March 7, 2006
Day 159
A painting at the fine arts museum.
I decided to make this a museum day. First, I attempted to find Dr Ara's museum in one of the city's hospitals. Dr Ara uses the same mummification technique as the guy who made Evita Peron and Vladimir Lenon's mummies. Not many people want to go see a bunch of corpses, so it was tough to find the place by asking the locals. It took a LOT of asking around, but eventually I was able to find it.
When I first entered the place, I noticed the strong smell of formaldehyde. All around me were people's picked parts, and the liquid used to preserve them gave off a strong pepperminty odor. Toward the entrance, there were lots of skulls and skeletons, but eventually I saw just about every body part from every walk of life imaginable. Seeing the bones wasn't too creepy, but seeing heads with flesh still attached gave me a bit of the willies. Now I can confirm that I definitely wouldn't want to be a doctor.
After my flesh-and-bones visit, I walked across town to the Anthropology museum. This time it was open. There were a few nice exhibits showing what ancient peoples' caves looked like, but overall it was small and disappointing. There was a ton of dry reading available, but not much to look at.
My last stop of the day was to a fine arts museum. It was really big, free, and featured works by local artists. That combination made for a great visit. After running around town all day today, I'm officially museumed out, but it was good to get all three taken care of in the same day.
The photo albums for this entry is here.
