Trip to Wonderful

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Musee de Beaux Artes

Well, actually it was the local art museum here on the Gisland--Nassau County Musem of Art. Staff were nice, but the inside is not especially kid-friendly, let alone for ASD kids w/impulse issues and a desire to touch everything. The outside, though, was great: there's a big sculpture garden for which one does not have to pay, benches (in noticeably short supply in the museum, incidentally--a guard politely warned my daughter off the baseboard she was using as a seat), and formal gardens with fountains--plenty of narrow paths to walk along, not too many precious botanica to destroy. Lots of bronze and stone sculptures that would be fairly hard to destroy, and plenty of space to get one's yayas out. Almost all the visitors were retirees, with the exception of one young Orthodox couple (on a date?).

Another minus: the part of the sculpture garden we visited is a very large open field favored by Canada geese, so it was filled with goose spore. And the restaurant had the child-unwelcoming-sounding name of "Cafe Musee," so we didn't check it out.

We briefly checked out the Tee Ridder Miniatures Museum. Not wonderful except for very tractable kids, though I'd have liked it were I alone: the room is smallish, with a wooden floor, so my son's rather averagely loud voice sounded like it was bouncing off the ceiling. Not to mention the Fear Factor of all those doll houses with doll parts, doll eyes, doll mouth, doll legs, on sale for $4,000 and within arm's reach of my son.