Museum Hopper

I think I need to get started on these blog posts!  I am a bit behind now! Starting a little out fo order, but we really liked the visit to the Terreiro da Se in Porto!  It was the first thing we did in the morning when we woke up our first morning in Porto.  We walked the quick couple of blocks to the Se, cathedral of Porto.   We paid the couple of EUR for the visit into the museum.  The tile in the museum and around the courtyard was beautiful.   We spent a decent time in the church.  You walk in though and it's like WOW! This was one of so many! We headed upstairs too (you can see the railing in the picture above). Courtyard next to the Church A rare photo outside where my eyes aren't totally shut From the Church, we zigged and zagged down to the Duoro river to head over to some Port tastings.  This was one of the best examples of Portuguese tile we saw while in the country (that was really easy to ge...

After lunch, we headed to the American Sign Museum .  I had never been and I had heard good things.  The museum is over on the west side in the industrial area of town.  We have not been over there much.   We used our ArtsWave pass to get a "buy one, get one" tickets.  The museum is rather expensive.  It was $15 per ticket, which is more expensive than the Art Museum and just about as expensive as the Zoo.  It doesn't necessarily have the legacy of either of those institutions. We arrived around 2:30 and caught the last 30 minutes of the tour.  I do recommend trying to catch a tour.  Ironically the museum does not have great signage -- or at least, it has a lot of it.  That being said, it has a lot of individually labeling, but I liked the tour highlighted the key elements of the museum and tied it together.  The tour highlighted the macro trends in signage (who knew such a thing existed).  And given my reaction of "w...

Over Easter weekend, we spent a rainy Saturday visiting museums with my parents.  First, we headed to the Taft Museum of Art .  I figured we would start there while my husband was wrapping up his workout and he could meet up with us later. We started with the special exhibit, Winslow Homer to Georgia O'Keeffe: American Paintings from the Phillips Collection .  It had a beautiful set of paintings.  My mother was drawn to the Edward Hopper like a moth to a flame.  One of my favorites was this spring painting of Washington Park. This was one of our favorites as well.  The dramatic sea and storms are drawn with the broad brush strokes. On the trip, we had enough time to go through museum.  The rest of the museum is the house of the Taft family.  Like the Frick , the Taft family planned on converting the house into a museum.  The art is very livable.  It even has a Goya -- although they may not have known it was a Goya at the ti...

We went to the Newport Aquarium on a Sunday rainy afternoon with my husband, his sister and her almost two year old son!   I had not been in a while and we went about two hours before close.  It was just the right amount of time.   The aquarium is not cheap -- it is worth making sure that you are in the mood and can spend as much time as you need to there.  I think they charge since they are fairly restricted in how many people can be in there.  That being said, it feels like it is always crowded.   We followed the path.  Our nephew loved splashing in the water at the different exhibits where you could touch the animals.  It did remind me of the Finding Dory scene where all the animals hide!  The turtles were great and he loved seeing those.  He kept pointing out all the fish and their colors.  He seemed more engaged at the aquarium than at the zoo.  Perhaps the zoo warmed him up?  Or getting closer to ...

A few weeks ago, I finally went to the Cincinnati Zoo !  It was one of the first nice, non-rainy Saturdays in Cincinnati, so the entire city showed up at the zoo.  My sister-in-law and almost two-year-old nephew were here, so it just seemed like destiny. Unclear if we parked in a zoo lot, but our car was there when we got back, so that's good! We got there about 2.5 hrs before it closed, but there was still a line to get in.   I feel like we did end up covering most of the zoo.  I was a little surprised at how tight the zoo really was.  I guess after the Detroit Zoo with its vast acreage, anything seems small.  Some of the areas though seemed so small for some of the animals.  A number of the animals also did not appear to be out yet...hard to tell if it was still too cold or what it was.  Most of the big cats were not for example.   That being said, we really liked the giraffe exhibit.  We really liked how they put th...

A few weeks ago, I did a girls afternoon at the Cincinnati Art Museum to see the Paris 1900: City of Entertainment .   We had a delicious brunch at the cafe.   The Paris exhibit does require tickets, but the tickets are just for the day.  They do not require a time.  I was able to use my annual pass for my ticket -- all included! I really liked the exhibit.  It was in the back two rooms on the second floor.  The artifacts were grouped by themes and it was across a variety of mediums (if you will).  I liked seeing the jewelry and paintings and sculpture and clothes.   Aren't these paintings beautiful?  It's really hard to believe that at the time they were considered so groundbreaking.  The use of light in these three paintings was really radiant, in particular the middle one.  I love the landscape, too.  The blue in that painting is very rich.   Basically this photo is for my husba...

I happened to be in New York for a quick minute and I ran into Museum of Modern Art .  I wanted to revisit some of the classics.  MoMA felt like I had never left it other than the entrance moving to a different spot due to construction on the main entrance.   I headed in, got my ticket and headed up to the permanent collection. These are a few of my favorites.  In particular, I love the Van Gogh!   The Matisse is gorgeous.  The Monet is beautiful.  I continue to think it's a bit of a shame that they squish this collection into such a small physical space within the museum.   Times visited: 9 Time in museum: 45 minutes Overall: B+