A Day at the Museum

As some of you might remember I went to New York last November and I promised some more photos. I had a fabulous time and saw so much and I walked and walked and walked, just taking everything in. It was weird being somewhere that I had never visited before, but that was also instantly familiar in so many ways from film and television. While I was there I also visited several museums including the American Museum of Natural History and with the movie 'Night at the Museum' being on here in the UK at the moment I thought I would dedicate this post to this museum.

The Museum was founded in 1869 Theodore Roosevelt Sr., the father of the 26th U.S. President, was a co-founder.

The photo above was taken looking across from Central Park on the Upper West Side. As it was late November, many of the buildings were decked in lights and decorated for Christmas. The Museum had topiary dinosaurs holding wreaths outside! As you can see from the photo the entrance to the museum is quite grand and in fact the architecture was magnificent both inside and out. In the picture below you can see the moulding on the ceiling and the marble columns.

The dinosaurs in the picture above stand in the foyer but there are many other fossilised remains of dinosaurs with the circuit of an entire floor is devoted to vertebrate evolution.The Museum boasts habitat groups of African, Asian and North American mammals the full-size model of a Blue Whale (photo below) suspended in the Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life, the 62-foot Haida carved and painted war canoe, and the Star of India, the largest blue sapphire in the world. The Museum's anthropological collections are also outstanding with large displays showing differnt cultures and their development.

While I was at the museum they had a special display of live reptiles so I took pictures of a few. It was nice to see some exhibits that were moving after seeing so many that were models or that had been preserved. Also worth checking out is the huge meteroite which is smooth to the touch. The museum is huge and takes the best part of a day to go around and is well worth a visit if you find yourself in NYC with time to fill.