The Grouch family visits Pompeii and the Space Shuttle all in one day!

The Missus, Young Son, Ladybug, and I journeyed to the California Science Center to see both the traveling Pompeii exhibit and the space shuttle Endeavour.  The weather was beautiful, especially for a day in late December.  We grabbed a snack to fortify ourselves and then plunged into the crowd to start our time travel back into ancient Pompeii!

Young Son and Ladybug enjoy their snacks outside in the warm sun.  

  The seagulls and pigeons resting on the retired F/A-18 enjoyed the high ground advantage for swooping down on dropped tidbits.

This is the video shown prior to entering the Pompeii exhibit complete with hot winds and gut shaking low frequency vibrations and loud blasts.

I found the art to be of amazing quality and in equally amazing condition

The products of this civilization appear to be machine-made they are of such good quality

I am a sucker for gold jewelry

Another item that looks like something that we might buy at pottery barn.  Amazing!

Ladybug found it to be very interesting

Water valves - who knew that this level of technology existed then?

Medical instruments - or at least they seem to be.  What items of our current civilization might be mis-identified by some future group of archaeologists digging in the ruins of one of our cities?

One of the unfortunate residents of Pompeii, encased in hardened ash.  They say that they died instantaneously and didn't suffer.  We can only hope that is the case.

A Pompeii villa that would be right at home in Malibu or some other tony SoCal location.

The Missus and Ladybug waiting to create a virtual volcanic eruption

According to Young Son, one of the four persons in this photo is Older Son!  Taken on the day that the Endeavour was flown over L.A. before landing at LAX

The building is in this photo

The Endeavour - massive and majestic!

Almost at the end of a fun day!

Outside of the Science Center