Universal Exhibition 2015

    A couple weekends ago we went to the Universal Exhibition in Milan. It's a huge event with over 140 countries participating. It is held every 5 years for a six month period. Each country has their own pavilion that they are free to decorate and setup how they wish, as long as they follow the theme for that year. The theme this year was Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life. I am not going to go into  much detail, but you can read all about it here. 

    Since there was so much for us to see, we left first thing in the morning. We dropped our dogs off with a friend and were on our way to Milan by 6:30 am. We decided to make an entire day out of it instead of wasting money and staying the night in a hotel.

 We picked up donuts on the way.

    We got lost trying to find the parking lot I bought our tickets for, but eventually found it after 30 minutes of searching and asking for directions. We took the free shuttle from the parking lot to the Expo, and then went through security. I was so happy I bought our tickets ahead of time because this was what the lines looked like at one of the entrances:

Thankfully we hardly had to wait in any lines because we had Connor with us. They let us cut in almost every pavilion we went to, which saved us hours of waiting. The first pavilion we went into was Pavilion Zero. This was kind of the basis for everything where we learned about how humans produce foods and consume it.

   The second pavilion we went to was Brazil. We left the stroller in the guarded area and all walked together over the rope net obstacle. It was much harder to walk on than I thought it was going to be, but we did it. Barely....

     The third pavilion we went to was China. We had to wait for about 15 minutes, but that was nothing compared to everybody else. They had a really neat light show that we could watch from the second floor. We also ate lunch at their self serve restaurant.

     While we were eating lunch, we saw the Children's Park down the road. We were going to let Connor run around for a little while before his nap, but he wasn't allowed to go inside and play freely. We had to register him and go in as a group with other families, then the volunteers would take us from station to station. We only waited 20 minute before our group was called into the play area, but Connor was ready to play!

 He was the smallest one in the group and had no idea what to do some of the times, but he had a blast! 

Aromatic bells: He had to run under each bell and smell the scent that was released into the air. Then he had to follow to dots to where a group of plants and flowers were. He had to pick which one smelled like the scent that was released into the pod. When he found the correct smell, he had to press the button. If he got it right, it would light up. Then he had to repeat it about 5 more times. He had no clue what to do, but he had fun running in and out of the bells.

Drop by drop: Connor had to collect water that was dripping from the ceiling into a funnel. Once he collected a decent amount, he had to dump it in a bigger bowl of water that would turn it into a mist. That mist would water all the plants surrounding them.

From the micro to the macro universe {left}: I'm not really sure what this was about, but I know it had something to do with their weight. They had to stand on dots that would weight them and link it to the screen somehow. The kids loved it. They were all yelling numbers in Italian and Connor just pointed and had fun.

The rhythm of life {right}: The kids were taken into a room with the volunteers. They would stand in front of a projector that would project their shadow as a tree onto the screen. Or, they could play with fish that were being projected on the ground.

Pedal power: This was a fun one! Each kid had to pick a bicycle. Once they started peddling, it would cause music to play and water to come out from the center of the circle. Each bicycle played a different tune and was connected to a different hole that water would shoot out of, so there was all kinds of different sounds.

Fishing: The kids were able to grab a magnetic fishing pole and fish out a clear ball. Inside was a note from another child that played in the Children's Park. We were told to keep it and then write a new note for another kid.

Vegetable garden play area: The last station was filled with different vegetables for the children to play on. By the time we got here, Connor was tired. We left after a short while and Connor was asleep before we even got to our next stop.

    The fourth pavilion we went into was UK. Theirs was made to look like a giant beehive. They even had bees buzzing in the background.

      The fifth pavilion was Mexico. We ate some really yummy tacos from there later in the evening. They weren't the best tortillas as they claimed, but they were good.

       Yay for America! That was our sixth stop. We were a little disappointed with it compared to some of the other ones we saw. Connor woke up in a bad mood while I was waiting to go into the elevator. He only slept for about 30 minutes, so he was cranky for about an hour after waking up.

 I really liked that the side of the building was covered with different herbs.

      Our seventh pavilion to tour was Morocco. This one was really pretty, but most of my pictures came out blurry :(

     Indonesia was our eighth pavilion to see. The line was really short, probably because they were having a really neat show outside.

 Connor "acquired" this balloon that kept him happy the rest of the day.

     Our last pavilion to go into was Oman. This was probably one of the prettiest. There was a lot of fishing information inside because that's a major food source for them.

   There was so much to see, and we didn't nearly see everything. Honestly, we probably only saw 1/8 of the expo, if that. I really wanted to see Japan and United Arab Emirates, but their lines were 1.5 hours and 3 hours long. We didn't have that kind of time or patience.

 The Tree of Life behind my goofy boys.

 Pavilions from other countries that we didn't visit:

 This face on the side of Slovakia's pavilion was really neat.

    We had a lot of fun, and are so happy we had the opportunity to visit the Universal Exhibition while living overseas. I'm not sure we will ever be able to do it again. The next one isn't until 2020 and is going to be in Dubai and I doubt we will be able to afford to go to that one! ;)