The museum is impressive and very well done. As it turned out, we could have spent a lot more time there , but we saw almost everything before we left to return to the RV Park at 3:00 pm. The museum started out as a D-Day museum, but under the encouragement of Stephen Ambrose, a noted historical writer, the U.S. Congress has designated the museum as the National WW II Museum. The museum has expanded into several ajoining buildings since it was founded over 10 years ago. There are now exhibits covering all phases of WW II, primarily from the perspective of the allied forces, and includes many personal items, photographs, film clips, and recordings of personal experiences of those who served. The museum is apparently getting a lot of visitors and is well endowed. Congress has not provided much funding, if any, right now, but further expansion is planned in order to house a large number of other exhibits and collections they said they have in storage.
The highlight of the visit was a 45 minute 4D film shown in a newly constructed 250 seat theater and narrated by Tom Hanks. It is called "Beyond All Boundaries, The War That Changed The World". The film is IMAX-like and essentially tells the story of WWII. It is shown on a 120 ft wide screen and uses 9 digital projectors and 27 surround-sound speakers. There is also a variety of high-tech special effects, including seats with a full range of oscillating vibrations (e.g. the seat shakes when the tanks are coming), lighting changes simulating battle conditions and explosions, and props on the stage that rise and lower as to film progresses (e.g. an anti-aircraft gun that rises and appears to fire above the audience, D-Day beach tank traps, a 75% scale B-17 nose cone, and a 25 ft high guard tower with a searchlight). And when talking about the Battle of the Bulge, simulated snow falls on the audience. You couldn't take any pictures, but it was pretty spectacular and something worth seeing.
Tonight is the Krewe of Bacchus Parade. This is one of the major parades and it looks like the weather will be pretty good despite a chance of rain later on.
More heavy trafffic heading downtown for the Bacchus Parade but we got to our grandstand seating area in plenty of time before it started. The weather held and was fairly mild and not very windy during the parade. The crowd was a lot bigger than our first parade earlier this week (Druids) and the floats were much larger and more numerous. There must have been at least 25 floats with marching bands, flambeaux (young men with propane tourches renacting an old parade tradition), and dancing groups between each float. There were also the usual parade officials vehicles, float maintenance trucks, and police cars scattered amongst the floats. There was also a lot of crowd control - police and barriers along the route and they kept everthing pretty much under control. Everyone was having a good time and we didn't see any incidents. Litter disposal is always a big issue during these events, and there was a real mess in the streets when the parade was over around 11:00 pm. There were also a lot of people messed up in the streets, as it looked like they had been hitting the Bud Lites for a fair portion of the day (no longer just for breakfast). We got back to the RV park just in time. Five minutes after we got back into our RV, it started raining very hard and rained all night.
Tomorrow morning we have a private tour of the "Den of the Krewe of Thoth" (warehouse) where they store their floats and a visit to the New Orleans School of Cooking in the French Quarter for a Creole/Cajun cooking demonstration and lunch. It also looks like we may have a little more free time in the afternoon before returning to the RV park for a short rest then returning to town tomorrow night for two more parades (Proteus & Orpheus) - both large Krewes. Our bead collection, thrown from the floats, continues to grow. It is almost beyond reason to keep them all, but we still try and catch them.
No comments:
Post a Comment