A rest day

The boys have been very tired today, the solace for which has been shopping and ice cream. As promised, we went to Macy's this morning. The boys, having been told that Macy's is prohibitively expensive, managed to sniff out some real bargains: hoodies for under $10, fawn cords (!) for $5 and t-shirts for even less. This cheered them up enormously and we popped back to the hotel to drop off our booty.

Next stop, lunch and the Cincinnati Center at Union Terminal. This is an astonishing and huge edifice; built in 1932 it has been left untouched and still has the beautiful art deco interior. Inside are three museums, built into the tunnels of the defunct railroad station: a natural history museum, the Duke Energy Children's Museum and the Cincinnati History museum. The boys really enjoyed themselves here and we were able to split up so that different groups could speed their way around the exhibits that were of most interest. One favourite was the Natural History Museum, which has a jungle scape in one of the tunnels which included a cage of vampire bats (real ones, not stuffed). We ate a good lunch (and all boys are eating really, really well which is super) and then proceeded to the 360 degree iMax cinema to watch a short entitled Tornado Alley which was, unsurprisingly, about tornadoes. Specifically, about one obsessed man who has dedicated his life to driving through the centre of a tornado whilst filming it. Needless to say, he managed the feat and survived.

Mr Cobb managed to catch a baseball game last night (thanks, Caroline), which was welcome time off; the whole experience was rather confusing and just not cricket. The boys have their first concert this afternoon at the Cathedral of St Peter in Chains - this is v. good planning (thanks again, Caroline) as it is 3pm and eases us all into the concert cycle; report to follow.