Toledo Zoo and Museum of Art

In part 97* of our summer adventures, let me tell you about our trip to the Toledo Zoo and Art Museum!

At the Museum (which was free, by the way--how cool is that?!), we made sure to take a few minutes to ponder the excellence of the Dutch Masters (Rembrandt, I'm looking at you!)

*Not an accurate count

but our main reason for visiting was to see an exhibit called Playtime that had lots of interactive, kid-friendly exhibits. 

The piece de resistance of the collection was a piece called Harmonic Motion which was, get this, a gigantic hand-crocheted web that you could CLIMB ON!

(Pardon the terrible pictures!)

I wasn't sure if Nikolai would want to do it (he sometimes gets nervous about new experiences) but after only a moment of coaxing he climbed right in!

A view from up top:

You climb in through a series of layers punctuated by 2 foot holes. The first time it felt incredibly claustrophobic, but I quickly got used to it.

It was incredibly fun and actually surprisingly beautiful--the colorful layers overlapped each other in interesting ways and shifted as people climbed on it.  I was really glad we decided to stop in and try it!

After the museum we headed over to the zoo (what we had originally planned to do before we heard about the exhibit at the museum). We did all the usual stuff that I won't bore you with, but here's a few pictures of my silly and awesome family that I don't want to forget:

It was Nikolai's idea to take a picture in this, but once in it he didn't want to look at the camera!

In the aquarium, the light from the giant tank made rainbows on Miriam's face. It's hard to see here, but it made for a really lovely moment.

We rode the train around the Africa exhibit for the first time this visit, which was fun.

The best part was this sign though.

It's small, so here's what it said:

"Esteemed Safari Guests

You are entering a reserve of natural wildlife. 

Please do not throw or drop anything from the train

as the animals might eat of it."

(emphasis mine)

Sorry, but that linguistic strangeness really made my day.

And finally, here's a video of sweet Nikolai licking chip yumminess off his fingers while slowly falling asleep in the car on the way home: