When Freebies Pay Off - Date Day

View From the Cà d’Zan Mansion

This past Saturday, my husband and I took advantage of the Free Museum Day Click Here being offered by Smithsonian Affiliated Museums. We ended up visiting the John and Mabel Ringing Museum of Art located in Sarasota, Florida and yes, if you were wondering, these are the Ringlings affiliated with the circus. Ringling Museum

The Bougainvillea in bloom on the Art Museum Walkway

I was under the assumption that we would only be allowed into the actual art museum, but there is also a Circus Museum, the historic home of the Ringling’s called the Cà d’Zan Mansion, and an activities museum on the property. Normally, you do have to pay separately from general admission to visit each one of these parts of the complex.

I was very surprised and excited to hear from the gentleman checking us in, that our admission allowed us to visit all of these places. Even after he told us, I had to ask him again just to make sure.

Decorative Ceiling in the Cà d’Zan Mansion

We visited the Circus Museum first. It has a huge miniatures section of a Circus and if you have a child who is a train enthusiast, they will get a kick out of it. We then headed to the Cà d’Zan Mansion, and finished our visit at the actual art museum. They currently have an exhibition by Yinka Shonibare. Here is a link to their quarterly newsletter with Museum information Ringling Museum Quarterly.We probably spent 3 or so hours all together touring the property.

Then after we left the museum, we visited Starbucks, and I used my Free Starbucks Gift Card from Swagbucks to get us a treat. What is Swagbucks? Click Here

We would have spent over $90 to go to all the sites at the museum and to Starbucks. This is when freebies pay off.

So needless to say, it was a great day.

At Home Moma

P.S. I need to send a special thanks out to my grandma for watching the kids. 🙂