Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Cleveland Rocks

We met up with some cousins in Cleveland last weekend! We did not take the motor home as we are still working on the tire situation...more on that ordeal later. We did use up a couple of free nights we had at the Hyatt and had a great time sightseeing and hanging out with some cousins. We went to the Great Lakes Science Center and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday and the Cleveland Zoo on Sunday. We had been to the Rock Hall at New Years to see the Bruce Springsteen exhibit and wanted to return to see the Women Who Rock exhibit. Both were excellent...but I think I enjoyed Bruce a little bit more. The Women Who Rock exhibit has a lot of costumes, including Lady Gaga's meat dress, but doesn't go into a whole lot of detail about their careers and musical influences. Nevertheless, it was a beautiful day and good time was had by all! We snagged a passerby to take our picture in front of Johnny Cash's tour bus:

We also went to the Great Lakes Science Center to see the steamship William G. Mather. Here are the boys in front of the steamship:

We've been to lots of museums with the boys and this was our second trip to this one. It is an excellent museum to take your kids to. There are lots of different exhibits and you can touch everything!! The men serving as guides on the steamship were very knowledgeable, although not as knowledgeable as our own personal tour guide, Uncle Pete. By the end of our stay the tour guides were asking him questions! It was a great day that ended back at the hotel with swimming, pizza, board games and a Harry Potter movie marathon.

Sunday we spent at the Cleveland Zoo. Lots of fun, lots of walking, lots of cool animals. It is a beautiful zoo with a very nice new exhibit for the African Elephants. But perhaps the most interesting thing that I personally enjoyed the most was the live music. The African Elephant exhibit had an African Drum band playing, singing and dancing and the Australia pavilion had a trio playing songs from the Australian outback. It made for a very enjoyable afternoon! Here's a picture of my little dude feeding the lorikeets:

So, here's my very first tourist tip...go for the membership. I can't begin to add up how much money memberships have saved us over the years, and as a family of 5, memberships are usually only 20-30 dollars more than the price of a one day admission. I bought a membership to the Rock Hall in October when I was there for a girls' weekend. I used it for my admission twice that weekend and we've now been back twice as a family. We also have a membership to our local science museum and local zoo. We've used the science museum membership twice in Cleveland and also at 2 museums in Chicago in the last year. We got into the zoo on Sunday for ½ price. I'll be renewing memberships before we hit the road next summer.

Finally, one last picture of the Rock Hall, because it is such a cool building:

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