Knoxville (my hometown) is four hours away from Cincinnati. I’ve always heard people saying what a great place Cincinnati is. But I never did more than drive through (and that not often) until Labor Day weekend two years ago.
We had a particular reason for visiting that weekend–we wanted to see a very special exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center. We bought our tickets just about as soon as we heard about this exhibit and it was every bit as thrilling as we expected.
The Museum Center, which was undergoing extensive renovations at the time
This is a detail of the prior photo, which had a container of the Emperor’s disgusting fingernails.
Since we were in the museum, we decided to take a peek at another exhibit, which turned out to be even more of a thrill for this English major.
A FIRST FOLIO
Me with an actual First Folio of Shakespeare’s play. I assure you I was way more thrilled than I appeared. I would not have posed for a picture with just anything!
There were interactive aspects to this exhibit, as you can see!
After the Museum, we decided to do a little sightseeing.
All of the above photos were taken in Fountain Square. The fountain itself is a Cincinnati icon, and is well-known to anyone who ever watched the opening credits of WKRP in Cincinnati (which was why John wanted to go there). Anyway, it is a beautiful landmark.
Whenever we visit a new place, we try to go to the Cathedral if there is one. Cincinnati has a beautiful one, Saint Peter in Chains.
Just across the street from the Cathedral is this magnificent edifice, the Plum Street Temple, one of only two Jewish temples of this style in the country and reminiscent of those destroyed in the Holocaust.
As you can see, we had a really full day. As was the next one, when we visited the Cincinnati Zoo, the second-oldest zoo in the United States and one of the best in the country.
Like cathedrals, we make it a point to visit zoos wherever we go. And we take them seriously, trying to make sure we see every exhibit. We saw every animal in this enormous zoo, and it took us EIGHT HOURS. The photos below represent only a very small sample.
This and the one below is a condor, which we only saw from far away–but just look at that wingspan!
This sign is the introduction to the nocturnal animal exhibit–considerate for the animals, but difficult for observers!
The tribute to passenger pigeons made us all sad.
At the insect exhibit
And that was the end of our short but very busy visit to Cincinnati. Have you ever been there?
