Arianna & Ostara in the Museo Palacio in Oaxaca
Arianna’s class in Colegio Teizcali visited the Museo Palacio in Oaxaca a couple of weeks ago, and she really enjoyed it and asked to go back with the family. This museum is not in the gringo tourist guidebooks – since the standard guidebooks discussing Oaxaca are not really aimed at traveling with children or families. We never would have known about it, if not for Arianna’s school. An extra bonus, the cost of entry was about $2.00 (US), and free for children!
The Museo del Palacio is a interactive museum aimed at Mexican families and children with exhibits about the sciences (biology and space), history and culture (primarily but not only Mexican).
On the staircase up to the second floor, where most of the exhibits are, there is an amazing mural detailing 3,000 years of Mexican history. At the top of the stairs is a computer running a video displaying the “story” of the mural. I wanted to take some time to view this amazing mural, but the girls were anxious to get to the more “child friendly” parts of the museum. Such is life, when traveling with kids.
Arianna served as our very enthusiastic tour guide
Since Arianna had been the Museo del Palacio before, she was eager to be our tour guide. She lead the way to the most exciting exhibits, and enthusiastically explained all the exhibits. Since I have a fairly solid background in science, going through the science portion actually helped my Spanish because I had background to help me understand the text explaining the exhibits. I served as “interpreter” for the girls, translating the Spanish signs into English. I was surprised at how much I understood – I have come a long way in the past month!
Ancient Mexican Children's Game
By far our families favorite section of the Museo was the game exhibit. This exhibit showed about 2 dozen ancient Mexican games from Zapotec, Mixtec, and Mije cultures. There was a staff member who was there to help us. She was delightful, and eager to show us all the games we were interested in. Some of the games were active, similar to hopscotch. Others were strategic board games. The kids played in here for more than an hour, trying out new games. Again, I served as translator since the museum staff member only spoke Spanish. Again, I surprised myself at how well I understood her speech – she was kind and spoke very slowly for me!
I would highly recommend Museo del Palacio to other families visiting Oaxaca. We had a great time, and it was a nice break for us because it was very low stress and fun for the kids!