Oakland Museum of California

This weekend, we got to visit the Oakland Museum of California. We had no idea a place like this existed and were glad it did!

This was a chance to be part of a group tour (lunch included) to be introduced to the museum with the museum docents. It was like a "behind the scenes" tour with some very knowledgeable people. Given Jr. and the Little One's recent rant on "why do we even need to study history", thought it would be a good idea to do this. 

This place really surprised us. Maybe because of the amount of information that we got from the docents.. maybe because we under estimated the amount of "action" that had happened in California over the last 500 years.. we still cannot put our finger on it. 

All we did was explore one eighth of one floor and even less than that of another floor over two hours. It was time for lunch and our drive back. In that two hours we learned a lot.

Here are some pictures of the exhibits.

 

 There were lots of interactive displays and the kids loved it.

This is the first time we have seen this gas dispenser among so many other firsts.. 

Jr. seems to have this as her signature pose these days, be it posing for Holi colors or Hollywoodland! 

 I was joking with the docent "we must have done something terrible to the grizzlies to have them on our flag" and she laughed. I told her "we cut down every oak tree in the area and call it Oak tree road. Kill every deer and shut off the creek and call it Deer Creek Road, decimate an entire tribe and name the local park after that tribe.." she nodded in approval! 

 

The second "science" floor had a lot of cool exhibits. But we spent 15 minutes there in the "bee" area. We had a busy weekend with lots of other things going on.. so we had to drive back (Okay, I had to do yoga for the day.. but we did have a lot of other stuff going on with the kids having class etc.)

We are definitely going back to this place to give it the time and attention it deserves. Apparently the third floor is a photo gallery! It was a bummer that I missed it. 

There are a few things learned :

1. The Indian tribes were amazing craftsmen when it came to making things with reeds. They could weave it so tight that they had water bottles made of reed! 

2. San Francisco was really built up with money from the Comstock Silver mining.. not the gold rush as I had thought. 

3. The peace sign actually came from the British and has to do with nuclear disarmament.. for a guy who is big on trivia, had got this one wrong!

4. California was actually named after a black queen Califa who appears in a book written in 1510 in Spain. (see one of the pictures above)! 

5. Paper sons! That should be a post in itself..

Strongly recommend the Oakland museum of California. Amazing displays. Great architecture. Well laid out. Especially with the docents telling us the details, it was wonderful!

Jr. tries to play the Veena

The next stop on our 2015 year end trip was to Suresh mama's house. Let posterity note that we stayed with them for days and did not make a flying visit!

As soon as we reached Suresh Mama's (uncles) house, the first thing Jr. saw was the nice Veena sitting in their family room. His mom plays the Veena and she let Jr. try it and was giving her a quick lesson. 

Jr. loved it so much that she asked to say there and play while we wanted to keep traveling. We had to pull her off the Veena.

By day 2, she got the hang of it and with more coaching from Amala paati she was able to play "Vara Veena" 

Now she wants us to buy her a Veena.

Guess nothing beats a Tanjavoor Veenai, to get a kid hooked to Carnatic music!

Ventura beach and Harbor Village

Stop four on our road trip was the Ventura beach and Harbor Village. The beach was very cold and given I like heat more than cold, we decided to walk along the beach facing the sun to see if that would help. 

It did to a limited extent.. Hope that my Vitamin D blood test due next week will pass with flying colors after all the sun we got last week.

The waves were tall and rough and there were not that many people around at noon.

we saw these baby Plowers on the beach.. they were moving so fast and well camouflaged in the sands and shadows.. it took me a lot of clicks to get this little guy. 

Then from nowhere this eagle comes down and takes some of these birds! Amazing how nature works!

 The kids had fun running around and climbing the little dunes. 

Then we went to the Channel Island visitor center. We have always wanted to go to Channel Islands park, but they require a lot of planning as the boat tours get booked months in advance. This time we stayed within walking distance of the starting point, but again, same result. No tours available. 

The visitor center is much hyped in the Ventura city website, but it did not live up to that hype. Compared to other visitor centers we have seen in National parks, this one is "okay". 

We proceeded to go to the Harbor Village. This was the real deal! Had lunch at a nice Italian place called Milano's. The food was great! After lunch we walked around the Harbor and took pictures.. the kids went on a paddle boat ride for an hour and that gave us a nice break for a high tea!

This family portrait was taken outside Milano's. 

They had the entire walkway nicely decorated with these lamps. We watched two guys patiently change the decoration for each lamp from Christmas greeting to New Year greeting. 

The paddle boat ride was starting to be a disaster. We watched another family struggle to even get out of the narrow path. The kids somehow managed to navigate through, and once they were out, they had a great time. 

