One day, seven museums! Sounds crazy but that is what we did on our last day in San Diego. Balboa Park has within its borders fifteen museums as well as individual gardens, fine arts venues and the San Diego Zoo - all within walking distance. Well we were barely walking at the end of the day but were glad for our blitz from opening to closing time. Our first stop was the Mingei Museum, devoted to folk arts and crafts where we were introduced formally to 150 Meneki Neko, those iconic cats who raise a paw in greeting in most Japanese restaurants. From there we moved to the Timken Museum of Art and tried to aborb paintings by Van Dyck, Rubens and Toulous Lautrec but were captivated by a beautiful shepherd girl whose artist we'd never heard of. A haunting model of "Lucy" the prehistoric young link from tree dwelling primate to walking human gazed back at us in the Museum of Man and challenged us to consider the power of the exhibit on race we had just seen downstairs. The Spirit of St. Louis and lunar module of Apollo 9 demonstrated the drive for adventure in the Air and Space Museum while the Tucker, Packards and Ferrari's were featured in "The glitz and glam" exhibit in the Automotive Museum. We're not sure how much we'll remember in a month but had a lot of fun doing a taste test - although maybe not as much as had by the dozens of kids clamboring over the dinosaur models and pulling and pulling levers and knobs in the Science Museum on resident's free day.
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