A Week at the Lake: Day Trip to Rochester

We set out for Rochester after breakfast yesterday morning.  Sadly, LittleL.G. has been under the weather with a cold and both Daddy and I woke up feeling less than 100%.  But we weren't going to let that ruin our big day!

First stop, The Strong National Museum of Play.  Since having kids, I've heard it is THE museum to visit.  Oddly neither Daddy or I visited when we were in school in Rochester for so many years.

It certainly didn't disappoint.  The museum was huge!!- taking up an entire city block!  With lots of different areas to play, we didn't even see everything in the six hours we were there.  The only negative I have is that overall, it was dark and I didn't bring the right lens to take good low-light photos, so the evidence of our trip aren't quite the stunning pictures I'd hoped for.

Of course, our first and favorite play area for LittleL.G. was Sesame Street.  We started there and she and I would venture back whenever something else caught MiniM.E.'s interest and LittleL.G. got bored.

on the steps of Sesame Street

playing the pipes

counting Bert's pigeons

driving the monster taxi

putting on a show

 There were so many things to see and do it was hard to keep up with MiniM.E. as she explored everything.

flying a plane

 Another huge hit with both girls was the train ride:

on the train

fun with fairy tales

 LittleL.G. took a catnap while MiniM.E. explored her favorite area of the museum, Berenstain Bear Land.

Molly Bear

pulling teeth

After lunch we did the pretend Wegman's.  It was by far the BEST part of our trip to Rochester.  Kids get their own mini carts, shop for super realistic looking food, then scan barcodes and print out receipts for their items.  Both girls could have shopped all day.

We also saw all the "mostly looking" exhibits and a few more rooms of gadgets and gizmos to play with.  This photo op was pretty fantastic:

scaling a tall building like a superhero!

Stop two on our Rochester trip was R.I.T., where Daddy and I went to school.  Things have changed a lot since we were there eleven years ago so we took a very circuitous route to the bookstore which had changed locations.  It was nice to see the campus and fun that it was move in weekend because we didn't feel so out of place.  The girls posed with the tiger statue before we ended our walk and actually had to DRIVE to the bookstore to buy orange tiger sweatshirts for the girls.  And maybe a few things for Daddy and me too.

We stopped for dinner at one of our old favorite restaurants and made it home late after a drive full of much crying.  It was a really looong but also really fun day.  Good thing we have almost a whole week left to relax!