Invisible (New York)

Good evening dear reader, I'm sorry, I've been somewhat distracted tonight.  I sat down to write today's post and have been consumed by a story on TV of a man with a 132lb scrotum, that'd be almost 60kg for the metric crowd.  Prime time TV?  Very sad story though.  I don't mean to make light of the situation, but the show was called "The man with the 132lb scrotum" totally original.

I'm still writing this post and the next show has just come on and it is about about a man with an 80lb scrotum - really? Two in a row? And what an under-achiever.

Moving on

Anyway ... we had the usual night with the usual crowd having the usual arguments/discussions in VERY LOUD VOICES, culminating in the 4:30am discussion between a man and a woman that finished with, "Well you just keep walking if you think that's gunna work for you."  Female voice. Silence.  Only a brave man would take the next step.  We'll never know.

Stuff from the day
It may well be reported differently by others, however, I deny ever seeing the child.  OK, she did collide with my knee and she did fall, but it wasn't my fault. If you take kids to a place like this they need to be kept under control. It was dark, she was running free - against traffic flow on the wrong side of the path.  Whatever.

As we were leaving the museum today a group turned up looking to gain entry.  There was less than an hour for the museum to remain open.  They were surprised when they were denied access to a place where we have spent in exess of the last five hours.  WTF?

We must look like we know what we're doing because we were asked for directions on the subway twice today. Special.

The title?  Thanks for staying with me, Invisible by Alison Moyet, because I'm sure I'm wearing the cloak of invisiblity. People keep walking into me, shouldering me, bumping me, walking directly toward where I am standing or walking.  The child I wrote about a couple of paragraphs earlier is proof.

The American Museum of Natural History

Yes, I know, another museum, but we like that sort of thing.  This one is five floors and some underground stuff too.  Negotiating the floors, even with a map, proved a challenge.  There were some excellent displays/exhibits but there was some pretty average stuff as well - including inaccurate information.  OK, I'm a pedant, but, this is a major museum and the expectation is they will get it right.  In two instances they were wrong. One was just purely wrong and the other was spin doctor bullshit. The photographic evidence will be somewhere below this.

Sydney at the Quay, no date, caption the next photo.

Absolute bullshit. A performing buying lunch maybe.

Totally wrong. What about wild camel in Australia?

What is it with places like this that encourages parents to bring children of an inappropriate age? Kids in strollers are clearly not going to get the purpose of being there. Slightly older kids are interested for 10 minutes and disinterested for 5 hours, screaming and annoying everyone else for most of that time.  Taking your toddlers to a museum won't make them smart and just demonstrates how stupid you are - because they are too young to understand what they are seeing and why they are there.

Pride rock #1

Pride rock #2

American Beaver (stop it).

This place is an absolute boon for schools.  They love a good diarama and believe me they do a great diarama.  Also, they have some excellent life-sized animal exhibits.  The real issue is finding a path through all the exhibits that doesn't mean you keep back tracking on yourself - impossible.  Or the other challenge, visiting the museum without walking through one of the four (?) or so museum shops - also impossible.

Too many of the exhibits were not lit, as in the globes needed changing, not for effect.  Some had way too much dust on them and in some areas the carpet was filthy.  I understand that to maintain a place like this is a massive effort, but, if you are going to charge admission then ...

The dinosaur exhibits were AWESOME.  Mind blowing stuff.  Great skeletal reconstructions of so many fascinating animals.  I'll let the photos do the talking ...

We made it to the last exhibit but couldn't get some of the photos we wanted because some areas were closed because they were preparing for a function this evening.  Sorry, not good enough for paying guests - and that was at least an hour before closing time.

T Rex

Mammoth

Check out these horns Bambi

Stegosaurus

It was incredibly difficult to navigate around the museum, right down to leaving.  We headed back around 5pm to where we began to find the doors closed and the area off limits.  Of course, that makes sense - to someone. I remembered seeing an exit elsewhere so we made our way towards that and found the subway.

Dinner

OMG. Via Della Pace on St Mark's Place. The best Italian I've had outside Italy.