Hakone trip part I: Open air Museum

It's been over a week since we went on our trip to Hakone, but I've been too busy to post anything about it until now. So here's a recap of our day. The bus picked us up in Ikego at 7, and we got to Hakone within a couple of hours. Our first stop was the Hakone Open Air Museum. Unfortunatly, even though we arrived earlier than originally anticipated, we were given only a little over an hour to see everything. The Museum is so spread out over the large grounds, that we didn't get to see everything we wanted. It ended up being more stressful than anything. Some of the art was artsy "my kids can do that" stuff, but other pieces were impressive. This was one of my favorites, it's called "Man and Pegasus" by Carl Milles. It actually stands quite tall in the air, but the full shots I had of it were harder to see the actual sculpture. This is the only I actually stopped to see the name of. Here are few more that I thought were interesting:

Some seemed more like toys to play on than art

There was a Labryinth that the kids were so excited to try out. After they went down I saw a group of Teenage tourists doing rock, paper, scissors in the middle. I knew immediately what they were planning on..........Tag! I also knew that this ment one of my kids was going to get ran over in the process. Before I could pull them out, Mateo was knocked down, and dirty of course. I was irritated, but he said the girl told him she was sorry.....I'm such a pushover.

There was a Picasso exhibit on the grounds, and I spent a good portion of my time looking for it. On our way we stopped at this tower.

It was so pretty inside. It was lined with beautiful stained glass, and even though there were a billion stairs going up to the top, it was worth the view once you got there.

At the end we realized we were running out of time very quickly. There had been an area for kids to play in that we had promised Mateo he could go to. Aaron kindly volunteered to take Mateo there while Abby and I hit the Picasso Exhibit. I'm glad I went, although it was more his work on cermaics verses his crazy paintings where the facial features are all messed up.