Islamic Arts Museum

I am very lucky to have children who love going to museums, so everyone was on board for a trip to the Islamic Arts Museum.  I had thought of it as a rainy day option, but with the heat in KL, everyone was fine with an indoor activity after the previous morning spent outside at the Bird Park.  

The museum is directly across the street from the National Mosque of Malaysia, which has a large, free parking lot, so we parked there and headed across the street to the museum.  We had seen it from our window at the hotel,

and it was a lot of fun to look back the other direction.

The building itself is a work of art, and there were so many interesting decorative touches.

We were the only people in the museum for most of our visit, which was nice, but we were disappointed to find out that they weren't doing the audio guides, which the girls usually really enjoy.  The first display was about the history of coins in the Islamic world, and we all found it really interesting, although Jeff was the only one who wanted to read every single board.

The girls and I were more interested in the inverted dome on the ceiling.

Jeff got a picture of us with it.

There were also several lovely traditional domes in the various display rooms.

The display cases had all kinds of artifacts from Islamic empires around the world.

Elena was thrilled to find a book about chess.

We found another beautiful dome,

and a covering that used to hang in front of the door to the Kaaba in Mecca.

Viv wandered at her own pace, but Elena was especially interested in trying to decipher the different kinds of Arabic script.  We found a great explainer for her.

They also had a section with miniature versions of famous Islamic buildings.  I figured these might be as close as the girls got to some of the real things. 

We found more coins upstairs.

One of our favorite sections though was on the Ottoman Empire.

Vivi found a pin with a white ostrich feather that she really liked.

But we weren't sure about the practicality of some of the outfits on display.

After exploring for two hours, we were pretty hungry.  Luckily, the museum has a restaurant on site that serves Middle Eastern food and has a kids menu.  As with the museum, we were the only people in it for most of our lunch.  It was a lovely place.

We had tickets for complimentary juices that came with our museum tickets, so that was a nice treat.

Elena got chicken nuggets and fries, which she kindly shared with the rest of us.

The "Mediterranean" pizza was a bit of a disappointment.

But Viv enjoyed her chicken shwarma that looked like it had been put in a panini press.

The clear winner though was Jeff who enjoyed his shish taouk. 

After lunch, we walked around the gift shop to digest.  They had some really beautiful things.  Elena got a bookmark, Vivian got a framed ceramic tile, and Jeff and I got a magnet for the fridge collection.

We were feeling very pleased with our outing when we walked out of the museum to see the parking lot across the street COMPLETELY full and closed off.  Forget double parking, there were cars parked in what would be the road part of the parking lot.  The gates were closed and more cars were parked in front of the gates.  From the loudspeaker inside the minaret, we could hear the sounds of a Friday service.  We had inadvertently parked our car in the parking lot of the largest mosque in the city on the holy day.  Jeff and I were both a bit upset with ourselves, because we've both lived in Muslim countries before and we ought to have known better, but we really weren't thinking about it.

The guard in front of the museum took pity on us and reassured us that the parking lot would empty out in about an hour when services were over.  Since the hotel was just a five minute ride away, we decided to get a Grab back to the hotel and come back for the car later.

After the girls were done with their afternoon cooking class, Vivian came back with me in another Grab.  When we got to the parking lot, it was as empty as it had been when we first parked there, and there was our car, just sitting and waiting for us patiently.  It was a good lesson learned, since we really enjoyed the museum and will definitely go back when we have visitors to take there, but maybe not on a Friday.