Rau!

This is about an art exhibit that I went to see some time ago, considering the items on the exhibit were sold after the tour was over, I'm not sure it's worth your time, but it's worth mine to write it

I visited the Rau exhibit at the Tennessee Museum in Nashville, on its almost last day here in the U.S. The exhibit was named for the man who had collected these works for his personal collection over the past 30 years. The subtitle was six Centuries with the European Masters. Some of the highlights were a Portrait of a Young woman by Bernardino Luini, who's work is often mistook for DaVinci's, as this painting once was. Saint Domino in Prayer, by El Greco, David Decapitating Goliath by Guido Reni, Woman with a Rose by Auguste Renoir, which I seem to remember copying in art class in highschool, Several works by Claude Monet and by Camille Pissarro, Woman with a Black Hat by Edouard Manet, as well as self portraits by Edgar Degas and Edouard Vuillard. My husband and I had a good time, though the exhibit was fairly packed because this was the next to last day of exhibit. The paintings were very intersting to look at, and Jake had to conceed that he liked the impressionists' work more than he thought he would. I liked seeing the art like this becuase experience is a better teacher than a textbook, and also, it's hard to study a painting by a photograph, because you can't really see the paint.

I haven't had much opportunity to examine paintings. Nashville doesn't have a lot in the way of museums, but this collection was a solid lesson in art history, and I greatly appreciated the opportunity to see these works.

Meersburg

Meersburg is a small town on the shores of the Bodensee, also known as Lake Constance. It's a beautiful and quaint little lakeside town, and our hotel was right next to the coast. After we got settled in our little room, we walked along between the lake and the many restaurants there, trying to decide what to eat. We finally settled on a little pizza place which was attached to our hotel, the Hotel Seehoff, which was cheap and perfectly located, by the way. Well, we ordered a salami and pepperoni pizza, but when they brought it to us there was no pepperoni at all, just thick cut salami and these long green peppers. That is how we discovered that in Germany, those peppers were pepperoni, and as far as I can tell they don't have what we know as pepperoni in America.

In the morning, we both woke up about 4am, because we were still getting used to the German time zone. So we got up and walked out on a little concrete barrier and watched it get lighter in Switzerland, and Austria, which also border the lake. Then we took a little walk around the town, as the shops began to open, though there were no tourists about. Finally we returned to our hotel for a standard German hotel breakfast. It consisted of rolls, meat, cheese, coffee, tea, orange juice, cereal, and fruit. After we had eaten we climbed stairs though the trees, up to the second level road, where the Altes Schloss Meersburg (old meersburg castle) was located. This castle is an old (628 a.d.) defensive castle, made of heavy stone, with thick walls. It has lots of medieval style armor, weapons, and furniture. It also has a couple of neat features. There is a rookery for the falcons, there was a tunnel that was once dug down to the lake to sneak supplies in during a siege, which was latter converted to a "put 'em there and leave them" dungeon, and in the towers, there are pieces of the floor which lift up to reveal the stairs downward. I assume this is also defensive, but really have no idea. It's very much a medieval, Camelot style castle, and the fee to get in was only a few Euros, if I remember right. After we had explored the castle, we took the long way back down to our car, along the sunny cobbled street. We bought an ice cream cone, and got back to our car, ready for the next part of our trip. The town is adorable, and the castle's very nice, and has a different feel than many of the other castles we visited here, and though there are some towns which draw more tourism along the coast of the Bodensee, this one has all you could want, with maybe a few less people. I would give this place an A

Diamond Caverns

Diamond Caverns are located within the Mammoth Cave National Park, but they are privately owned. My husband and I have been to a lot of caves, including Mammoth Caves, Lincoln Caverns, Cumberland Caverns, Kentucky Caverns, Ruby Falls, the Lost Sea, and probably more. This one struck me as pretty interesting as far as private caves go. It was a very wet cave, and had something we hadn't seen before: a honeycomb like rock, which we were told was created when pyrite was eaten out of the rock by sulfuric acid, which was formed when carbonic acid came into contact with the rock. The carbonic acid would be created by the limestone I believe. I think that's pretty interesting. Our guide was freindly, but didn't exactly seem to like his job. There was also a nice gift shop, with leaves dipped in silver and gold for christmas ornaments. We bought one of those, to go with a similar one we have, of an aspen leaf we got at Rocky Mountain National Park. Ultimately, this cave, as is any cave, is a good way to spend a winter day. I would give it a B.

Lancaster County

Today I'd like to talk about Lancaster County Pennsylvannia. There is a large number of amish and menonite people living in this religion. I found this area to be very fun and enjoyable. First, let me say we had some wonderful home cooking at the Bird in Hand Restaurant in the town Bird in Hand. We finished off our meal with shoo fly pie, which was great. I think is best described as an apple pie without the apples, and extra cinammon. Then we went on Aaron and Jessica's buggy rides, which was interesting. In one way, I was disappointed, because I was hopping to ride in one of the small enclosed buggies that you see so often. Instead, several of us rode in a more wagon like rectangular buggy, that was roofed, but mostly open air. However, this was made up for by the man who drove the buggy. He was an amish man whose name was Meno, I believe. I had not expected this, as I was aware the the amish are somewhat private people, and I did not really expect to find an amish person involved with a tourist operation. He told us that the Amish generally didn't like to have their pictures taken, and to keep an eye out for road apples from the horses. We rode the buggy through the farmland, where houses all had laundry out to dry, and the air was clean, and the views nice, considering there were no power lines in the way. We stopped by one house where some children were selling souvenir horseshoes that had been brightly painted for only a few dollars each. After our nice little ride we headed up to the gift shops where I bought a book on the Amish, and my husband bought a shirt that proclaims " I love Intercourse" Intercourse being, of course, a nearby town. In the market area they also had bundles of dry flowers, and I would really have loved to take some home, I doubted they would make the trip all the way back to Tennessee in the car. Finally, as we left the area, we stopped by to get some home made root beer, in a glass bottle. It was more stout than the brands you can get at the store, but it was good and it was cold. A fun day can be spent here, especially if you enjoy riding around in the countryside. I'll give this area a B+.