Things to do
The cultural scene in Omaha is awesome: Smithsonian affiliated museums, performing arts centers, and several lively entertainment districts are filled with locally-owned restaurants, quirky boutiques, street musicians and great pubs. Omaha is one of the nation’s premiere hot spots for the indie music scene and has been a home to jazz, rhythm & blues, funk and rock, as well as Latin, alternative rock and hip hop.
The Holland Performing Arts Center design is unique in many ways, sporting a sleek urban air of modernism inside and out, with bold design and finely engineered acoustics; the Performing Arts Center is among the very best in the country – an experience that is a must for any self-respecting bioacoustician and efforts are underway to organize a behind-the-scenes tour for participants of the Symposium.
As for food, prepare for a culinary delight in the Old Market, Omaha’s historic neighborhood where the streets are cobblestone and the atmosphere is electric. You will be able to select from a richly diverse mix of restaurants and taverns, as well as boutiques and galleries – a perfect place to spend a pleasant Midwestern summer evening.
If not the Old Market, you can head over to Midtown Crossing at Turner Park, home to a wide variety of great shops and restaurants, and free outdoor music performances at the Pavillion, just a short cab (5 min) or bike ride from the Symposium hotel. Or, dine one evening at Gorat’s, Warren Buffett’s favorite steak house – keep your eye peeled and you just might be the lucky beneficiary of a financial tip from the Oracle of Omaha himself!
So, if you would like to:
- walk across a swinging rope bridge suspended over a tropical rainforest waterfall at Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium
- hop aboard historic train cars at The Durham Museum, a fully restored art deco museum, which was the historical site of Omaha’s largest railway station
- explore more than 100 acres of botanical beauty at Lauritzen Gardens
- marvel at exquisite works of art inside the Joslyn Art Museum
- visit Boys Town, a national treasure featuring an expansive campus, historic chapel and museum
- spend a relaxing afternoon at El Museo Latino, the first Latino art and history museum in the Midwest
- step into the pioneer life at Pioneer Courage Park and Spirit of Nebraska’s Wilderness Park
- view the always-impressive art exhibitions found at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and KANEKO
- visit Love’s Jazz and Art Center that captures the heritage of jazz in an area where Duke Ellington, Count Basie and others once played
- stroll through Heartland of America Park or go for a gondola ride and catch the spectacular evening light show at one of the world’s largest shooting fountains
- walk or bike across the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge over the Missouri River, the longest and first pedestrian bridge to link two states (Nebraska and Iowa) and connecting 150 miles of trails
plan to join us here in Omaha the 3rd week in July of 2017 for a week of great food, lively entertainment, a splash of unsurpassed culture AND the latest big finds in the world of ACOUSTIC ANIMAL COMMUNICATION.
Bicycles for Rent
A municipal bike-sharing system in the Greater Omaha metro area, Heartland B-cycle, will get you around town. With 33 stations and 180 bikes you are rarely far from where you want to be or a B-cycle. Hop on when you’re in Omaha and bike!
North America’s Central Flyway
PARTICIPATE IN THE SYMPOSIUM AND STAY A WHILE LONGER
Nebraska is located in the heart of the Great Plains, where each Spring, more than 80 percent of the world’s population of Sandhill cranes converge on Nebraska’s Platte River valley—a critical sliver of threatened habitat in North America’s Central Flyway. Along with the cranes come millions of migrating ducks and geese in the neighboring rainwater basins. The cranes come to rest and refuel for a month as they prepare for the arduous journey to vast breeding grounds in Canada, Alaska and Siberia. They arrive from far-flung wintering grounds in northern Mexico, Texas and New Mexico on an epic journey of thousands of miles. The arrival of the cranes on the Platte River—and the millions of other migratory birds that visit each spring—is one of the greatest wildlife spectacles on the continent.
Located beneath the Great Plains of Nebraska is the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the largest fresh water deposits in the world. The deposition of aquifer material dates back 2 to 6 million years, from the late Miocene to early Pliocene ages when the southern Rocky Mountains were still tectonically active. The groundwater in the aquifer is paleowater and was deposited following the last glacial maximum or earlier.