They were very tired after the one hour paddling in the sun. 

 We stopped by for some last minute pictures in front of the murals on the way out. 

and it was time to say bye to Ventura and head towards Anaheim, as we had a date with Mickey the next morning! 

All of us loved the Harbor Village. It is a quieter less cluttered version of Sausalito and the people were sooo nice! Maybe it was the holiday spirit. Maybe the people in the Ventura harbor village are nice by default. Either way, we loved it!

They say it is 5 PM somewhere, for me it is 9 AM somewhere! So the blog takes a break! 

We pick up at stop 5.. later!

The Mission at Bonaventura

Third stop on year end trip.. which happened on day 2 morning was the Mission at Bonaventura. It is the number one tourist destination in Ventura. 

We also like to go see the Missions. Someday I will finish Photobloging all the Missions. We were talking about how 200 plus years ago Juniperro Serra managed to walk along the coast and set up a mission practically every 75 miles or so.. and he set up 20+ Missions along the coast.  

Then I reminded my kids of Adi Sankara.. who was born in Kaladi (they have been there) and went all the way to Kashmir by foot, establishing a Mission wherever he went,  around 1300 years ago!

A persons conviction and calling can make them do wonderful things! If you have never been to these missions, you should try to go see them. There is a lot of history in them, but more importantly, they are simple and elegant as places of worship. Not much of gold and dazzle.. mostly wood but there is a peace and serenity in these places that seeps in when you sit there and close your eyes. 

This mission is beautiful. 

 They have a little gift shop and there is a nominal fee to enter like all the other missions.

There is a museum with some of Juniperro Serra's artifacts. 

The wooden bells were intersting!

These beads reminded me of the Rudraksham, which is interesting. Most other rosaries I have seen are just smooth wood beads. This one was different.

There is a matching fountain inside the compound as well as three trees that were planted when the mission was started. They are still flourishing. 

Next year when we revisit San Diego, we will to go the one in Oceanside.. 

There are a lot of boards that explain how life was in this mission and the aquaduct that brought stable agriculture to this region starting from this mission. It was very interesting.

There was a baptism going on inside. We did not know if the bagpipe was part of that function or not, but we enjoyed it all the same!

He played for a good 10 minutes to entertain the crowd in the courtyard! 

The main sanctum was quiet. We sat there quietly for a good 20 minutes and I got a chance to meditate.

The priest showed the kids that one of the important relics in this Church was a piece of the Cross of Jesus. The little one was confused as the wood was not obviously visible but inside the metal. Think priests everywhere have a tough challenge when it comes to explaining things to kids! 

This is how it looks inside. The inside was dark, so placed the camera on the floor and did a 15 second exposure. Jr. was very impressed with my "skills" after seeing this photograph!

If you have a few hours to spare and happen to go by Ventura, strongly recommend the Bonaventura Mission. 

Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History

At first we were wondering if we will go see a museum because we were driving through a very residential neighborhood. Then, as promised by google maps, at the end of a normal looking residential street, was this cute museum!

There was a large whale skeleton that greeted us ...

The museum was a single story school looking building with different rooms allocated to different things. It was target to really young kids (aged <10 in our opinion) to introduce them to science concepts. They had a nice microscope which projected the images on a 52 inch TV. The kids just stayed put there and viewed rocks, snail sheels, anything and everything and watched the images. We had fun at that exhibit as well..

Here is Jr. after focussing on some grainy rock

They had one room dedicated to space and space related items.. the thing that caught our eye in this room was this meteor.

There was a large exhibit about archaeology and excavations that focussed on two things. The pygmy mammoth, which I did not know anything about till this trip, especially that they were found in this area 12,000 years ago, and the Indian tribes of the area that were opressed by the settlers. 

The kids were not happy after listening to how the natives were treated and are still feeling the after effects of those days.

The little one seemed to know all about it already because she had read this book about  a girl who had survived alone on the Channel island for 18 years in a book that was part of her school read! The conversation started and ended with "Appa, you don't know anything!". If there is one thing I actually do know by now, it is that I don't know anything. 

There was a beautiful cheat sheet, in case there is a time scale quiz! 

They had a cute Christmas tree with butterflies as ornaments. We loved it!

We spent less than 2 hours here, but the kids had a good time. There were smiles all around, a few new things learned and information tucked away for future use. 

This reminded us of the Kids discovery museum in Sausalito. 

It is indoors and the kids feel nice and warm and have fun doing science work! The exhibits are very nicely done and the explanations are very simple.

The staff was also very friendly and helpful and guided the kids through various activities. 

This place was small but made our day!

Strongly recommended, if you have kids under 10. This is a great place to visit in Santa Barbara.