A few days in the 'BIG' smoke!!

Mark had this last week off from the hangar ... and we had a lot of fun planned for us as a family. We figured that most people don't tend to explore the places nearest to them ... we know that to be true from our own experiences ... so we booked to stay in Columbus the nearest city to us ... it's only about an hour and a half away ... but just a lot easier to be based there. We got a good deal on a room with a separate living/room kitchen area ... and Abigail felt at home there right away!!

Columbus isn't a big city like London ... but having lived in Coshocton for the last 11 months it certainly felt big to us and a little more like home as well!! Although now we feel a bit like hillbillies in comparison!! When we arrived we went for a swim in the hotel pool and drove around to see what was nearby.

On our first full day we went to Columbus zoo (www.colszoo.org) ...

... and saw lots of animals close up!! Many of them were just behind a VERY thick sheet of plexiglas (perspex) ... but you were so close up you felt you could touch them! Abigail was a bit wary of some of them ... like this silver-back gorilla who was huge ... she much preferred the baby gorilla we saw who was only a few months old!

We all loved the manatee's and ray's ... so big, yet so graceful .... and Abigail kept wanting to go back to her favourite animals of the day ... the elephants and rhino's!!

As you can see there was a lot of fun, including bronze elephants and measuring ourselves against a full grown brown bear (cut out) ... we felt very small ... and the polar bear cut out was even bigger!!!

On our second day we went Cosi (www.cosi.org) a 'hands-on science experience' ... they have a Titanic exhibition on at the moment where we started our day. We were pleased to see that there were some Beckwith's on board ... not only did they travel first class, but they survived the disaster after drifting for 6 hours in a life boat.

There is a whole area called 'kidspace' which Abigail loved ... there was so much to do in there it was difficult to get her out ... she especially loved all the water play things they had.

There were many parts of Cosi to visit .... it was fun to watch Abigail's reaction to it all ... she was just all smiles the whole time!

Abigail really enjoyed every thing we did ... every day she woke up and we told her we'd be going on an adventure ... to which she would excitedly say 'venture 'venture and get ready really quickly. All the excitement made her sleep really well ... so well in fact that we had to wake her up in the morning to go to breakfast instead of the other way around!

On our final day, before we headed back home, we visited the German Village part of Columbus. A new favourite TV show of ours out here is 'Man Vs Food' where the host visits three restaurants in each city they film in ... so we found one restaurant to try out for ourselves!! Schmidt's Sausage Haus (www.schmidthaus.com).

These photos were taken after we'd had the most delicious meal ... with the yummiest sausages we've had since we moved to America (They don't do them very well out here!!) ... Abigail ate 5 huge pieces of the different sausages, that's how good they were!!!

We had the best time while we were away ... finding lots of yummy restaurants and new shops ... Abigail was on her best behaviour the whole time and we made many happy memories together as a family. The fun continued when we got home ... we'll fill you in on that in a later entry!