Terracotta Warriors in Indianapolis

After packing our bags and enjoying a full breakfast, we left the Sleep Inn around 9 am.  We continued to be impressed with our lodging.  I don’t know how we could beat it at around $65 per night.  We arrived at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis about 9:30 and parked in the free spaces at the garage across the street.  Admission to the museum is $20 but we got a 10% AAA discount.  Tickets for the Terracotta Army exhibit are an additional $10.  A family membership at the museum is $155 which would be a great deal for someone living nearby.  Our tickets for the Terracotta Army were for the first group at 11:45 so we had some time to walk through the other displays.  The first thing we saw was a massive 43 foot tall glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly that ended in a glass ceiling viewable from the lower level.  This Fireworks of Glass display was quite a spectacle.

A large water clock moved blue tinted water to track the minutes and hours.  Another display was the Dinosphere which is a live sized diorama with reconstructed dinosaur skeletons and plants of the time.  The domed ceiling had projections of the sky that simulate the passing of days and seasons.  One thing in particular that we noticed was that the museum was divided up into areas that would separate noisy groups of children. We also liked the Reuben Wells steam engine which is a locomotive that could push a load of rail cars up the 5.9% grade near Madison, Indiana that is the steepest railroad incline in the United States.  We found it amusing that the steepest rail grade in the US was in one of the flattest states!

When we entered the Terracotta Army display we saw about 6 of the excavated statues from China.  This is the first time that artifacts from the Terracotta Army than have been in the US.  There were many interactive touch screen displays that described the layout of the excavation and the history of how and why the soldiers were built and placed in the underground rooms.  Illustrations of work showed how up to 700,000 workers toiled for 30 years to build the soldiers, each of which has unique faces, uniforms and postures.  There were also clay horses that were constructed with the army.  We learned that the clay soldiers were originally painted with bright colors but that over the 2000 years since, the paint has degraded and flaked off.  It is believed that over 8,000 terracotta solders, 700 horses and many weapons, chariots and other artifacts are in buried in the Shaanxi province.

After leaving the exhibit on the terracotta warriors we walked around the museum a little then headed across the skywalk to the car in the parking garage across the street.  We had a lunch of peanut butter and crackers, fruit, jerky and corn nuts then drove the short distance to the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

The art museum has a huge collection of excellent art in their permanent collection that includes works by Picasso, Monet, Chagall, Matisse, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Renoir and many others.  There was a special exhibit of works by Georgia O’Keefe while we were there.  The art museum was huge and we hardly saw a small portion of it but we really wanted to see the gardens on the grounds of the huge property.  The Indianapolis Museum of Art is built on the property of the Lilly family and includes over 150 acres.  About a third of this is maintained as gardens.  

We walked around through many of the gardens and took some snapshots of some of the more interesting flowers.  We went into the greenhouse store and saw some of the plants for sale.  I would have purchased some succulents for my houseplant collections but I am not 100% certain that my problem with powdery mildew has been eliminated.

We left the garden area of the museum around 4 pm and headed toward Cincinnati.  We parked at the Gateway Garage (where we parked for Oktoberfest on Saturday) and met Sarah & Greg for dinner at Taste of Belgium in the Over the Rhine (OTR) area of Cincinnati.  We had meat croquettes as an appetizer that we all enjoyed.  Sarah had a chicken salad, Mary had a traditional crepe, Greg and I had the waffle and chicken.  I was a little apprehensive about it since the meal is roasted chicken coated in Texas Pete Hot Sauce served with a waffle covered in maple syrup.  I have to admit that it didn’t sound all that great but I trusted Greg’s recommendation and gave it a try.  It was actually very good.  The spicy chicken and the sweet waffle worked well together.

After dinner Greg needed to leave for choir practice so Sarah, Mary and I walked around OTR for a bit then stopped in a Graeter’s for ice cream which we all enjoyed.  We took Sarah home and picked up some LED light bulbs that she bought for us then headed for Georgetown, Kentucky to visit with Emily & Ian

On arriving at their Georgetown, Kentucky home, we visited with Emily & Ian for a short time before turning in for the night.  We woke around 6 am on Wednesday and set to work painting Ian’s “man cave” in Secret Meadow which is a hunter green color.  Before we could start the final green paint, we had to prime the walls to cover the claret red that the walls had been painted.  We used much of the leftover paint from the other rooms to put a good primer coat on all the walls.  The Behr paint covered well and looks good in the room.  I know Ian is anxious to get moved into the room and get it set up for his needs.  We finished painting around 6:30 and were pleased with the results.  Emily made an excellent auflauf for dinner that was a casserole of potatoes, carrots and cauliflower with a light sauce. 

Although we hated to eat and run, we needed to get started on the over two hour drive home so we headed out around 8 pm arriving home by 10:30.  We were very tired but had a great vacation and still got back in time to take care of some chores at home over the next few days of vacation.

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