De wereld van Kina is Ghent’s kid-friendly natural history museum. “Kina” is a contraction of the Dutch words kinderen, meaning children, and natuur, meaning nature. The museum has two campuses located on opposite sides of the city: the main museum in Sint-Pietersplein, and the garden near St. Luke’s Hospital. Today we visited just the garden. It’s still a little early in the season for most of the plants, but it was interesting nonetheless. The crocuses were in full bloom, the bees were busy in their hive, and the greens, browns, and blacks of early spring suited the gloomy statuary. An interpretive center featured bee and spider exhibits, and had a cute exploratory area with papier-mache animal scenes, a slide, and a puppet theater. It was relaxing to have Wes at a museum where he could roam freely and touch what he saw. A curator was on hand to show us the tarantula collection. Wes, Katie, and I got to touch the furry belly of a live tarantula.
Entrance to the gardens of "De wereld van Kina"
Crocuses
Spring flowers
Hen art
Grotesque sculpture illsuited to a children's garden
Katie gives a puppet show in the exploration room
Papier-mache elephant playing guitar in her living room
Tarantula
Maybe we are just self-conscious, but we sometimes sense Belgian ladies looking at Wes’s pacifier with disapproval. There was an odd installation in the garden that reinforced this feeling. Pacifiers where hanging from the branches of a tree by individual ribbons, each bearing a different name and date, like a pacifier burial ground of some kind.
Pacifier graveyard in the trees
The garden is within easy walking distance of us, and free if you don’t go into the interpretive center, which is free for kids but 2.50 Euro for adults. We’ll revisit it later in the spring to see how it has changed.
After our garden visit, Wes played at a nearby park and then we had a late lunch at one of our Turkish places.
Tube slide
Our kids are sometimes most adorable when they are unhappy.
Post-hairwashing
Mildred
Lastly, and unrelated to Belgium, kids, or music, here’s a link to an interesting and entertaining blog post that was featured on WordPress this week: Top 10 Places You Don’t Want to Visit.
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