3 bakeries
2 Broadway plays
1 dance performance
lots of delicious food
an exciting, exhausting week
That basically sums up my whole week in NYC over break, but if you're curious, keep reading for more about what I saw and experienced while in town!
I decided that I would attempt to go to every museum that I could in the week that I was there, so I began with the American Museum of Natural History. I took too many pictures, so I'm trying out a slideshow, but you can also see the original pictures here.
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
And after spending 5 hours there, I decided that this museum is best with kids, as it is an excellent introduction to cultures and animals and history that you might never encounter in real life. Since I've been to a number of excellent zoos, I was a little bored by the number of taxidermied animals, but it was incredible to see so many of them! I didn't really know what to expect before coming to this museum, except that everyone said I should make time to go see it. I was slightly overwhelmed by the amount of stuff there is to look at and did not do the museum justice by any stretch of the imagination. I did determine that you could leave the museum and come back in the same day, which is really nice if you get hungry in the middle of the day and want to go the Shake Shack around the corner. I highly recommend the planetarium show about the stars, narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, it was excellent. I didn't love that the museum charged for most of the special exhibits, so I didn't get to see any of those, as I wasn't really interested in any of them to shell out another $6+. While you can pay whatever you want for the normal museum admission, if you're willing to pay full price you can skip the line and either get tickets online or at a kiosk there. The suggested student price is really reasonable, but if you're going to only pop in for an hour or so, paying the full price of $20+ is not really worth it in my opinion. Of all the exhibits, the dinosaurs never cease to amaze me - it still boggles my mind that I was staring at real fossils and not just someone really skilled with plaster of paris. The gemstone exhibit made me laugh - if you read closely enough in one part of the showcase, you'd actually learn about what the kids in my intro to MSE course learned about crystal structures and classifications! I do like that you can pop in and out during the day, so that if you need food, you can dash over to Shake Shack and get a delicious (minorly overpriced) burger and then continue winding through the museum.
After the Natural History Museum, I dashed across Central Park to quickly look at the Museum of the City of New York - I highly recommend this one if you're ever in the area. I don't think they have any permanent exhibits, but the ones I got to see were very interesting and the one I missed also looked great! I originally went there for the DD and Leslie Tillett exhibit, as they were incredible textile designers, but I also found a number of other interesting exhibits, all focused around NYC.
just look at those awesome prints
They had a short film playing about the history of the development of the city, Timescapes - why it is planned out the way that it is and how different neighborhoods developed, died and redeveloped with time. The other interesting exhibit was one about the different types of activists and their causes in NYC, spanning time from the first Quakers to the nurses who revolutionized public health to the current day bicycle activists. With lots of little snippets of information and a few historical items to look at, it was a nice exhibit - not too much information overload! This was probably my favorite image, that gal on the end just makes me laugh:
I ran out of time to see the World's Fair exhibit, but oh well! I'd say you only need ~2.5 hours to make it through the whole museum, so it's easy to slip in on a day when you're out in the city. Oh! I just found that they have a sweet haute couture online exhibit! I find online exhibits a bit strange, but those thoughts are for another day.
The next day was a bit slower, but I made it out to Queens for the first time! I had found the Museum of the Moving Image online and it looked really interesting (also it promised a look at some sweet posters that were at the Hobbit's NZ premiere), so I hopped a train out there and spent a solid 2 hours wandering. They have a great core exhibit that introduces you to much of how a movie is made, including a large collection of old movie cameras, TVs, and sound systems.
I will say that after watching all of the extended extras on the LOTR DVDs, not much of the information was new, but it was cool to try dubbing over some lines from the Wizard of Oz and to see how a live sports broadcast is 'directed'. They also had a place for you to try out stop-motion filming, which is great for small children, but I had fun as well :) I made a short 4 second 'movie', but apparently waited too long to download it and it exists no more! The LOTR posters looked like giant versions of those bookmarks that I used to have - that were kinda 3D and if you looked one way and moved your head the image changed a bit. Oh wait, I still have one of those - NASA produced a sweet one for phases of the moon! The Museums screens movies throughout the day, but I did not stay for one (Puss in Boots was playing) and they seem to have space for 2 traveling exhibits. When I was there, they were featuring a history of sorts of video game consoles called Spacewars. I am absolutely horrible at gaming and the few games I tried out just reinforced that fact.
Old (Original Nintendo) or New (Wii), arcade style or not, I'm just bad at it. I couldn't even figure out how to use the Atari console they had available. Oh well, it was still interesting to see and play the first video game created! They were also showcasing the new Pixar film, The Guardians, and had some really interesting character development mapped out, as well as a featurette about how the movie was created, highlighting the extensive use of motion-capture for each character. Overall, I was surprised to learn the museum was over 27 years old, as the space and exhibits definitely felt fresh and modern. I was glad to have gone earlier in the morning, however, as the museum filled up with loud small children after lunch! A side note, but I was struck as to how Queens is apparently developed - there seemed to be a main road, and if I wandered off it more than a block (happened by accident when I was trying to find the place), it was a very different place. Reminded me of Yakima in a sense, but not quite.
Also in Queens is apparently the Indian area of NYC, as I wanted to try to find the Sari Palace for some pretty sari material. I found it and picked up some beautiful material, but I'm pretty sure I was one of 3 non-indian people I saw the whole trip! There were lots of sari places, but Sari Palace was the only place that actually gave you the prices for each style (that I could see) and since I was only looking for material and not to get a sari created, it worked for me! I'm still designing what I want to use the material for, so no pictures yet :)
