Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Science Museum of Minnesota

The Science Museum is a wonderful place to spend pretty much an entire day. We were talking about going alot over the winter and decided the Dead Sea Scroll exhibit sounded pretty interesting so it was worth making a trip over there. After some further research we discovered that the cost of becoming a member was actually a good investment - it would save us money on the Dead Sea Scrolls, admission and Omnitheater tickets combined.

Members pretty much get free Omnitheater tickets and museum admission and then discounts on special exhibits, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and also parking and gift shop discounts as well. We joined under the dual person membership. $69 dollars gets us into the museum as many times as we want for an entire year.

So on Palm Sunday, we called my in-laws who also decided it would be fun to go and we decided to head over there for the afternoon. We left around noon and made it to the museum a little after 12:30. We had 1:00 Omnitheater tickets and 3:00 Dead Sea Scroll tickets. This ended up working out just about right.

The Omnitheater show was Arabia and it was really interesting. We saw a great deal of history of Saudi Arabia and how it got to where it is today in the oil industry. The music was awesome and made me want to eat indian food!

After the Omnitheater we only had about a half hour before we could go get in line for the Dead Sea Scrolls. My mother in law and sister in law were hungry, so we stopped for a snack and then had little time to play before getting in line. We got into the queue for the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Ok, I won't go into much detail about the Dead Sea Scrolls since it won't always be there - but I can say this, while I'm glad we went to see it, I'm not sure it was worth it. They took people in every 15 minutes, but there were so many artifacts and things to see that folks lingered a long time in each room, making it difficult to get through the entire exhibit. The scrolls themselves were incredible to see. At the end was also an exhibit on the St. John's Bible - now I have been very interested in seeing this illuminated bible - but I wasn't expecting it so it was hard to get in the right frame of mind for it. They either should have advertised it with this or not had it at all. Being that it was Palm Sunday I am wondering if this exhibit was even busier than it would be if we went back now. It is there through October. I don't think we'll go see it again though. Interesting, but time consuming.

By the time we finished the Dead Sea Scrolls it was pretty late in the day, we were hungry and tired, so we just wrapped it up and went home. I have seen many of the regular exhibits there before, but it has been quite some time, so I'd like to go back on a day that we could enjoy walking through some of those as well.

But, we're members now, so that wouldn't be hard to do! I'd like to go to the Big Backyard there this summer and play mini golf and also see as many of the different Omnitheater shows that come as possible. It's fun to have a museum like this in our town and fun for all ages!

Details:
Science Museum of MN
120 W. Kellogg Blvd.
St. Paul, MN 55102
(651) 221-9444
www.smm.org
info@smm.org

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Northstar Roller Girls

Greetings fun lovers of the Twin Cities Metro area! After a very long sabbatical the Fun Couple has returned! As the weather here continues to get nicer moving into spring we hope to have some more fun things to write about again!

A friend of some friends of ours is a member of the Northstar Rollergirls. Our friends have been asking us to go to a derby with them since last fall, but we weren't able to go to one until just a couple of weeks ago. We attended on February 20th and it was a blast!

The Northstar Rollergirls started out as the Twin Cities Roller Girls and had their matches out at Cheap Skate in Coon Rapids. As their league grew, they outgrew that space and moved downtown to the Minneapolis Convention Center. The league now consists of four teams: The Banger Sisters, Delta Delta Die, The Killmore Girls and the Violent Femmes.

On February 20th, the theme for the evening was Carnaval - we're guessing since it was somewhat close to Marti Gras. We opted for the general admission seating - it's cheaper and you have less of a chance of having a rollergirl end up in your lap. Plus, the trackside seating puts you pretty much sitting right on the floor. We were able to see just fine from our general seats up in the bleachers.

The night is structured as follows - 6:30 doors open and pregame entertainment takes place, 7:30 the match starts - two teams play a 20 minute bout, then the next two teams play a 20 minute bout. There's a 20 minute halftime then each set of teams return for another bout. The announcers explain how everything works before the bouts actually begin.

We were rooting for the Banger Sisters since our friend's friend is a member of that team. All four teams were very good and entertaining to watch. There's alot of action, it took me a few minutes to truly understand what was going on, but once I did, I really got into it! They do sell drinks (you have to get a wristband if you plan to drink alcohol, but the wristband is free) and snacks, but we decided they were kind of spendy and opted to go drink beer back at our house after the bout. Admission prices are not bad overall though and if you buy ahead of time online or at several ticket venues listed on their website it's a little bit cheaper.

We are planning to catch them again before their season is over, they have two more derbies coming up this spring. It's a great, high energy way to spend a Saturday evening!

Details:
Northstar Roller Girls
www.northstarrollergirls.com
Derby held at Minneapolis Convention Center
Price:
General Admission (Bleachers) $10 in advance/$12 at the door
Trackside (but be warned you'll be on the floor) $12 in advance/$14 at the door