Sunday 6 August 2006

Back To Cincinnati - Day 3 - A Full Day Of Fun

They were predicting that today would be hot and humid - not good weather to be outdoors. So we decided to head indoors and visit the Cincinnati Museum Center. We visited the museum back in March and had a wonderful time. However, the directions to the museum were wrong and Adam had to take a little detour.

After that visit, Adam emailed the museum about the directions. The museum sent out staff to check the directions and verified that the exit numbers were incorrect (this is the area where I-75 and I-70 meet in downtown Cincinnati - it is quite the spaghetti junction with exits numbered from 1A to 1H). Mary Todd Hardeman, Vice President for Development and External Affairs, offered to make our next trip to the museum "on the house". We decided to take them up on this offer.

On our previous visit to the museum, we only visited the Natural History & Science Museum and the Children's Museum. Our complimentary passes included all four components of the museum, including the Omnimax Theater and the Cincinnati History Museum. We chose the Cincinnati History Museum as our first stop. This museum includes a scale model of Cincinnati in the early 1900s. There running streetcars and trains - which Jeremy wanted to go on. There were lots of hands-on exhibits for the boys to try out. Exhibits include a replica of a steamboat and a restored streetcar - both of which you could enter and explore.

Next we had a quick lunch followed by a visit to the gift store. We made our way to the OMNIMAX Theater for a showing of Beavers. An OMNIMAX movie is projected onto a five-story 72-foot diameter, tilted domed screen. The screen is so big that you only focus on a portion of the screen. Beavers showed the evolution of two beavers and their ever expanding dam and lake. The imagery is amazing. Corbin enjoyed the movie - he sat in awe. Jeremy was a little cautious, but he did like the scene that involved a bear.

We spent the rest of the afternoon visiting the Natural History and Science and Children's Museums. When we decided to leave, Tina noted that we had spent over five hours at the museum. That was a mind-boggling number given that we had no major issues with either boy. We highly recommend the Cincinnati Museum Center as a place to visit if you are in the Cincinnati area.
A big thank you to Mary for the complimentary passes.

Tired, we headed out into the heat and humidity to the van and drove back - via a scenic route - to the hotel. Time for a swim and some food.

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