Getting our culture on

At dinner, Spu and I discussed with Drs I-K about what we were going to do in the following days. Spu and I said we were going to hit 3 major museums in one day - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The American Museum of Natural History, and MOMA.  They gave us looks of disbelief and made comments such as *I could spend the entire day there!* Indeed, and we also could have spent entire days there, but alas we only had one week in NYC and therefore, one day. Since the Met opens the earliest, we headed to the Museum Mile and strolled through Central Park while waiting for things to kick up. 

Along the way, we saw this.

Hello, Guggenheim! But we didn't go in - I visited it later in the week.

Sunny morning, hanging out on the steps, waiting for it to open

Kekeke

Unfortunately, we basically had to run through the collection without stopping to read the descriptions and skipping major things like the Egyptian section...but we were still there for 2.5 hours! Sheet - time schedule not working!

So we grabbed a hotdog from a streetside stall and trundled across Central Park to ANMH, where we basically ran to the top of the building to the dinosaur section.

Which had this giant spider over the (closed) main entrance.

Rexy!

Trixie!

Hey, it's Kevin!

EEEEEK!!!

A mammoth

Hehehe, Spu looks like Beethoven.

Roar!

Steggie. The really funny thing about being up there was remembering all the random info we learned about dinosaurs when we were kids. The different periods, names, etc...

Like an aussie...

The hall of American Animals was closed but the African and Asian ones were open, thank god. 

I think these were black rhinos?

As a sign of our mutual immaturity, we looked at this sign and simultaneously said *boobies!*

A very close parent-child relationship

Dum-dum!

Mexican dog sculpture. It looked much cuter without flash.

Spu gets into a spot of bother with a giant head

The Hall of Biodiversity.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Well, we do our next best without sitting in it

Poor taxidermied tiger

Seriously though, the taxidermy was both impressive for the sheer number of  animals but also depressing when you realise how many animals were killed for it.

But this is a model of a baby blue whale that died naturally.

Sharks chasing a turtle

The Squid and the Whale - an Epic Battle 

After a mexican lunner, we walked down the Upper West Side and swung by the Dakota. We couldn't go to Strawberry Fields because a crime was committed in broad daylight close by.

Spu wasn't too keen on MOMA (he doens't like Modern Art) but I convinced him that it would be worth it. In the end, I think he decided that it was the best museum because it had an exhibit examining things related to children. This included advertising, toys, films etc. 

And it had these giant tables and chairs that we were allowed to climb over!

On Saturday morning I finally made it back to the Guggenheim (Spu went shopping), but the main spiral was closed due the the installation of an exhibit so we could only take photos in the foyer and look at the exhibits in the annexe.

Then when I left the museum, there was, irony of ironies, a German culture parade on! It actually kinda made me wish I had my dirndl with me but I did end up having a nice chat (auf Deutsch!) to these Swabisch ladies who'd been in the US for 40-50 years.