Visiting Columbus
Under Renovation 🙂
While Columbus Ohio isn’t well known across the country, but it’s actually a pretty large city. As a matter of fact, even though Columbus is shy of a million people, it still comes in as America’s 15th largest city. Columbus is a great place to travel to, with the city broken up into several districts, each with their own cultures and attractions. Above is a photo of downtown Columbus at night, with some more city shots below.
Columbus is the capital of Ohio, and right in the city center you’ll find the capitol building. Unlike many other capitol buildings in the United States, Ohio’s has it’s own unique architecture and was built in 1861. The capitol grounds hold several statues and monuments, such as this one to the right that is dedicated to famous Ohioans such as former president Ulysses Grant and General Sherman.
Something I was looking forward to seeing was the Scioto Mile. This is a nice walk along the Columbus River that goes for miles and passes right through downtown Columbus. When I visited the river itself was dammed while the Scioto Mile gets some major work done. The river itself wasn’t very attractive with all the construction and piles of dirt everywhere, and most of the walk itself was closed. This fountain was still open though, and in the middle of the summer it had no shortage of people. Had I been wearing swimming shorts, I would have ran in myself!
Instead of completely avoiding the Columbus River, I decided to share this picture on the upper left where you can see how low the water is and all the dirt packed up along the banks. There was a big banner I came across while on the trail that showed the two year development plan. The Scioto Trail goes for dozens of miles, above is mile marker #4.
One of my first visits in Columbus was to the Franklin Park Conservatory. This beautiful park has existed for over a hundred years, and is the location of General Sheman’s famous “War is hell” speech in 1879 to a military academy graduation The building on the left is the famous Palm House. The Palm House was built in 1895 and has 43 different species of palm trees. I made the mistake of not getting inside, and when I came back later to fix that it was too late and the building was closed! On the right is a photo of the central gardens right in front of the Palm House. When I had returned at night there was a wedding taking place.
The rest of the gardens have hundreds of other plants that vary during the seasons. Since I visited during the summer, most of the flowers were already in bloom and the park was full of the birds and bees. Above is a large bumble bee on the left, and an oriole on the right. For some reason it’s been almost 10 years since I saw an oriole! Beyond the gardens and the Palm House, the conservatory has collections of art, offers classes and workshops, and even summer camps for kids.
I was really surprised how many districts and neighborhoods where in Columbus. The city seemed to have several nice neighborhoods with some fairly large houses. These photos were taken in the same neighborhood as the Franklin Conservatory.
Next on my list was the Ohio History Center. This is an enormous museum that covers everything in Ohio from the prehistoric times to modern history. It was here that I learned that dinosaurs have never been found in Ohio! Of course that doesn’t mean they never existed here millions of years ago, just that somehow their remains did not survive the passage of time. Without any dinosaurs, Ohio’s natural history begins in the ice age with animals such as this giant mastodon or more primitive ones like this fossil on the right.
Next in line in Ohio’s history are the Native Americans. There was a good bit of history here covering the Native Americans, that had everything from different tribes in the area, ways of life, and artifacts. Above is a recreation of a village in Ohio that would have existed before the arrival of Europeans. The museum had several artifacts like arrowheads and pottery on display, but my favorites were the face on the upper right and these smoke pipes below. Each smoke pipe was unique in design and covered almost all the common animals living in North America!
There are way too many exhibits to put all on my website, but some other examples moving forward in time are large areas dedicated to the civil war as well as life in Ohio during the 1950’s and 60’s.
By far the best part of the Ohio History Center is their Ohio Village. This recreation of a civil war era village has numerous buildings to explore and events that take place throughout the year. I was lucky to visit on July 4th when they had lots of special celebrations going on. The main events began with a speech by the Ohio Village mayor photographed on the upper right. His speech complained about the war in the south and changes in the country, but rallied everyone to support the Confederacy.
The July 4th celebrations also included Civil War soldiers firing blanks, a 19th century band, and plenty of dancing. They even had some vintage baseball players playing ball in one of the fields.
These two photos above are just completely random ones I took while walking the city. I really liked this massive building on the left and its design. As I got closer to it, I discovered it was a Hyatt hotel. The photo on the right was at the entrance to a large power company, where they put some giant turbines on display.
Without question, the most liberal and eclectic part of Columbus is the Short North District. Here you’ll find a little bit of everything from dive bar to nice restaurants, and hippies to rappers. There was a lot of life music here, like this band on the left. There was another band I came across later that had some stranger older man dancing with nothing on but a woman’s bikini bottom, running shoes, and a bike helmet. I choose not to put him on my website for obvious reasons, but he definitely seemed to be having a good time. I also couldn’t help but photograph this green woman on the upper right.
I saw this group of people on the left, and risked taking their photo when they seemed to be rolling a blunt right in public! The photo on the right shows some kind of live rap music dance off they were having. It was very informal but people were definitely having fun and a guy on the mic was encouraging people to come up and compete. I’m not much of a dancer and was afraid he would call me out but fortunately I got lucky! These two murals below are some other random shots of street art, also called graffiti by some, in Short North.
Like I mentioned earlier, Short North has a little bit of everything. This city park was my entrance to the neighborhood. I later had dinner here in a fairly nice restaurant that had some great outdoor seating. This beautiful apartment complex was also in the Short North neighborhood. I was passing by random shops and small houses then this place appeared out of no where.
Last on my page are photos from my visit to the German Village. To be honest, I thought I was actually in the wrong neighborhood because of all the bricked buildings everywhere. I had been expecting German architecture and it wasn’t until I saw all the German flags and restaurants that I knew I was in the right place for sure. Ethnic Germans have been living in this neighborhood for well over 100 years. While the architecture is very American here, the restaurants, food, and cultural events are German. On the upper right is a German restaurant called the “Sausage Haus” and a German chocolate “Fudge Haus” below.
I learned walking around the German Village that things are pretty well spread out. There are lots of German restaurants and stores, but they kind of sporadically spread out throughout the neighborhood, so sometimes you think you’ve left only to find out there is more to see! At the western end of the German Village is Schiller Park. The park is the city’s second oldest and was established in 1867. The park was named after the famous German poet Friedrich von Schiller. On the right is a large bronze statue that was dedicated to Schiller by Munich, Germany in the 1960s.