Science Museum of Virginia

Now that I have a full-time job with a regular schedule, I only work one Saturday each month. That means we have time on the weekends to do fun things like go to Richmond to the Science Museum of Virginia!!

Richmond is 50 miles from Fredericksburg and we can take Interstate the whole way, so it doesn't take long at all to get there and it is no problem to go down for the day.  It is pretty great to be located in between Washington, D.C. and Richmond, it gives us a TON of things to do!

The Science Museum of Virginia is housed in the old Union Station, a building that is on the National Registry of Historic Buildings.  It is beautiful inside and out and the exhibits in the museum had us all marveling at the wonders of science and nature.

As soon as we walked in the door we were greeted by an enormous example of a Foucault Pendulum.  That really impressed the girls!

The pendulum hanging from the dome at the museum's entrance.
This photo is taken from a higher floor.

Playing with physics experiments...

It was a lot of fun to see bugs and butterflies under a microscope, to see their furry legs and (kind-of scary looking) mouths.

The grown-ups had as much fun exploring
as the kids!

Mostly, the girls led the way and jumped from one thing to another, free to explore.  Every once in a while I tried to turn something into a teachable moment...

Here I am explaining to Anja that what she just saw in the microscope was dandelion fuzz ("you know, Anja, that stuff that you blow and make a wish")...

And here she is saying "I know, Mom" and running off to the next thing she wants to see...

Astronaut Elise!

Imagining life on the space station.

The variety of displays at this museum was fantastic.  We got to explore and find out about healthy foods...

Anja gets to see how her balance is...

Checking out how our joints move...

This machine scanned an x-ray of a human body and explained how it all works...

We watched Rat Basketball (rats trained to put a mini-basketball into a mini-basketball hoop) then learned a bit about rats (even in captivity, they only live 2- 2 1/2 years) and got to pet them.

The animatronic triceratops was VERY cool...

Probably the part of the museum the girls liked best was the Live Animal Lab, where there were tarantulas, amphibians, snakes, and other reptiles.  These girls have been fans of snakes for years!

An Evening in Richmond with David Sedaris

Last weekend Jason and I brought the girls to mom and dad's and headed south to Richmond for an overnight date.  The girls were happy to spend time at grandma and grandpa's, I think grandma and grandpa were happy to spend time with the girls, and Jason and I were happy to spend time alone.  Everyone was happy; it was a win-win situation!

What initiated this weekend away was when I heard David Sedaris was going to be in Richmond.  He is one of my favorite authors; he is a humorist who writes short stories and essays.  He is one of the funniest writers I know, and very entertaining in a live performance where he reads his work.  I had seen him in Fargo about a year ago, before we left Minnesota, and during that reading I laughed so hard I cried.  He is not for everyone, he can be bawdy, crass, and is definitely not politically correct.  I'm not sure what it says about me that I find him so funny.  I am not alone, though; he is a New York Times bestselling author, so lots of people must feel like I do. 

I got tickets months ago for his performance, and even though Richmond is only 50 miles from Fredericksburg, Jason and I decided to spend the night there rather than drive back home late and tired.  I had not been to Richmond and Jason had only been there a couple of times to visit friends, so this was the first time either of us had explored the city in any way.  We went to Carytown, a neighborhood centered on Cary Street in Richmond, which has lots of boutiques, vintage clothing stores and restaurants.  A fun section of town, but Jason and I agreed it was kind of a weird mix of businesses. 

 It was fun to walk around and explore, though, and we found a restaurant there called Can Can, which had been recommended to us, and we made a reservation for dinner that evening.  

After checking into our hotel, we went back to Can Can for dinner.  The restaurant is French, with a very cool interior that looks like the 1920s or 1930s with a pressed tin ceiling, dark wood trim and brass railings.  The food was excellent, definitely the best meal I've had since our trip to New Orleans in May, possibly even before that.  After our food arrived I realized that Jason and I hadn't exchanged a word since we had started eating -- the sign of a most excellent meal!  Jason had Hangar Steak with au gratin potatoes (I sampled Jason's meal -- all au gratin potatoes will pale in comparison from now on); I had pan fried Rockfish (to DIE for!) and the side of barley and veggies was nearly as good as the fish.

After dinner we headed to the Landmark Theater to see Sedaris. 

You can even see me in this picture, at the lower right
hand corner, in a white jacket.  Thanks for taking the
picture, Jason!

We waited for the doors to open and were one of the first in line to get a book signed (I have all of his books and some of them on audio as well).  On the way into the theater we had been given a flyer detailing some restoration that was going on at the theater.  While waiting to get the book signed I asked an usher standing nearby about the history of the theater.  She told me it was originally a mosque, built in the 1930s.  I was very surprised to hear that Richmond had a large enough Muslim community in the 1930s to build a large mosque.  Next, I asked when it became a theater.  The usher said she wasn't sure, but said it must have been when the Muslim community had gotten smaller that someone else had taken over the building.  Looking around at the tile patterns on the walls, the décor definitely looked like it could have been in a mosque.  After I got my book signed, we walked up to our seats and I was surprised to see murals depicting people with camels in desert scenes.  I knew the depiction of the human form is banned in some Muslim sects and felt it highly surprising that these murals would be in a mosque.  I thought maybe they had been added after the building had ceased to be a mosque.

When we got into the theater, we looked around and admired the architecture and décor.  Beautiful geometric patterns in the tile work, a ceiling that looked like a mosaic but was metallic leaf.  As we looked around, Jason and I talked about how it seemed that the theater was part of the original construction because all the architecture and décor was seamless.  But we wondered about having a theater in a mosque.  That was unusual, wasn't it?  Bring out the smartphone!!  Turns out the building was never a mosque, it was a theater built in the Moorish Revival style in the 1920s.  Aha!  It all made sense then.  The usher had her history wrong.  Very wrong.  You can read more about the history of the Landmark Theater here.

With not having to worry about driving home late at night, we could totally relax and enjoy our evening, and we did.  Two huge thumbs up for Carytown, Can Can, and David Sedaris!