Monday, November 17, 2008

sometimes you get a dud



Two weeks ago I read a little blurb in the paper about a replica of Christopher Columbus' ship The Nina, and how it would be docked in Morro Bay for two weeks for tours. Well, what kind of self-respecting homeschooler would I be if I didn't take advantage of this opportunity? So we packed up the kids and took off on Veteran's Day (1 of 2) to see this marvel. I blame the Walt Disney Company. The whole Pirates of the Caribbean franchise had me psyched to see a real live ship! It was an actual, small let-down. The ship was smaller than anticipated, they had the cool parts of it blocked off (you couldn't go down below or up on the higher deck), and the "tours" were led by scary looking girls with purple hair. So we paid our $13 admission only to walk maybe 30 feet from one end of the ship to the other. We read the plaques and looked at the pictures of the replica-making process. After 10 minutes we decided to make the most of Morro Bay and go to Foster's Freeze. We also went to the beach down by the rock because the kids like to chase the seagulls and then we headed over to a playground for a while. Oh well. There will be other field trips to wipe this one out of our memories! I think we'll try the monarch butterfly grove this Friday...

5 comments:

John said...

Come on Jen, Capt. Jack Sparrow was a whole hundred and fifty to two hundred years after Columbus (if you think Disney and all of the fiction writers would get it right). Remember that the King and Queen of Spain sponsored the journey for an Italian sailor/adventurer, but they weren't going to over-spend on this whole "going west to find the east" idea? And this was the smallest of the three ships.
But it sure would have been cool to see a skeleton or cannon or even a parrot instead of a purple-haired girl.

Hilary said...

yeah, back when I was a homeschooler we got to see the replica of Sir Francis Drake's shipe when it sailed into the Port of Longview. It was the same: smaller than actual size and we couldn't go down below... don't recall the price we payed, but we didn't get to see much of it.

Sallie said...

The Nina may have been a dud but the pictures sure are cute!

Nanny

Erik said...

Hi Jen,

Thank you so much for the kind words about the House recaps. As a person who is going through a challenging career change, the opportunity to contribute a dash of funny to a site like GMMR is often the highlight of my week.

Please accept my best wishes to you and your family for a healthy and happy holiday season. Thanks to your blog, I now have a new recipe for Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread to try while watching Survivor this week!

Sincerely,
Erik Wilkinson

imjustaphoneguy said...

I thought the Nina (Ni-ya) was cool. Granted, good ol' big brother spoiled the fun that going below might have been, but all-in-all, I don't regret the trip. We weren't favored with the tour, the purple haired lady might have spiced it up some...