Bodies - The Exhibition

This is where we went after our lunch at Opera...

It was at the UTC mall in La Jolla in the old Robinson's May store!

In line to buy tickets. After Bert bought them, we waited in line for about 30 minutes. It was like Disneyland. By the way, cameras weren't allowed once you entered the exhibit...

As we were walking in, a young (college age) couple was leaving and the girl remarked, "Okay...uh Nordstrom's?". Her companion just laughed. It seemed funny at the time.

Here's an article about this exhibit which some have deemed controversial. We figured, we had to see it. How many times are you going to have the chance to see plastinated bodies and see the nervous system, the circulatory system, muscles, and such isolated with such precision? It was an amazing exhibit and not gruesome at all. TC was fascinated (her words) by the display cases with the healthy set of lungs and the smoker's set of lungs, which were all blackened. There was a box encouraging exhibit goers to drop off their packs of cigs and give up their habit. I wonder if the packs in there were really from people or were just planted there to make it seem like people actually did throw away their cigs.

On our way out, we bumped into Elphie and her boyfriend Fiyero, which was a nice surprise. Lotus and Thor saw a similar exhibit in L.A. about a year or so ago with Mulysa's boys, "Body Worlds" (or was it Body Works?) so I was determined to see this exhibit in San Diego.

While we were looking at the livers, spleens, gall bladders, etc, a guy said, "I'm gonna go home and drink a lot of beers" to the laughter of his friends. Then he added, "At least I know what it does to my body now!" Hmmm...you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink!

One of the most interesting things there was the skinned man. His body was plastinated, of course, and the skin was peeled from head to toe. There were cut outs where his eyebrows, eyes, nostrils, lips, and navel were. But everything else was there and I mean EVERYTHING, including his twig and berries. Another striking exhibit was the room which had the circulatory system. It was amazing to see the dense network of veins and capillaries we have all over our bodies. I could go on and on, but I won't.

Yes, the exhibit was pretty expensive - $26.50 for an adult; $18.00 for a kid. If you paid $6 more, you could rent this hand held device (looked like a long cell phone) which was the self-guided audio tour. You could press buttons that matched up with the exhibit's numerical placards and listen to someone explain the exhibits in more detail (you had your choice of the adult or child version of the explanation).

You weren't allowed to take photos with cameras or cell phones, but I found these pix and an accompanying article on the web:

pix of Bodies - The Exhibition