Day at the Museum

Saturday was a blast. It was just what we needed to take our mind off of the foundation for a day. Trent and I spent the day in Davenport. I wanted to see the Diana Exhibit, which is at the Putnam museum until January, and Trent wanted to see the 3D movie, Metallica: Through the Never, also playing at the Putnam. I myself was not too thrilled to see the Metallica movie, but since we were seeing the Diana exhibit, I figured I would go along for his thing, too. 

We got tickets for 1:00 to see the Diana exhibit, and those tickets also included all of the other galleries in the museum. It had been a while since either of us went through the museum, so after we saw the Diana exhibit, we went through the other galleries, too. Please excuse the quality of these photos, as I took them all on my phone!

The tiara was the first thing they had on display. I loved it - it was super sparkly!

I also really liked all of the jewels they had displayed, especially the diamond necklace below.

There was a really cool room where they played home videos stitched together and had a bunch of things from Diana's childhood, like stuffed animals, ballet slippers, one of her diaries, and family albums. I didn't get any photos of these, although it was cool to see. At the beginning of the exhibit, there was quite the crowd. It settled down after you went through the other rooms, but there were definitely a lot of people there to see it. Mostly older women. There were a couple really young girls, maybe with their grandma or something - one of them said, "Didn't she die like a really long time ago?".....I laughed.

Her wedding dress was really cool to see, though. The train is 25 feet long!

Then there was the room with 28 of her dresses on display. The black sparkly one below was one of my favorites, along with the two Versace dresses below.

There were a lot of these "coat dresses" too, which just feel like something a first lady (or a princess) would have worn in the eighties.

I thought the exhibit was really cool and well done. There was also a room dedicated to her charity work, and then at the end was a room dedicated to her death, with hundreds of books that people signed after her death with messages to her, and they also played scenes from her funeral and played the song "Candle in the Wind." Trent said that part was just depressing. Ha. It did seem a lot like a visitation or something. Anyway, I'm glad we got to see it. It was kind of a once in a lifetime kind of thing, and it's cool that it was right in our own backyard.

In the other exhibits, I just took photos of things I found kind of interesting..Trent and I thought the old documents from the founding of the cities around here were kind of cool, and funny.

They talked about how beautiful the land was around here and how there were so many resources, being right by the "Great river" and such.

Of course we had some fun exploring the river on a steamboat, and exploring the caves. :)

We were lucky that the rest of the galleries actually weren't that busy at all. Not a whole lot of kids running around..we maybe saw 2 or 3 families while we were in the other galleries. Nothing like the Diana exhibit. But we got to play around without embarrassing ourselves too much, which is always fun.

There was a huge art installation in one of the big lobby areas that I didn't expect to see, but it was really cool. It was made to look like a coral reef.

But it was actually all crocheted together. A huge, colorful crocheted coral reef. It must have taken a million years. It was crazy.

Here's the story below - sorry it's hard to read. But basically two sisters created it as an homage to coral reefs and saving these ecosystems. It's been displayed all over the world, including at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.

I just thought it was really cool. Maybe just because I love colorful things. :)

After we explored the museum, we had some down time until the Metallica movie at 6:00, so we decided to check out the new restaurant downtown called Me & Billy.

It was pretty good. We just got appetizers and drinks. I got mini grilled cheese sandwiches with Sangria, and Trent got mussels with some kind of crafty beer. 

The atmosphere was really cool. This is a horrible photo below, but it was really open and modern, and made you feel like you were in a big city like Chicago. I really liked the shiny white tile on the columns, and the bright green chandeliers near the entrance.

After dinner, we went to Brady St. Pub and hung out there until it was time for the movie. I was surprised at the amount of people who showed up to see Metallica in 3D. It was basically a 3D concert with a weird storyline that was happening at the same time.

The music was loud, and I don't really know a lot of Metallica songs. I was bored and felt like I was going to fall asleep most of the time. However, Trent loved it. We went back to Brady St. after the movie, hung out with Sean, and watched the UFC fights on tv. All in all, it was quite the day/night! So glad we finally got a break from reality.