May 02, 2016

Museum on a Free Day

We tried. We really tried.

 Today, SIL and I thought it a good idea to take our kids to the museum. After all, they’ve been to the beach, the mountains, they’ve hung around at home, and for the last day of their Easter break, we thought to break the routine and pack them off to a museum.

We chose the Silk Museum in Bsous. It is a museum in an old silk factory, and has actual live silk worms, which is interesting for kids, and they can see the looms in action.

But as we turned into the parking lot, which was empty, a gentleman came our way. “We’re not open yet for the season. We’ll open tomorrow”, he said apologetically.

That’s a good one; opening after the holidays.
 
Artist here
 

Fine. Okay. Well, than back to Beirut, to the Wonders of the Sea. It’s also a private museum that’s got a fantastic collection of beautiful shells, aquariums with sea anemones and clown fish and lots of other things that move. Great for kids.

As we turned into this parking lot, we noticed that, again, we were the only car there. And although the sign on the gate indicated that, logically speaking, the museum should have been open, it was in fact very much closed. We couldn’t get into the garden, and the shutters were lowered.
 
Very well then. There is still the Museum of Minerals. Shiny stones and rocks are on every child’s mind, and on mine as well. We’d gotten wiser though. How about we contact them first? Their Facebook page indicated that they reply to their messages within minutes. And indeed. No sorry, we’re closed today.
 

 
We finally ended up in the Sursock Museum. And although beautifully restored only last year, the collection is a bit austere.

When we got home, H. said to her father “We visited four museums today.”
He was quite impressed.
“But only one was open.”
“Oh.”

5 comments:

  1. You made my day. Amazingly well written. Very smart kid too. Thanks Sietske.

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  2. Mag ik vragen door wie het schilderij met de 3 ''Grieks achtig'' aandoende dames is?
    Bedankt voor je superinteressante blog, veel fijner om te volgen dan wat je in de reguliere media kunt lezen over Libanon en andere Arabische landen.

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  3. Ja en ik heb ook een vraagje. Zou je iets kunnen uitleggen over de soorten verf die in die schilderijen wordt gebruikt, en wat voor vef ze vroeger gebruikten. Verder ben ik ook nieuwsgierig naar die stenen vloer, is dat marmer. Is het inheemse marmer, of is die marmer via het Suez-kanaal in Beiroet gekomen. Graag iets meer uitleg.

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  4. This made me laugh. No matter how hard you try, the absurdities of life in Lebanon.

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  5. HI Mrs, I'm your student at ACS!! I am in the class 8.1!!

    ReplyDelete