As we were getting ready to leave the gym, Jacob mentioned that his ankle was really bothering him again. It was starting to swell up again. He said that he had stepped on someone's foot while he was playing but his foot stayed upright and didn't hurt, but otherwise he couldn't pinpoint a moment that might have irritated it. He already had a teammate with a bad sprain that was getting treatment from an athletic trainer (at least they had one for this tournament!), and Jacob came right after him to get ice and get it wrapped. Instead of taping it the trainer just gave him an ice wrap which ended up being really uncomfortable, so he took it off almost as soon as he was in the car, though he continued to ice it. He was pretty upset that it was bothering him again, and I was now slightly panicked because I knew this wouldn't bode well for the things we had vowed to do, no matter what, on Sunday after his game. The only two things I really wanted to do on this trip, the ones I had given up Friday to do the college tour. UGH.
Before we could even get to that, the first order of business was grabbing some lunch. At that moment, we had forgotten it was Easter Sunday (waaahh) and the first place we tried, Jersey Mike's, was closed. We had already eaten at Chipotle too many times so we didn't even check there, and we had just done Firehouse, too. I internally panicked a bit that we wouldn't find anywhere that was open. We went back to the main strip by our hotel to see if we could find anything else, and in the end there was a Five Guys that was open. I was barely even hungry after a big hotel breakfast and definitely not wanting a burger, so I just got Jacob a lettuce-wrapped hot dog (you should have seen the look they gave me--yet the idea came from the Albany location we went to in October, so...?). It felt pretty pathetic when we should have been eating a feast of ham, pierogies, and fancy jello, but it was all we could do to get him fed and move on to our other activities, regardless of what those might look like now that he was hobbled again.
We finally got downtown in the early afternoon, later than I'd hoped but well within what we needed to make things work. Unfortunately, we happened to hit traffic going to the Oklahoma City Thunder NBA game at 3pm. Of course. That only ended up being maybe 10 extra minutes, fortunately, but we did get this view of the tallest skyscraper in the city while we were waiting. For reference, it's 200 feet taller than the big tower across from Oral Roberts, but 10 stories less. Go figure.
We also got to see a really cool botanical garden downtown that I had seen on maps and looked into in case I was on my own for this outing. Had I been alone I definitely would have checked it out, but it clearly wasn't happening this time. The park was hoppin' with the nice weather and the game, though. Eventually we drove past the worst of the traffic and found a parking lot right next door to the art museum. I went to pay for our ticket and as I came back to the car, Jacob got out of the car and could barely walk. I looked at him in disbelief and was like, "Were you going to tell me you couldn't walk?" He said he didn't realize it until then, but I feel like he had to have an inkling. I tried to explain that had I known that, maybe we could have figured something out, like waiting until closer to hotel check-in time and letting him wait there, or something along those lines. I hadn't wanted to wait until 3pm since the museum closed at 5, but had I known it was that bad, we certainly could have. Now he left me no choice but to either skip the only goals I had for this trip or drag him through them unwillingly and in pain.
Call me a terrible mom if you will, but I had to do this stuff. If I was getting on the plane home knowing I never saw the Chihuly stuff, it would have just crushed my soul. I was missing Easter for this, and my one consolation was that I'd get to check this one thing off my bucket list, and to take that away really would have crushed me. I offered up to Jacob multiple opportunities to just sit and wait somewhere in the museum, but he didn't "trust" me to not take forever, so he preferred to make himself miserable following me around. I can guarantee you that if I was on my own I would have still been hurrying to try to get back to him, but apparently something about how our Disney trip went (?) made him assume otherwise. In the end the first picture and last picture I took in the museum were 31 minutes apart. So if that doesn't show that I was trying amidst a sea of Chihulys, I don't know what does.
We slowly made our way toward the museum entrance, and these extra happy tulips were on the way.
I feel like I see a ton of tulip varieties at Highland Park each year, but these were amazing!
The lobby of the museum features this incredible, super tall Chihuly. This is the object shown in the picture I pinned on my Pinterest board...and there it was!
The colors were fun up close.
The first thing inside was the Chihuly exhibit, which I guess was a special one commemorating the 20th anniversary of when they first had a Chihuly exhibit at the museum and ended up buying the pieces to keep. I don't really have a concept of what was owned and what might be new, but there was a whole special gallery section for it.
First up were some "Seal Pups". They looked a bit like funny balloons to me.
