Five, Six & Seven...

I have to admit, I'm tired. I am not used to biking every day so I am more tired in the evenings than I was thinking I'd be. So three days of our visit are going to be combined here. Let's start with July 4th.

On the fourth, most things are closed, because national holiday and all. One thing that was open was the movie theatre, and in the mornings, some of the area theaters have free showings of older movies that would have been new just a few months ago.  We ended up at the Brownsburg 8 Goodrich Quality Theatre. Brownsburg is a northwestern suburb of Indianapolis.  One of the interesting things I feel like is different about Cleveland to Indy is how it seems to get rural much quicker here than at home.  The suburbs they have are more of our exurbs. The novice city planner in me wonders how this all is, but nonetheless it is so.

We were able to see Ferdinand the movie. I am a big fan of the book, so I have to say the movie was much different than the book. But I don't think that it takes away from the book, its just a different story, they took the character of Ferdinand and made their own story about him, loosely related to what happened in the book.  It was cute, but somehow I feel like the whole Running of the Bulls and matadors get a very bad rap in it all. I'm not sure where to draw the line in what is art and what is cruelty, but somehow it doesn't feel right to completely disregard what is longstanding in their culture. I also don't know that much about the ins and outs of bullfighting, so I may be romanticizing something that could be not as glorious as it seems.  But even the bee in the new movie couldn't die when it stung Ferdinand, and that was a little over the top for me. It was full of laughs and the kids enjoyed the movie experience greatly.

That evening, the Eiteljorg Museum was free so we checked it out.  It is a museum about Native Americans and Western Art and Life.  I liked it more than the State Museum, only because you could interact with the displays and I think my kids enjoyed the specific children's area.  But I think it also maybe was more interesting to us because it was a broader topic and we had a little bit interest after coming off of reading the Indian in the Cupboard series during the school year.

A wigwam made of birch bark

A machine to represent manifest destiny: Told if you put in a quarter you will get a dollar. 

On the sixth day, the only new thing we did was check out the Indianapolis Children's Museum.  We had learned that on the first Thursday of the month, you could get $5 tickets for a 4 hour visit.  We got our tickets, and we knew it would be a big crowd, what we had forgotten about was with large crowds came a lot of traffic.  So getting there took an extra half hour.  But once inside we were good to go, having already purchased our tickets.  We checked out the exhibits and had some dinner.  My favorite part of what we saw was the Dinosaur exhibit, but there are still a lot more things to see and because of that we we got a year pass even though we will only be here 3 more weeks.  Many visits to come, I think.

Dinosaurs!

Turtle Hop Lava

On the seventh day, we biked to the Indianapolis Zoo.  I was thrown off by the price of the zoo.  Its about 3 times as much for a ticket to the zoo in Cleveland.  It is listed as a participating reciprocal zoo  program member, so I was thinking at it would be half price.  But it wasn't.  Instead it is a non-tax funded zoo and so it has some gimmicking pricing bits to it. They change the price of the zoo depending on the day and they want you to buy tickets online so they can guarantee a number of tickets sold. And though listed as a participating member in the reciprocal program, it only amounts to a $2 discount per ticket.  So for a family of 5 paying attendees, it was $94 to go.  Now the zoo is nice and well done, but I am definitely not going to be returning with my family anytime again during this month, simply because of the price.  A few exhibits were stunning including the underwater viewing tank of the dolphins and the walrus viewing.  The cheetahs were especially exciting to my boys.

Underwater Viewing Tunnel for the Dolphins

Walrus!

Earlier in the morning, I talked to a local resident and she recommended a shop called Amelia's.  It has giant cookies, other treats, a bit of other small assortments of things and bread. Lots of glorious artisan bread.  We bought a loaf of the city bread. It's delicious!  A bit sourdough like, but a good bread is so much better than what you get in a grocery store. And we got a cookie to share, which was large enough to split between the 6 of us.  And so ended our first week.

Previous adventure post here.

On a day that was our fourth day but was the 3rd of July

We started out the day with another bike ride, this time to the Indiana State Museum. We chose it because with our pass from a museum in Cleveland through the ASTC program you can get into it for free. And free with a 6 person family is a very good thing.  The museum was large, and I don't think we covered it all and will definitely have to return to do so.  It basically covers anything historical that happened in Indiana, whether that be people, animals, plants or technology, or geological. My favorite parts where probably the natural history parts where you walked through caves and saw fossils. Can you tell I'm a bit of a science nerd at heart?

A giant sloth!

The kids got a bit restless because they wanted more hands on things, so it was good when we found an LED throwing activity that they could take part in, and then there was the giant foam blocks to play with that were fun as well.

Throw an LED magnet!

Building with Blocks!

We ate lunch outside, even though it was hot, we found some shade and some more interactive bits, some climbing boulders on the side of the museum, which are part of the Watanabe Garden. The rocks made good places to sit and the bigger kids enjoyed climbing over them. Stella would have climbed too, but it wasn't the most friendly 1year old place, so she enjoyed wandering up and down the serpentine path. 

After a hot ride home, we rested. My favorite time of day. :) I then had the crew walk to the local library because they were having an Animal Show, from a local Safari animal place.  The kids loved it, so even though they were whiney about getting out again, it was well worth it in the end. Ben even volunteered, sometimes its fun not having a shy kid. 

I ended the day with a walk with my Lena-girl to the local yarn shop.  Any knitters out there?  It said it was 450ft from my house, so I kind of had to go.  And it was huge and the employees were friendly. I picked out some yarn to make a shrug and a pattern to boot because it was just what I was looking for. I do believe I will be back. 

Previous adventure post here.

On the third day...

On our third day in Indianapolis, we got an earlier start than I usually get with my kids.  I wanted to minimize being out in the heat but still wanted to explore the city on bikes. We set out about 8:45am on the Cultural Trail to downtown.  We are conveniently staying about a block from the bike path and so we are determined to use this amazing resource while here.  We headed towards downtown, about 1.5 miles from our house. Wow, is it a nice trail! I was thankful that Ben had gone on the trail the night before with his dad because we didn't all have new eyes to the area.  And Ben is amazing at remembering directions, I think at three he was able to direct my entire family to all the local sites within a few miles of our house. The trail had a few important turns along the way, so Ben for sure was useful.  It's a good note that this trail isn't for speed biking, but more of a way to explore and enjoy the city which made it perfect for my pace with 2 solo biking kiddos and 2 in the bike trailer behind me.

The city of Indianapolis via biking is beautiful! It seems to be kept clean and there are so many bike posts along the way. One interesting things is that this city has motorized scooters that you can rent throughout the city. Because they are GPS trackable, you are likely to see them littered throughout the city, but overall they are more good than bad and honestly, they eliminate car pollution, which I appreciate. I haven't figured out where they come from, but when I do, I'll let you know.

There are many sites accessible by bike including museums, the university IUPUI (the symmtery of the abbreviation astounds me) and the zoo! It was very enjoyable with the kids and I didn't feel overwhelmed taking them all out in this manner, a great feat in itself. We also stumbled upon the Canal Walk, but it feels like its more for walkers than bikers, at least not my bikers who are likely to end up in the very accessible water in the canals. My only thing I'd add is an outdoor play area for kids in the downtown, but I know this is not usual, just a bonus that some cities (cough cough, Cincy) have.

We checked out our local branch of the library after a rest break post lunch. Its very walkable from our location, and though small, seems to pack in resources for kids, a big plus for our family. 

Hope you stick around to see what is in store next. :)

Previous adventure post here.