Day Date Exploring Norfolk & The USS Wisconsin

Saturday we decided to knock something off our Norfolk bucket list and go tour the USS Wisconsin. If there is a carrier or battleship in the vicinity of where we are stationed, we have to go see it at least once once. It's just a rule in the Navy world. We toured the USS Alabama when we were stationed in Florida and the USS Lexington when we were stationed in Texas, and since we've now been in Virginia for 8 months, we were overdue for a trip to the USS Wisconsin. Also, we've been terrible about doing Norfolk things. We need to step up our tourist game. 
The USS Wisconsin is right next to the Hampton Roads Naval Museum. If you know Parker, you know he loves a good museum. I've said it before on the blog, but museums are not my favorite way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Parker understands this about me and is really good about not making a museum tour an all-day event. Bless him for that. 

We started out touring the museums. The cool thing about the history museum is it was entirely dedicated to Norfolk history. We are both the first to admit that this has not been our favorite city to live in, but seeing how rich this city alone is with history was really neat. They had two morse code stations set up, so we had fun typing out messages while the other listened closely and tried to guess. It's pretty cool people can actually communicate this way!

Hanging out with the impressive silver display

After we finished moseying around the history museum, we decided to tackle the USS Wisconsin. It felt like deja vu the entire time because it was so similar to the USS Alabama. I felt like we were back in Florida for just a tiny second. It was a beautiful day (okay, it was still cold, but it's better than it's been!) and that sun was just shining away. It was in the high 40s, but I opted for shorts because, good grief, this Texas girl is so tired of pants. I usually only have to wear jeans 3 months out of the year so wearing them 6 months out of the year is just not cutting it. I was cold, but it was worth it. Anyway, wardrobe tangent. Moving on. 

The inside of the USS Wisconsin was dated in parts, but it sounded like a lot of it is similar to what ships look like today. I had to take a picture of the manual pencil sharpener. 90s kid nostalgia at its finest. I also had to take a picture with a picture of Steve Martin aboard the USS Wisconsin. Father of the Bride will forever be one of the greatest movies ever made in my book.

Check out this view. It was such a beautiful day! All sun, no snow. That's a win to me. The shades of blue between the sky and water were on point.

After climbing all around the battleship, we hit up the science portion of the museum. Ironically, this was our favorite part of the day. I say ironically because science and me are like oil and vinegar. Not the most winning combination you could ever put together. The reason it was so cool is because they had carpet sharks swimming around, and we got to touch them! These sharks are small, although full grown, and completely harmless, but we couldn't believe we could just put our hands in the tank and pet them. They didn't feel like normal fish and instead felt like a thin carpet- how fitting. I texted my marine loving little sister a picture because she would have loved this! 

The plan was to go home after the museum/battleship fun, but it was just such a pretty day, so we decided to walk around the city. We've never really explored the downtown area, and there is a chance we are moving soon, so we wanted to be sure to see it all. We found a really awesome-looking building with tall white pillars and giant steps leading to the door. We realized it was the public library, so we thought that would be fun and went in. We took 5 steps in, looked at each other, and walked out. We realized we had no idea what to do in a library. Kindles have ruined us. We found the MacArthur Memorial and quickly walked around that museum, grabbed some food at a local pub, and called it a day. It was a very Norfolk-filled day and we had the best time!