Parque de Ciencias

Today, my friend Rachel and I went to Granada's Science Park. It was so cool! We started off with the first building, which had some mind-teasing puzzles and games, as well as interesting rooms on the planets, on Earth's layers and makeup, then a room full of mirrors and lasers and lights, and finally an exhibit of old machines like typewriters and clocks.

The park has a huge courtyard with a cafeteria and lots of crazy playground activities fun for all ages to wrap their heads around. I think my favorite was the fountain, which had these revolving posts in it that splashed water all around. It's getting pretty toasty here!

Next we went to the observatory tower. The park has a planetarium, an astrology observatory, and an observatory tower that overlooks the city. Unfortunately it was a little humid and smoggy out today, and we couldn't see very far, but it was still fun! 

Continuing through the courtyard, we saw some cool water setups, like a solar-powered fountain that runs water to nearby gardens, a mock twister in a cylinder, and some sort of model waterworks with lots of handles to turn and fun things to play with. There was a big chess setup and some more mind-scrambling games and puzzles, all leading to the gardens of various plants and trees.

My favorite part of the day was the Butterfly House. It's set up like a greenhouse, with a real little tropical scene inside, complete with water and turtles and fish. We saw some beautiful butterflies! And they weren't shy, either; although they took some people by surprise I will never understand people who run away screaming from something so beautiful and harmless.

The biggest building was yet to come. There is so much to see at this park, it takes several days! We missed out on temporary exhibits, the planetarium, and a few rooms in this central building. Here we had a room on the human body, which is interesting but weirds me out a little. Hanging above that were various animal skeletons, which were much more interesting. I also enjoyed the massive taxidermy exhibit, which had a lot of cool animals displayed.

The central theme of the park, at least in this moment, is puzzles, and what better way to show it than the M.C. Escher exhibit? Escher is the father of tessellations and paradoxical drawings, like the ascending and descending stairs in a square, or the various woodcuts he did using the chiaroscuro technique. I spent a full hour in this room admiring his works and enjoying the atmosphere. The Parque de Ciencias does a great job of setting up the right atmosphere in each room according to its theme.

The last room I went into was a series of exhibits on the Arabic influence in Andalucia, especially in terms of their ancient sciences. Given my enjoyment of my Islamic Culture class (profile soon to come!) you can imagine that this was especially interesting for me!

To top the day off, there was a live bird area, with all different types of big, trained birds. I liked the huge buzzard, but the focus of the day was clearly on owls: a sign? :) There were 3 beautiful owls within 2 feet of me, and it was really special because we have them at home sometimes but never can get so close! Definitely thought of Dad while taking these shots.

Despite missing out on some buildings and exhibits, it was a really great day at the park. Thank you for reading!