the most elaborate ones I had ever seen.  They also had one with feather plums on the helmet!  It was the most suits of armor ...

When I was in Tokyo, I actually ended up going to Senso-Ji Temple twice!  I went on Friday (right before my rain soaked visit to the Edo-Tokyo museum ).  Then after doing a walking tour with some of my coworkers, two of us ended up back at Senso-Ji on Saturday. What a cool temple!  First, it is really in the middle of the city.  It goes from bustling city to a sacred (but still very bustling) temple.  The shrine was crazy busy in the rain, and also crazy busy on the weekend (obviously).   PS I love this photo! On my second visit, Chariti and I were actually approached by five university students who wanted to practice their English.  They were part of their university's English club who occasionally goes to the temple to practice.   It was great because I was able to get all my questions answered from the day before...including where the sandals of the gods were.  As you can see in the picture below, I am not sure why I could ...

After the shrine, I walked to the Edo Tokyo Museum .   I had contemplated getting a cab, but unfortunately due to the rain, I could not find one.  I was soaked by the time I arrived...and cold (as you can see with the fogged up glasses).   I start with this as a preamble because I am very sure this impacted my view of this museum.   This museum focuses on the history of Tokyo; it started with when Tokyo was known as Edo .  It has been the third capital of Japan and has held that role since 1603.   You start at the top of the museum and work your way down.  The museum is fantastic for children as it is quite hand's on and full of interactive displays.  It starts out with large scale replicas of different buildings from different periods within Tokyo.  One was a theater, Nakamuraza.  Inside the theater, you could see a replica of a play with life-sized actors.   They also have a number of smaller scale models.  Th...