Museums-Aquarium-Flowers

This week we went to the Okinawa Prefectural Museum and Art Museum one day. It was an amazing museum. The part I loved the most was that the inside was huge and all white and had awesome lights. Also, you walked into the entrance of the museum and it was sort of like a beach/ocean theme. The floor was see through and you look down and it was a replica of the ocean life. The whole thing was really interesting learning about the culture and the history. They also had an art museum which was pretty small but it had some very interesting art. I think we were all taken for a second at the wall filled with giant pictures of half naked/naked men, kind of shocking for a sec. That took us a good part of the day to go through and we were tired at the end of all the browsing.

The following day we all got up early in order to head up north to the one a waited event of the Ocean Expo Park. I've been waiting to go to this since I got here. We started with the Churami (beautiful ocean) Aquarium. It is the second largest in the world. It was AWESOME! I enjoyed how it was set up in that you start at the top of the ocean and worked your way down to the deepest part of the ocean. I loved it all, and it was neat to recognize fish that I've seen snorkeling. We exited the main aquarium to make it in time to go see a couple of dolphin shows. They were too very neat in how high they can jump. They also would play eisa music and the dolphins would chatter as the whistles to the music. After we finished the aquarium it was late in the afternoon so we walked through the park to the other side where the Dream Center was located.

The Dream Center was a giant garden and green houses that you got to walk through. When you first walk in the entry way ceiling is done in stained glass which look beautiful. Then we just followed the route through the green houses, collecting stamps of the main displays. Over here it seems that everywhere you go there is some sort of stamp collection to do for the kids, but I end up doing them usually. It basically is a piece of paper, you find the stamp ink it and then stamp your page in the correct area. I think they are neat so i have a stamp for about every place we go. We went into the first green house and it was gorgeous. There was TONS of orchids all over the place. I knew this was definiately going to be right up my alley. Orchids were the main attraction but then they had a green house that contained different types of fruit plants. They had some very interesting plants and fruits I had never heard about before. So as we moved on through we got to the observatory, which is the giant spiral tower. You could take an elevator to the top and the view from the top was spectacular. you could see everything. The picture of the view is from the tower and there is an island in the background which is Ie Island. We then ventured our way out to the end of the center and eventually found our way back to our car.

For dinner we had a choice, 1) Pizza in the Sky or 2) go home and find something else to eat because it was going to be getting dark and we wouldn't get to see the view at the pizza in the sky restaurant by the time we found it. But I ended up convincing everyone to do the Pizza in the Sky. We did manage to find it and have amazing pizza. There isn't really a menu to chose what pizza you want, it is just what the pizza is for the day. We had some sort of sausage and ham and corn pizza. It was delicious. So you might be wondering what the in the sky is all about. It is what American's basically call every restaurant that has amazing views. We got to watch the sun set from on top of a really high mountain. It was a beautiful view. We finished up our two pizzas, salad, sake and tea and headed back home.