January Outing to Bonn

Whew! We had a busy holiday season. We did stay home and had a nice quiet Christmas, but this and that always keeps you busy. It's taken me this long to write anything in my blog again.

I've posted pictures below from our first outing of 2005. We went to Bonn to see an exhibit from Egypt's Valley of the Kings. It was interesting, but crowded. We couldn't take any pictures inside the museum.

From a Fodor's guidebook, I found out about another little museum in Bonn, called the Arithmeum. It's a museum of calculating machines. I thought it sounded kind of boring, but it ended up being a lot of fun. They took you through the history of calculating machines, demonstrating even some fancy gold-plated ones made by Pascal and Leibniz.

The most fun, though, was with the ones they let you crank and turn and push yourself. Since the beginning ones were strictly mechanical, with no electricity, you could figure out how they worked. A lot of them were fun simply to turn and manipulate for the noise they made, even if you couldn't figure out the exact mechanism involved.

I wouldn't make a trip to Bonn just for the Arithmeum, but if you're ever in Bonn anyway, it makes a fun stop. For us, it was the perfect complement to the crowded Egyptian exhibit. We had a nice peaceful time, exploring the museum at our own pace.