We took the subway north this morning to 72nd street on the upper west side so we could walk towards our museum and pass Zucker’s Bagels and Smoked Fish for breakfast.
The dinosaur skeletons were particularly cool. So many full remains!
My favorite “dinosaur” is the Giant Ground Sloth. These things are sooo cool. I love when we find a skeleton. This particular dude is the largest skeleton ever found. He was massive. Or she… I don’t want to be presumptuous.
Another ground sloth skeleton 
Drawing of what a Ground Sloth would have looked like 
This giant armadillo next to a standard armadillo. They said these things lived as far north as modern day Arizona and Texas! 
Black Rhinos 
California Condor 
Bald Eagles 
Condor 
Pheasant, grouse and quail
They had a very large collection of pacific Island items including a statue from Easter Island. Also, tons of Aztec, Inca and Mayan items as well
One of the more interesting items I thought were these diorama recreations of various port and trade cities at a high point in their history.
Great port city of Alexandria 
Peking in the 1400s 
Calcutta at the time of the US Revolution. A center of global trade
Some other random items we liked today:
2.29 TRILLION pounds. I gained a little lol 
Norah really liked the Earth science exhibit with geology and rocks. Like father like daughter 
They had this hall of animal taxonomy classified into phylums 
Amazingly, we didn’t get tickets to the Hall of Gems and Minerals- I couldn’t figure out how to join the virtual line… figured maybe it was already sold out for the day since online said it usually was… and Norah was disappointed- but when we passed by the entrance, the attendant let us in anyway without asking for tickets! Ha there was no line so I assume since it wasn’t stacked full of people, anyone could go in but we’ll just pretend we were super special 🙂
The largest star sapphire known in the world. 
After we had seen all our brains could take of museums for the second day in a row, we headed down to the subway back towards our hotel to grab some food. The subway station was decorated appropriately.
Coleslaw 
Cel-ray celery soda. Kegan had been craving this for a while and had yet to find it anywhere. 
Unlimited Half sour and full sour pickles. 
Matzah Ball Chicken Noodle Soup 
Hot Pastami and a Corned Beed on Rye 
Chopped Liver appetizer. No Jewish deli trip is complete without this. Theirs was very good.
He said the pastrami was great and the pickles were spot on… but he actually likes my matzah ball soup that I make better! Haha
After dinner we hung out in our hotel for an hour until it was time to head south towards Wall Street again to visit the Van Gogh Interactive Exhibit on Pier 31
The Van Gogh exhibit was very cool. I’m admittedly not much of an art buff- and of course I knew a couple of Van Gogh’s majorly famous works, but so didn’t realize he was so young when he killed himself (37), I didn’t realize he was roommates with fellow artist Paul Gauguin and I didn’t realize that an argument with Gauguin led to the famous “ear” incident where Van Gogh cut off his own ear with a razor blade and put it in an envelope and dropped it off at a nearby brothel.
Needless to say, they weren’t roommates after that, Van Gogh checked himself into a mental health facility and remained there painting. He was discharged in 1889 and within months shot himself in the abdomen and died two days later.
Tragic story, terrible mental illness. Beautiful art produced from the madness.
After coloring, we entered the VR experience room where we wore Virtual Reality headsets for a 15 minute ride through Van Gogh painted fields to see some of the villages and scenes he painted. Then, because we had VIP tickets, we got to select a Van Gogh printed poster to take home.
Overall, a great experience. There are many of these around the country right now. I highly recommend a visit!
Tomorrow we’ll head out through Queens to Flushing- the end of the 7 train line to experience some of the outer boroughs and search out some great Asian food.
I saw the same Van Gogh digital experience in Indy on Friday. It was awesome!
Oh! I didn’t know we had one in Indy! Super cool!