I thought the first place we visited, the San Diego Museum
of Man, was a church. It has a tall ornately decorated spire that stands next
to a blue and gold painted dome. Bells chime the quarter hours from the spire,
and provide a carillon concert every day at noon. The so-called California
Building was never intended to be a church, although it was modeled on one when
it was built as part of the Panama-California Exposition in 1915. It even has a
chapel.
Mayan stela, or stone monuments, from Central America were
reproduced in plaster for the ground floor exhibit, where their intricately
carved faces, animals and decorations tell stories of gods and royalty. In a
rather incongruous juxtaposition, they stand next to a display all about beer,
from its earliest days in Chinese and Egyptian history to the present-day
artisanal beers. They even offer tasting
events after hours – so drop in closer to St Paddy’s Day if you’re interested!
Man’s evolution from the apes makes up part of the second
floor exhibits, as well as a section on the aboriginal peoples of Southern
California, called the Kumeyaay (coo-me-yi), and one on ancient Egypt, complete
with mummified human remains.
We declined the opportunity to spend an extra $15 each to
visit the temporary exhibit, entitled Instruments of Torture. We laughed when we read the brochure entry
immediately following the description of that exhibit. It said: “Ask about weddings in the chapel.”
The weather was perfect for the picnic lunch we brought, so
we found a shady spot and ate while we watched tour groups, school kids,
joggers and mothers with strollers enjoying the sunshine.
The Museum of Natural History, further along the park’s
promenade, had a wonderful dinosaur display with question-and-answer panels to
help visitors understand what dinosaur skeletons can tell us, and how they
became extinct. We rested our feet in the theatre as we watched two 3-D movies
about dinosaurs and animals of the Ice Age.
The Reuben H. Fleet Science Center was our last stop. Kids must love this museum! It has gadgets,
levers, knobs, ropes and all kinds of hands-on displays to learn about magnets,
optical illusions, gravity, tornadoes and much more. There was an IMAX movie about coral reefs as
well.
Val was fascinated by the display about UAVs – unmanned aerial
vehicles, or drones. There were a couple
of demo units, and we watched one, the size of a large pizza box, hovering
above the ground and flitting around at the command of the operator. Using a drone
instead of a helicopter to provide traffic reports is one example of the
economies they offer. I won’t hold my
breath for a pizza delivery mode, however.
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