New York: Central Park and the American Museum of Natural History

Today was natural history museum day. I had hoped that Samuel would appear more interested as we ventured out, but he seemed more excited by the immediate prospect of catching a subway than of spending the day in a museum. Of course going to a 'museum' is never interesting when you are a child.

Much to Samuel’s chagrin, we stopped a few subway stations short to experience the edge of Central Park. What a vast, lovely space in the centre of the city! Being a Saturday it was full of people too. 

Of course the Natural History Museum was always going to be full of amazing things to see. With its collection of 33 million specimens of plants, animals, birds, dinosaur fossils and rocks there had to be something to interest Samuel. I thought it would be the dinosaurs and fossils....

Surprisingly though, our time centred round the space, Earth and native American cultures exhibitions. Samuel loved the latter two a lot.

In the space section, we attended another planetarium film, this time dealing with the size of the universe and dark matter.  This was followed by an exhibition covering scales of the universe. It demonstrated the relative size of many objects in the universe, moving from galaxies, to our solar system, to the earth and red blood cells before getting even smaller.  It used the planetarium (Hayden sphere) as a reference and models to demonstrate the relative sizes as one went smaller and smaller. I found this very insightful, particularly the demonstration of the size using things one could easily compare.

We followed the space exhibitions with the earth geography section which covered rocks, volcanoes and techtonic plates. Samuel was deeply fascinated by the range of polished rocks and tectonic plates explanations. 

Samuel also enjoyed the European and Native American cultures exhibitions which contrasted the way Native Americans lived in the woodland areas and the grasslands. These exhibits though, seemed to ignore the tension between colonisers and Native American aboriginal cultures. This was not the case for the Australian exhibit.

Instead of eating an overpriced and poor quality lunch from the museum cafeteria, we explored outside for lunch. I had found a bakery which sells the ‘best chocolate chip cookie in New York’. When we got there, there was a line snaking up the street. But it was indeed the best chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever tasted: large and straight from the oven. At least it was a delicious overpriced poor quality lunch!

Line for Levian Bakery

Overpriced poor (nutrient) quality lunch!

Back at the museum Samuel was appalled by the fact that birds regurgitate food for their young to eat and hated taxidermy and the dinosaur exhibitions. We were all impressed and amazed by the number and breadth of the exhibits though, particularly the space, earth and Native American culture, the American Natural History Museum certainly has something for everyone.