NYC day 3
Friday in NYC
Friday morning I went into the city early with Ava again had a nice leisurely breakfast and then made my way up to the Museum of Natural History. I was still a bit early, the doors weren’t open yet, so I wandered the block for a while and then headed in. I bought a pass that let me into everything they had open that day.
My first scheduled thing was the Dinosaurs Alive IMAX film. I was glad I saw it, it’s not a fantastic IMAX experience really but it was interesting and one thing that was neat was seeing this fossil that had been found where they thought the dinosaur was stealing eggs from a nest and named the dinosaur the Latin for “egg thief” (of course I can’t remember what that is) and then years later it was discovered that it was actually a mother sitting on her nest. They had that fossil out for display in the museum and I liked knowing the backstory for it when I came across it in person.
My next activity was the Mythical Creatures exhibit. They didn’t allow photos in there which disappointed me. The exhibit was really neat, totally worth checking out if you can get there before Jan. 6th (which is when I believe it closes) They have a Kraken which comes right out of the floor and his tentacles are all spongy. It was neat to see how the mythological creatures may have originated. For example the Cyclops. In Greece they had found Mammoth skeletons but the physiology of them is similar enough to human skeletons if you arrange them in a human shape but of course they’d be giant humans. The Mammoth skull has a single hole in the front which is where the trunk would have been, but if you were thinking it was a human skull that looks like a single eye hole. Neat huh? Unicorns were possibly a product of mistranslation for rhinoceros as they had a single horn. Although I prefer to believe in Unicorns personally :) They even had a Narwhale tusk there that you could touch! That was awesome. They had one at the Cloisters as well but you weren’t allowed to touch it. At every station they had a video that gave you a brief explanation of a couple of myths, it was just a fun thing to do. I’m glad I went through it early, I suspect it gets busier as they day goes on and kids in there would get more crazy as they get more tired.
My last activity of the day was at the Rose Centre Planetarium for the film “Collisions” which was all about how collisions formed the planet and the universe and just how they affect things. That was a neat one as well.
The rest of the day I spent wandering through the museum and enjoying myself thoroughly. I love how they have the animals and such set up in these wonderful settings so when you take a picture it can look as though you’re face to face with them… except for the dumb people who were all using flashes on their cameras to take pictures of things behind glass. They had digital cameras, yet it apparently occurred to no one to change their setting so as to avoid taking many pictures of bright lights bouncing back at them.
My other complaint was that there were far too many people making out in the museum! I guess really old things for some people are a turn on… I dunno, but it’s not even as though I had accidentally wandered into a deserted area or something, people were just going at it randomly.
I was on my feet for most of the day, totally forgot to have lunch because I was so busy, and was exhausted but happy by the end of it all.
Then I headed to the New Amsterdam theatre to get my Mary Poppins ticket. There was some crazy lady who was arguing with them at the box office (I think the show was sold out and she was trying to get a ticket with just a couple of hours ‘til showtime) so the guy who opened up the box office window for me was happy to not be dealing with some crazy lady (by this time the woman was hitting the glass at the next window over) and he didn’t even ID me for my ticket LOL.
I had time for a nice dinner with a cherry Coke (we don’t have those anymore in Canada) and then went back to the theatre. I bought myself a Mary Poppins candle, couldn’t decide on a shirt yet, and then went to my seat. I had front row of the balcony which was fabulous. They let us take pictures of the theatre before the show which never happens so I took pictures of everything!
I loved Mary Poppins. The show took some songs from the movie but the events in the show were from the books. I re-read the 4 Mary Poppins books that I have the week before I went to NYC so they were fresh in my mind. I spent much of the show near to tears because it was watching some of my favourite books come to life and they did such a great job with it. I don’t want to spoil the fun surprises in the show for anyone but at one point Mary Poppins does fly up past the audience and she flew right in front of me! So much fun! It’s a beautiful show! There were a lot of small references to the books as well, just throw away lines and such or parts of the set design that I don’t think people would have picked up on as being significant had they not been familiar with the stories but they had me bouncing in my seat. I was tempted to stage door just to saw how wonderful it was but I didn’t want to ruin the illusion of the show so instead I just went back to Ava and Julie’s place. Found it all by myself which was good, I didn’t want to get lost in Brooklyn.
