Cultural Diversity

If anyone had asked me what there was to do in the Cedar Rapids area I would have been hard pressed to come up with ideas. Even though we have driven through this area many times, we have never taken the time to explore this part of Iowa. Jean, who in our family is known as a wonderful hostess had, as usual, all sorts of ideas. We spent the first few hours in the Czech Slovak museum. All of my life I have been immersed in Dutch culture so I found it incredibly interesting to see the costumes and learn something of the history of the Czech and Slovak people of whom I really knew very little. It is a beautiful museum and even more fascinating because of the restoration that has occurred as the result of the 2008 Cedar River floods.


We then drove to a very small town for a lunch in a sweet little restaurant that was decorated in an early 1900's style. After eating Gary drove us on to the Amana colonies. It had been years since I had been there and it surprised me to see how much it had been "commercialized". I wondered how much the culture of that group of people had been lost to the tourist industry. Still, it was fun to see the beautiful furniture built there and the huge wool weaving looms. We even had a woman who was willing to open a shop so we could sit in the world's largest handmade rocking chair.

After another wonderful dinner with Gary and Jean the women once again lost our ongoing Cribbage war with the men. Sigh.

It was a full day, but a relaxing one.