Natural History Museum

So today we had one of our first touristic days in the city. And we decided to go to the American Museum of Natural History.

It's definitely a favorite. Marcus had gone there over the summer, and I was so excited about their IMAX movie-- it was an easy decision to go there first. Plus, we decided that instead of paying to go a couple times, since it is so gigantic, that we'd become members. That way we can wander around as many times as we want, and we can break it up so our feet are never too tired :) Plus we get into more exhibits, tours, and IMAX movies that way.

We didn't go in the front entrance. And good thing we didn't because the crowds were so much crazier there. We used the "secret" entrance from the subway. Lines were much, much better. Plus, we are members, so we got to skip the lines anyway.

The first thing we did was see the IMAX video Born to be Wild. Here's the clip about it. It was fantastic. The elephants and orangutans were so incredibly cute.

And since we are now members, we decided that we'd just pick a few exhibits to go to or walk by since we can come back as much as we want for the next year :) Here are some of our favorite spots.

Northwestern Indian Art

The ocean animals

It was really dark in there so I googled a picture of the GIGANTIC whale hanging from the ceiling:

I really liked this area. It's like SeaWorld!!!

A ray for Marcus :)

We'll go back to the dinosaurs another time, but I did want to see the ones in the entry:

And I requested the African animals too:

And Marcus, of course, wanted to see the space exhibit, but to get there we had to go through reptiles. Not my favorite.

But this made it better. Cute.

And then we walked through the space section.

(After that, we got super hungry and went to Mariela's for pizza.--This area of NY is one of my favorites with Central Park and all, and Marcus loves it because we always go to Mariela's for pizza.)

I'm sure we'll be back several times. It's a really neat museum. So much to see. (And if you come visit, we can go again-- we get discounted passes to bring more people. No pressure. Just if you want. Haha.)

Plus I found this awesome picture of their Christmas tree-- so we'll be back for sure next winter!