Friday morning I went into the city early with Ava again had a nice leisurely breakfast and then made my way up to the Museum of Natural History. I was still a bit early, the doors weren’t open yet, so I wandered the block for a while and then headed in. I bought a pass that let me into everything they had open that day.
My first scheduled thing was the Dinosaurs Alive IMAX film. I was glad I saw it, it’s not a fantastic IMAX experience really but it was interesting and one thing that was neat was seeing this fossil that had been found where they thought the dinosaur was stealing eggs from a nest and named the dinosaur the Latin for “egg thief” (of course I can’t remember what that is) and then years later it was discovered that it was actually a mother sitting on her nest. They had that fossil out for display in the museum and I liked knowing the backstory for it when I came across it in person.
My next activity was the Mythical Creatures exhibit. They didn’t allow photos in there which disappointed me. The exhibit was really neat, totally worth checking out if you can get there before Jan. 6th (which is when I believe it closes) They have a Kraken which comes right out of the floor and his tentacles are all spongy. It was neat to see how the mythological creatures may have originated. For example the Cyclops. In Greece they had found Mammoth skeletons but the physiology of them is similar enough to human skeletons if you arrange them in a human shape but of course they’d be giant humans. The Mammoth skull has a single hole in the front which is where the trunk would have been, but if you were thinking it was a human skull that looks like a single eye hole. Neat huh? Unicorns were possibly a product of mistranslation for rhinoceros as they had a single horn. Although I prefer to believe in Unicorns personally :) They even had a Narwhale tusk there that you could touch! That was awesome. They had one at the Cloisters as well but you weren’t allowed to touch it. At every station they had a video that gave you a brief explanation of a couple of myths, it was just a fun thing to do. I’m glad I went through it early, I suspect it gets busier as they day goes on and kids in there would get more crazy as they get more tired.
My last activity of the day was at the Rose Centre Planetarium for the film “Collisions” which was all about how collisions formed the planet and the universe and just how they affect things. That was a neat one as well.
The rest of the day I spent wandering through the museum and enjoying myself thoroughly. I love how they have the animals and such set up in these wonderful settings so when you take a picture it can look as though you’re face to face with them… except for the dumb people who were all using flashes on their cameras to take pictures of things behind glass. They had digital cameras, yet it apparently occurred to no one to change their setting so as to avoid taking many pictures of bright lights bouncing back at them.
My other complaint was that there were far too many people making out in the museum! I guess really old things for some people are a turn on… I dunno, but it’s not even as though I had accidentally wandered into a deserted area or something, people were just going at it randomly.
I was on my feet for most of the day, totally forgot to have lunch because I was so busy, and was exhausted but happy by the end of it all.
Then I headed to the New Amsterdam theatre to get my Mary Poppins ticket. There was some crazy lady who was arguing with them at the box office (I think the show was sold out and she was trying to get a ticket with just a couple of hours ‘til showtime) so the guy who opened up the box office window for me was happy to not be dealing with some crazy lady (by this time the woman was hitting the glass at the next window over) and he didn’t even ID me for my ticket LOL.
I had time for a nice dinner with a cherry Coke (we don’t have those anymore in Canada) and then went back to the theatre. I bought myself a Mary Poppins candle, couldn’t decide on a shirt yet, and then went to my seat. I had front row of the balcony which was fabulous. They let us take pictures of the theatre before the show which never happens so I took pictures of everything!
I loved Mary Poppins. The show took some songs from the movie but the events in the show were from the books. I re-read the 4 Mary Poppins books that I have the week before I went to NYC so they were fresh in my mind. I spent much of the show near to tears because it was watching some of my favourite books come to life and they did such a great job with it. I don’t want to spoil the fun surprises in the show for anyone but at one point Mary Poppins does fly up past the audience and she flew right in front of me! So much fun! It’s a beautiful show! There were a lot of small references to the books as well, just throw away lines and such or parts of the set design that I don’t think people would have picked up on as being significant had they not been familiar with the stories but they had me bouncing in my seat. I was tempted to stage door just to saw how wonderful it was but I didn’t want to ruin the illusion of the show so instead I just went back to Ava and Julie’s place. Found it all by myself which was good, I didn’t want to get lost in Brooklyn.