What. A. Museum.

As dinosaur lovers, we had to take a trip to the American Museum of Natural History whilst we were in New York City. It was one of the first plans we made for our trip and we even considered making in a two-day thing, but after paying $22 each for entry, we just walked faster instead. The museum was good, but not good enough to make me shell out twice for entry.

This museum had the most extensive collection of large animals that I’ve ever seen, including animals that we have never seen before, and we’ve been to a few of these museums. Not only that, but the animals were set up in gorgeous exhibits, with painted walls, the animals arranged into a fitting scene to match and then all the little features to make the whole thing come together. It was like looking at a work of art and not a museum exhibit. Most of the time we spent there went to looking at these exhibits and enjoying all the little details of each exhibit.

It was pretty tough to narrow down–pfft, who am I kidding, I didn’t narrow down the photos, I put them all in this post because you just have to see how amazing the exhibits were.

Even better–that’s right, it got better than amazing– there was plenty of room to move about the halls so you could take your time to enjoy things without getting in too many peoples’ ways or being shoved that often. It’s pretty much impossible to avoid a good ol’ shove in a museum but I was definitely impressed by how few times this seemed to happen. Despite there being every single child on the planet there on the day we went–I’m not joking, at least three school buses emptied of children as we approached the entrance–we hardly ever had to elbow a ten-year-old out of the way. The dinosaur exhibits were the exception, they were heaving with people, but that was more to do with the crowd and by the time we’d got to that part it was in the middle of the afternoon.

I’m just going to nerd-up and admit it, but my favourite exhibit was the biodiversity one. Not so much for the education, but it was so well displayed that you couldn’t fail to be interested in it. With little glass bacteria at the start to a school of fish hanging over head–there was a giant squid floating on the ceiling somewhere too–it displayed so elegantly the intricate relationship of all life on the planet. Removes nerd helmet. 

Oh and following the biodiversity exhibit was a life-sized model of a blue whale. A blue whale. Ever since I was a kid and read somewhere that a blue whale was bigger than a bus, I have wanted to see one (I still dream of seeing one in the wild) but seeing this life-size model, that made my soul squeal in delight.

I didn’t enjoy the dinosaurs as much as the animals, but it’s hard to enjoy something that you can only see through the armpit of a very tall man. In hindsight, we should have made our way to the dinosaur exhibit as soon as we arrived and hoped that no one else had the same idea. But we didn’t. You live and you learn. Still, it was hard not to be impressed by the huge collection of original skeletons they had here.

Seriously. What. A. Museum.

In the end we spent around six hours at the museum, and we didn’t see everything. But, we saw enough to get our monies worth, which is always important. Have you ever been to the American Museum of Natural History?