Saturday August 23/Sunday August 24 (Toledo)

Saturday was a quiet day as Harry enjoyed his day off from trucking. I also relaxed during the day and went out for a walk later in the afternoon. We then sat on the porch enjoying the lovely evening,

On Sunday, I went for my walk in the late morning as Shirley, a friend of Lisa's, was going to collect us and drive us to Toledo to visit the Titanic Exhibition. It is housed inside the Imagination Station and that in itself is worth a visit. 


It reminded me of the Exploratorium in San Francisco though on a slightly smaller scale. There was something very different though, a bicycle on a high wire that members of the public could ride. It was quite safe as it worked with a heavy counter balance. It was quite a weird feeling as there was some play in the cable but I was determined to go all the way across (backwards) and then return (forwards). 

We had a good wander round while waiting to go in to the Exhibit.

There was a lego model of the Titanic that a 9 year old had put together and also a model of what the rear half of the Titanic looks like now deep on the ocean floor. 
On entry we were handed a boarding pass for the Titanic. It had the details on a passenger on the back and just before the exit we would find out if we had survived or not. Lisa and Shirley both tickets for First Class passengers, yours truly of course had a Third Class passenger and her two young children. 

There as a short resume of the reason that passenger was on the Titanic. there were also many stories along the walls and it is amazing how many people were on the Titanic not by choice but due to other circumstances. There were also stories of selflessness and well as selfishness! One about a Catholic Priest who was going over to officiate at his brother's wedding, he stayed to comfort those left behind!

There were many artifacts that have been recovered from the Titanic in recent years with the advent of submersibles. I am left with three thoughts about the tragedy that maybe should not have happened or at least with such a loss of life. First, the fact that in the hurry to leave the binoculars for the forward lookouts were left behind!! Second, the fact that, in spite of warnings from several other ships about the icebergs, the Titanic continued to steam ahead at full speed (21 knots). Third, there were not enough lifeboats for all the passengers as they would have been aesthetically displeasing!!

On the way out is as sobering to see the lists of passengers that were saved and those that perished, these lists were compiled by class.

                             First Class     Second Class     Third Class     Crew
Saved                    199                       116                   181                209
Perished                125                       168                   529               701

It turns out that the people Lisa and Shirley drew were both saved but my passenger along with her two young children perished.

It was then decided that we needed to eat so after a brief discussion we headed to the Spaghetti Warehouse. We had to wait about 20 minutes as many people were eating early as the Mud Hens were playing at 6 pm. We reached our table and our server appeared, she was very young. 

So we tried to order drinks, they did not have what Lisa wanted, no hard cider and no Perrier water. the poor lass was running back and forth and got so confused Shirley's drink did not appear, neither did any water for the table! We finally settled on our drinks and these finally arrived. By this time the poor lass was in a bit of a tizzy and was being aided by another server. Our appetisers did arrive and and then our mains - trouble was we had not had our salads, lol!! So, our entrees were kept warm while we ate our salads. By this time our poor server must have been  totally confused. The manageress has been keeping an eye on events and came over to the table. She explained that the server was very new and to cut the story short, we only had to pay for our drinks, our meals were on the house!!! Not a bad outcome and our server will only have two tables for the rest of the evening.

We travelled home via Shirley's place where I caught up with the two young outdoor cats I had met during my winter trip, as well as an ice cream at the Homestead Shoppe.