I have a greater appreciation for the southwestern blanket pieces after studying them a bit more at Corning. They're still not my favorite visually, but the intricate designs that are all glass (not paint, despite how they might appear), are amazing.
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| This one looked like a vase with a hole in the middle. I can't imagine being brave enough to put flowers in there! |
There were a couple sets like this. They were bigger than they look, as the bigger ones were probably a couple feet across.
This collection was pretty impressive. I'm not sure I'd seen many of these in person before, but I think I saw similar ones in the Chihuly wall calendar.
These were even more interesting, almost like giant perfume bottles with funky bird stoppers.
I have been in love with Macchia after seeing a similarly colorful display in Pittsburgh, nestled among the plants in the center of a brick-lined greenhouse. This wasn't quite as interesting, but maybe the best display of them that's I'd seen since.
This collection of orange bowls was striking. Looking back, I may have seen the same (or similar ones) in Toronto.
I saw some of these in person in Toronto, but I mostly remember one being featured in the Chihuly wall calendar once and I loved it. They're like cylindrical vases but with large chunks of glass on the outside.
Across the way from those was one of my favorite Chihuly things--a Persian ceiling. The Persian ceiling I saw at the Albright-Knox in Buffalo in 1997 was what completely sucked me into Chihuly fandom. It was incredible. I could have stayed here for a half hour alone, but instead, I had to make it quick. This was my view from inside the room of my disgruntled viewing partner walking past me while I stopped, hoping I would follow him and keep moving.
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| Note the scale of the giant vases and flowers behind him |
Here's what it looked like in the other direction.
A picture of one of these from the one I saw in Tacoma has been the photo on my customized credit card for years, and we saw one in Toronto as well.
I should add here that we were pretty much the only people in the exhibit at the time, and we had a security guard oh-so-casually but very obviously following us through the entire exhibit. I suppose they need to make sure no one's going to make off with the art, and with only two people to watch, I guess it was harder to make it less obvious we were being watched. When Jacob walked off to the next room in the picture above, he totally followed Jacob and left me behind. Oy.
There was room after room of pretty pieces.
And then there was this...another one of my favorite setups, and probably my favorite version of it:
The first boat I remember seeing was in Pittsburgh, but it just had a bunch of the round Floats in it. It was so pretty in the middle of a fountain, though. I loved the ones I saw in Toronto and at the Biltmore that were more similar to this, but this one was just so fun and colorful! The pieces were way more random and varied.
I told Jacob I wanted to see the rest of the museum quickly while we were there because there were some interesting pieces listed online. It turned out a bunch of them were not on display, but it was worth the walk...to me anyway.
This one commemorated the Oklahoma City bombing, which we'd be heading toward shortly.
This was part of an exhibit of similar paintings of historical figures. I figured I should capture this one of Abraham Lincoln, Rochester's own Frederick Douglass, and John Brown.
The Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester does stuff like this, juxtaposing classic old portraits with funky modern ones.
There was this odd exhibit of doors that I think were photos but almost looked projected and three dimensional, and somewhere as we wound through it, this projection was a moving video on the floor...of two people cuddling in bed. A little weird even for my tastes!
In this one, the woman was looking at the Monet wearing a Monet-themed jacket.
I laughed a little because the exhibit had a couple Gauguin examples as well, which hearkened back to another art gallery fail moment. When we went to Washington DC in 1988, my mom's boss told us to go see the Gauguin exhibit at the National Gallery of Art, and it was...not our style. We saw a celebrity and someone in a weird hat, but the art was...different. I've come to appreciate him more in the last 35 years, but seeing Gauguins here in the midst of a challenging gallery visit reminded me of that.
I am a big fan of modern art, and this wing had some good ones.
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| That one on the right looked like rippled glass and it was so pretty up close. |
This one intrigued me because I remembered a piece from the Albright-Knox in Buffalo that I loved as a kid--I swear I have the postcard in my memory bin somewhere--and this seemed very similar. Sure enough, same artist! Google "victor vasarely albright-knox" if you want to see the other one.
I love weird abstract art. The colors and shapes are so fun, even if I feel like I could do something similar and not have it sell for a million dollars.
Outside this room was the "upstairs view" of the Chihuly.
And that was mostly it. I had to ask about one more Chihuly that was on the map, but essentially we were done. There was another little lobby area on the way that had this piece with the putti (like little cupids) on top...
And then there was this chandelier outside their in-house movie theater.
We headed outside. It was such a beautiful warm day, and spring had really sprung there. The area of the museum was full of amazing art deco architecture. Zoom in on this building across the way and you'll see it.
