Trip to the Titanic Exhibit & Other Childhood Interests

The last weeks for me haven't been all work no play. In addition to being relatively current with my favorite TV shows, I have had a chance to get out and do a couple of fun things. I had a lovely brunch at the Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay, saw the movie "Jackass 2", and went to see the Titanic Exhibit with a friend of mine in SF.

The Titanic exhibit was quite interesting - more on that below. There are a few things that have caught my interest since I was a little girl: the tragic story of the Donner Party and westward movement in the US, volcanos (due to the eruption of Mount St Helens), and the Titanic disaster.

My interest in the Donner party started with a book report I did in the 8th grade. I somehow ended up reading the book "Ordeal by Hunger". Having traveled with my mom a lot in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and also having seen evidence in person of various trails that people took on their way to the west coast, I was enthralled with the story. Even now, I am still very interested in the Truckee area and any evidence of wagon trains. I have loved trails forever it seems, so the westward movement across the US was a natural interest for me. I have been to both ends of the Oregon Trail and always thought it would be neat to experience traveling on it like they did in the past.

As for volcanos, I believe my interest started with an old 3-2-1 Contact TV show episode where they went to Hawaii and talked about volcanos. The eruption of Mount St. Helens really cemented my interest in them though. I even had a pen that had ash from the eruption. Other volcanos like Mt Lassen and Kilauea in addition to going to volcanic areas like Yellowstone have been really cool!

So back to the Titanic exhibit. I remember when they found the wreckage. I am not sure why I thought it was so interesting but something about the whole thing just fascinated me. The exhibit is being held at the Sony Metreon and it is really well done. When you first walk in they have a model of the ship and it is really neat to look at. My friend Brian and I opted to take the audio tour as well which cost an extra $5. It was worth it. When you first start the tour, you are given a boarding pass of an actual passenger on the ship. At the end of the exhibit you find out if that person survived or not. Brian got the boarding pass of Mr Astor (who did not make it) and I got the boarding pass of a woman from steerage, I can't remember her name (she did survive though). From there you start the tour. The exhibit is arranged in chronological order. The first items being pictures of the shipyard where the Titanic was built. After they have pictures of the launch you actually go through an entrance that looks like it would have had you actually boarded the ship - too cool! The exhibit progresses through the different levels of the ship showing you what the hallways and rooms looked like. This was also really cool. All along the way they have exhibits of artifacts that they have recovered from the wreckage. I thought the most interesting was a jewelry exhibit. It was hard to believe that those items had belonged to someone, had ended up on the bottom of the sea, and had been recovered and restored. We walked through the 1st class, 2nd class, and 3rd class accommodations, we got to go by the grand staircase and through the engine room. After this we entered a very cold dark room where they were running a video that detailed how the iceberg punctured the ship and how it sank. In this room they also had a huge piece of ice that was made to look like an iceberg. They encouraged you to touch it then they told you that the water in the Atlantic ocean that night was colder than that piece of ice. The next room had a projection of the size of the lifeboats on the floor so you could see how big they were. From there the exhibit turns in to a full wall of names. It is separated by passenger class and crew and then by who survived and who did not. There are a lot of stories on the walls along the exhibit and it is in this room that you find out if they survived or not as well. They also have spotlighted some people with ties to San Francisco as well. From there you enter a room that goes in to the wreck recovery missions. The icing on the cake though is the huge section of the hull of the ship that they have propped up there! WOW, that piece of the ship is a bit unsettling. There is also a piece of the ship set aside so that you can touch it. The end of the exhibit dumps you in the gift shop of course where they have the usual tacky trinkets along with some really cool stuff. I think my favorite thing in there was that you could actually buy dishes that are just like what they used on the ship. This exhibit is by far better than one I had seen before on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA. It was really well done.