Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 - 9:19pm (Part 1)
Our final day heading into the city, and we had another busy and fun-filled day! Our legs still hurt a bit from all of the walking that we did yesterday, but that didn't stop us from walking all over the city all day long. After breakfast, we walked up to the top of the very steep hill (10th St.) to the bus stop at Kennedy. We took the smaller "Community Coach"bus again to Port Authority. They're so much more convenient than NJ Transit buses - they run way more frequently!
Once in NYC, our plan was to head up to the American Museum of Natural History. I looked at the map and saw that the A, C, and E trains went to our stop (81st St./Museum). Obviously, I read that completely wrong because only the A and C trains went there and we got on the E train! A little ways out, it seemed strange that we hadn't arrived yet so I checked the map - we were headed out towards Jamaica Plain! Oh no! At the next stop, we got off and took another train (I think an R train) back so we could transfer to our destination. At our transfer stop (50th St.), we were going to transfer to a C train to go uptown to the Museum. Upon reaching the 50th St. station, we discovered that due to the construction, the C train wasn't operating from that station for the weekend. Great, clearly it was not our day for public transportation. We ended up walking to another station, taking a different train uptown, and walking a few blocks to the museum. By this point in time, Poolie's legs and heels were killing him and it was raining out, too. We didn't let this disrupt our day; after all, a rainy day is the perfect day for visiting museums!
We reached the American Museum of Natural History, located on an edge of Central Park. I reminded Poolie that this was where "Ross" on the TV show Friends worked, but I doubt that he cares too much about that, haha. Upon entering, we bought our tickets and decided to attend a show at the "Big Bang Theatre" called "Cosmic Collisions".
We walked around for a while in the Rose Center for Earth and Space, since we both love all things about the universe and outer space. There were lots of neat displays where you could see what your weight would be on various planets and stars. You could also read up on pretty much anything pertaining to the planets and our galaxy. There were also gigantic real meterorites that you could see and touch.
The show at the theatre, "Cosmic Collisions" was so cool. It was in a large theatre with a spherical ceiling that was one giant screen all around us. The movie was narrated by Robert Redford and detailed various collisions in outer space throughout history and hypothesized possible collisions in the future and their implications. The special effects were super awesome and the movie explained the positive and negative effects of these collisions on our planet. We loved it!
After the movie, we stopped for a quick bite to eat, and then continued around the museum. We walked through the Hall of Human Origins, Hall of Meterorites, Hall of Minerals, Hall of Gems, Hall of Biodiversity, and the Hall of Ocean Life. The meterorites were amazing, and it was incredible to the immense variety of minerals and gems from all over the world!
The museum does have over 30 million artefacts and pieces (including the geodes pictured above) - you could spend days and days studying everything and learning new things, and still have more to see and read! I'd love to go back sometime!
At the end, we bought these hologram postcards from the museum store, and Poolie also got me a holographic bookmark of kittens running through a field that is awesome :)
Next installment please...
ReplyDelete