Day 7 was great. We started out the morning a little better with a bit less waiting in lines. My mom was pretty beat from the day before so she stayed back at the rental to rest for most of the day. We missed her but it made things a lot more simple to have the stroller for Holland, and two parents available to watch the kids. We loved the Museum of Natural History. We had planned on doing this first during the day and then going to a couple of other things after, but we were mistaken about how long we would want to spend at the museum.
Our favorites were the dinosaur bones and the planetarium show. We really enjoyed almost all of it though. I liked this quote from Theodore Roosevelt.
There were so many displays in big rooms based on continent. There are so many different animals in the world. It is amazing.
We liked the big mammals and the room about Africa a whole lot.
Every creature in the museum was at least partially from real animals with the exception of the giant squid, according to one of the workers.
We loved the planetarium show it was about the dark matter and energy in the universe. It also talked about black holes and galaxies swirl together to make a lens, but there is too much gravity in the lens for it just to be the visible matter. So there has to be some dark matter in it. Eliza wants to know if the dark matter is a solid or a gas. It also talked about how the universe is constantly expanding and we know that because that the waves lengths we see are red. Red waves are stretched out unlike blue wave lengths which are contracting. The universe is getting cooler as it expands. It is not as hot as it once was. This is all from Eliza's memory. She's got a steal trap.
The girls loved all the displays about space. We practically had to drag them away so we could see the rest of the museum.
This particular meteorite was 34 tons and the posts supporting it had to go down below the foundation of the building.
Holland loved the displays too, especially the screens she could play on.
This room was fascinating. A whole case of endangered animals. There were huge displays about insects, amphibians, and various interesting plants. It was almost too much to take in. Eliza didn't exactly love the case of arachnids.
The ocean room was crazy amazing. There was a blue whale suspended from the ceiling! It was so interesting to see a real one (although stuffed). It has always been interesting to me to to imagine how big they are, but it is spectacular to see it right next to me.
Another angle of the blue whale. It took up the whole room!
We had to visit more continents to see the animals. I think it would be interesting to see the process of designing these displays. They were all really well done.
We couldn't miss the rest of the Africa room.
Although, I didn't let us linger in the reptile room. They give me the heebie jeebies. We did spend some time going through the human artifacts rooms, but they weren't as interesting to me. There were definitely some disturbing photos, artifacts, and descriptions that were pretty gruesome. Of course these were the displays that my kids tended to make a bee line for. Such as the shrunken heads or the awful rites of passage some cultures had.
We ended the visit on a high note though, seeing the dinosaur bones. Next to the displays were signs to show which bones were replicas and which were real fossils. I was shocked to see that most of them were real, even out of cases.
So big and cool!
The stegosaurus was a lot smaller than I imagined, but would still be terrifying to see in person.
This museum was so big! There are so many rooms of each thing. There were four huge floors!
Triceratops and other cools dinosaurs!
Woolly Mammoth.
Since the day was practically done when we left the museum we made just a quick stop to see Grand Central Station.
It is just like in the movies!
Then we went out to eat for our one fancy meal of the trip. We wanted to try authentic New York pizza and this place was super highly rated. My mom took an Uber from the apartment to come join us. We followed along with the app. We were very anxious for her to arrive so we could eat.
We ordered the Grandma pizza, and it was delicious.
Then the plan was to go to the Rockerfeller center at sunset to enjoy the view from uptop. However, we found out that you have to have a reservation for a specific time. So we made the reservation for Friday night and just enjoyed the view of the plaza.
I had a small breakdown right before we left New York City for the day. Sometimes it is hard to be a parent on vacation. None of our normal boundaries or expectation are able to really to be enforced. It makes for some frustrating times. Despite an incident here or there, I was really impressed with how well my kids did this whole trip. They were troopers and behaved well almost the entire time.
I didn't realize as I was taking this photo that Holland was running away. We had to do some spreading out, sprinting, and yelling to find her. Scary!
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