Granada Science Park - part 1

Mateo's birthday wish was to go to the City or Art and Science in Valencia (or CAC as they say - Cuidad de Artes y Ciencias) but it's a 1200km round trip and this year, impossible to organise. He should have gone with school but it was cancelled - we're not sure why but we might as well say due to 'la crisis', which is what takes the blame for most things these days.

Anyway, he agreed he would 'make do' with the local science park in Granada. Ruy and Romy had both been here on their respective school trips and I think we were all expecting something aimed at younger children. But I'm glad to say we were very pleasantly surprised - and scientifically and artistically improved on our return. So good, I'm posting in two parts. This is our morning's activity.

Firstly, we took Darwin to visit a friend, who lives on the way to Granada. Despite the name, Darwin would probably not enjoy the science park very much and probably couldn't be trusted not to have a little chew on some of the many bones on display there.

We'd tried really hard to get up and off in good time and in the end, managed to get to the park by 11.00 - which was good as it didn't actually open til 11! We had it in our heads it opened at 10...so our inability to get out of bed when the alarm rang didn't matter at all. And we were one of the first into the park. It took us an age to actually enter the place as we were already impressed with the entrance and the water features and the domes that demonstrated the Coriolis effect - that swirly, cloudy effect you see round Jupiter. They were wonderful!.

My personal favourite was one of the special exhibitions called 'Títeres' which is the generic name in Spanish for puppets. The exhibition was celebrating 30 years in puppet theatry of a local company called 'Etcetera' and had the most fantastic selection of puppets on show together with workshops showing the making of puppets and films of the actual performances.

The photographs cannot do this exhibition justice, and I knew this as I snapped away but I couldn't resist trying to capture almost everything!

These were puppets made of light

This old man was incredibly lifelike as he played the violin

Part of  a 'Carnaval of the Animals' show

Absolutely amazing puppets..

- enormous, see FR infront of them! They were watching a puppet show!

We got to have a go at shadow puppet theatre

Not much of a story line to tell you though.

  

But lots of animation

More neon puppets

We couldn't drag Romy away.

Eventually, we had to so we could explore the Dinosaur exhibition. It was a blast from the past for me because I first saw these giants in the Natural History Museum around 18 or 20 years ago. I didn't have the  shock of seeing the animated models and hearing the roar of the T. Rex  as I did the first time - so much has changed in 20 years and we have become so much more accustomed to impressive visual and aural stimulus, but it was good to be reminded of the incredible size of the big dinosaurs - to stand next to one, looking up.

Did that dinosaur just move!

Watch out Romy - dinosaur feeding time!

Romy is not put off by the gorey bits.

Face down a T. Rex or run away...

More delights from the afternoon to follow. Doesn't do to try and take in too much information in one go, does it? Which is my excuse - in reality, I am absolutely exhausted from our busy day yesterday and must just go and lie down for a little while!