(This post has been edited because the restaurant I originally listed at the bottom... my favorite has closed. So sad!)
We drove up to Richmond for an overnight mini vacation. I knew I wanted the Children's' Museum to be our first stop partly because I was so excited to try it out, and partly because it should have been cheap. We have a membership to the Children's Museum of Virginia locally. When you get this membership, it lists tons of museums that have reciprocity. On the Association of Children's' Museums page, it says that you get a 50% discount.
We drive up there with an excited little man, get in, and the woman says "oh, we don't do that." What? We just drove all this way; I must have heard wrong. Apparently, on the bottom of the page the small print says to call first, because some museums choose to back out of this deal, and the four Children's Museums of Richmond don't honor it. I tried asking about teacher discounts, AAA discounts. Nope, there was nothing which the woman told me with an attitude. If I wanted a discount I was told to come back at 4:00 for the discount price... they close at five. It was thirty dollars for R, Bubbie, and I to go in. That's so expensive! It didn't even include the marry-go-round and it was ONE floor! We thought about turning around and leaving, but we decided that for 30 bucks it had to be awesome. It was.... okay.
Maybe I've just taken advantage of the fact that we have so many awesome things in Tidewater. They did have a splash pad, which was cool. They had a slide inside and a backyard area with some metal drums. They did have an area for younger kids which R enjoyed. There was a garage where kids could work on a car, an ambulance and medical area, and some water play. There was a small area for digging up dinosaurs. We spent the most time playing in the leaves in the back of the museum and in the splash pad, two things which we can do for free back home. Also, at our local museum you can see people putting back toys that have been played with. At this one there were piles of legos and baby dolls on the floor and the backyard area totally needed some TLC. It was a nice morning once I got over the disappointment of the cost, but in comparison, I now love our local museum ten times more! Funny how going away makes you miss home.
This is what Bubbie and I did while big man was in the splash pad. Enjoying the shade.