Another view of the tall one...
The outside of the gallery itself was really cool.
Here's the Chihuly window from outside. I've seen pictures at night and it looks amazing.
The building to the right (it says Municipal Building) is art deco, too, and had a fountain and sculpture out front. I wish we could have walked around more, but...well, you know.
A sculpture out front...
Jacob was miserable by this point. Apparently the half hour wasn't short enough for him, though I'm not sure anything would have been. But I still wanted to see the Oklahoma City bombing memorial, which was just a couple minutes away. We found free parking on the street (not without an extra circle of the block because there were people sleeping under a nearby gazebo in one spot), and Jacob reluctantly got out with me. This bench was on the sidewalk right near the stairs to head up into the memorial area.
This plaza was behind the building on the side opposite the one hit by the bomb. You can see that courthouse in the background of many of the bombing photos. That round area in the center existed at the time of the bombing.
This view looked out over the area where the building once stood. The building in the background is the memorial museum (which was also damaged).
This was probably the thing that stung the most as we walked. It was the grassy play area for the daycare where the children died.
As we came around through the first gate entrance, the one signifying the minute before the bombing, you could see one of the remaining walls.
The pond in the middle was very shallow. I wish I would have taken video of the space to really capture it, but you know...distracted by the incessant complaining.
Looking back at the 9:01 gate where we came in.
The chairs were moving but it admittedly it felt a little strange to think about sitting on one. There were smaller ones for the kids, and one of them was decorated for Easter. It was heartbreaking, but I have to imagine this space can be therapeutic for loved ones. It was really beautiful.
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| The names were inscribed on the front of the glass boxes and a little hard to see. Guessing there was a reason behind it, though. |
We walked back through the 9:03 gate at the far end. That one signified the start of the city's healing. This was off to the side beneath it. It was a place where people left things as part of the healing process. Most items have been removed but some remain and others have been added. I guess in the garden on the other side of this wall was a tree that survived the blast, and areas dedicated to the rescuers and children...but walking that far would have been subject to a protest.
This is the outside of the 9:03 gate across the street.
There's a statue there called "And Jesus Wept". It was on the site of a Catholic church that suffered severe damage.
It was so hard to fathom the devastation in that area back then. Here was this giant park-like area in the middle of a city that used to hold an entire building...one that was half destroyed by a giant truck bomb. Unfathomable. I was surprised how many other older buildings still appeared to have remained intact nearby.
We headed off to our hotel for the last night. I snagged a Holiday Inn Express near the airport for $80 that had amazing reviews. But when we walked in, I realized I had neglected to double check the bed type...because we had one King bed. Grrreaaat. I know Jacob was annoyed but he held off on giving me crap for it, thankfully. We threw a pillow in the middle of the bed and called it good. We'd be getting up early anyway. We opted for Easter dinner from Outback Steakhouse since we were missing good food at home, so Jacob had steak and I had a chicken sandwich and Caesar salad (and got to eat the entire loaf of bread myself). We sat on the bed to eat and watched some TV and YouTube videos. We had a pleasant night all things considered, even if it wasn't the good family time we'd have had at home. It was nice to get a break from the arguments, at least. The sunset was pretty that night.
The way home was generally uneventful. We were up just before 4, headed out just before 5 after figuring out what snacks to eat for breakfast and fitting all of the leftovers aside from three applesauce cups in our bags to take home. We grabbed a single gallon of gas to fill the rental car tank, and had an uneventful drop-off and shuttle ride.
...and even better was that they upgraded us so we could sit together! We got Comfort Plus seats which were more comfortable and had better snacks for the three-hour flight to New York City. Jacob got a nice view of Manhattan as we arrived. This was all I could get around him.
As we walked out from our gate at Laguardia, this was the view across the way - Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, and Arthur Ashe Stadium at the site of the U.S. Open.
I also spotted the far end of West Ridge Road near Kodak, with a view down the road, past the mall and all the way to the soccer dome that's past our house...so somewhere in my view were the trees around our house! Maybe someday I'll see the house given all the times we have planes directly overhead. We arrived to a very quiet Rochester airport, and Craig and Carter arrived as we were waiting for our gate-checked bags. It almost felt weird and foreign to be home, but I was very relieved (until I realized all of the cleanup and organizing I had waiting for me). We had spent the bulk of two weeks traveling, a trip I had been dreading/preparing for for months, and now it was over. Back to normalcy for a bit...and it was much needed.
