Olympic Museum and Chinese Acrobats

Back on our summer visit to Geneva, Claudia and I took a day to head up to Lausanne and have a look around the city. One of the famous things about this location is that the Olympic organization is based here and there is an Olympic Museum.

Since the Olympics were actually on at the time, we thought it would be worth heading over to have a look.

Here is the large fountain display marking the entrance to the grounds of the museum and park.
Up the steps was the entrance to the Museum, I have to say, the building itself was very unimpressive. A big white block with no real style to it. It seems like the Olympic types were not real big on getting some interesting architecture.

Naturally, there was extra decorations promoting the Beijing games added to the building.
The white pillars leading to the entrance have the city and year for each of the games. We actually saw this guy working on adding Beijing to the pillar as we were going in.
Once inside, I did not take many photos, some displays forbid it, such as the exhibit on the city of Beijing and others were just not that interesting. While it was neat to see some of the sporting equipment and the like, I don't really think I would look back fondly on a photo of some shoes.

What WAS exciting was that they had a performance by some acrobats from China. Since the show was just starting when we arrived, we decided to head in and have a look.

I also took this as a chance to practice taking some photos in lower light conditions. Acrobats in a darkened hall presented some interesting challenge, but I think these turned out not too badly.

The group were about 6 women and one man, all in quite flamboyant costumes. The first part of the show was a lot of plate spinning. Can't go wrong there. Although a couple of plates were dropped.
Here is a big group of them, putting on some slick plate spinning moves.
After a bit, they finally let the dude join in, who showed off his enormous muscles by picking up a bunch of tiny plate spinning ladies. I was slightly too slow on the photo and they had put their legs down at the sides, but I assure you they were all up there just a moment earlier.
Then to make up for being left out of the first act so much, Acrobat-man came out and rode a unicycle while flipping bowls from his feet up onto his head. I think his costume was a little bit too nuts for me.
He finished off this segment with some crazy ring twirling, all the while keeping a large number of bowls on his head.
Next up, a girl spun a bunch of cloth around. Kind of strange, but it looked nice. She had some moves while doing it, but I just liked this one with four going at the same time.
To round out the performance, there was some more crazy costumes and crazy posing moves.
All in all it was quite entertaining, and since we had not really expected to see any sort of show, it was a nice extra thing to see on our day out in Lausanne. The fact that the Olympics were going, actually benefitted me in a way I did not expect. I am also very happy that it was Chinese acrobats and not Chinese folk music. I am sure there are many many fans of that sort of thing, but I can't stand it.