Visiting America was one of our biggest dreams, which we managed to achieve in the summer of 2019. We chose New York as our main destination, as we wanted to experience everything first-hand that we had seen in the movies for so long. And the Big Apple won our hearts!
If you don’t already know, amongst the huge buildings and skyscrapers of this vibrant city, which some even consider the center of the world, stretches the lush green park, Central Park. We were lucky enough to stay next to the park, but even luckier that our accommodation was very close to the American Museum of Natural History. More specifically, the museum is located at 79th Street and Central Park West. The nearest subway stations are 81st Street station, from the B and C lines, and 79th Street station from the 1 line.
More information about where we stayed in New York City can be found here.
Many of you may have seen parts of the museum from various scenes from Hollywood movies. Featured films include “The Mummy”, “Men in Black 2”, “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” and many others. Furthermore, the films “A Night at the Museum” 1, 2 and 3 were almost entirely shot in the museum.
See how to get your ESTA for your visit to the U.S. here.
But before we go into what you’ll see at the museum, we’ll give you some useful information for your visit. First, the hours of operation are from 10 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. The exceptions are Thanksgiving and Christmas. The cost for admission to the museum is $23 for adults, $13 for children ages 3 to 12 and $18 for seniors over 60. These prices are indicative and suggested by the museum. However, visitors may pay as much as they wish in the form of a sponsorship.
A visit to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, then, is a highly educational and fun experience for adults and children alike. It provides a huge variety of exhibits, from the age of dinosaurs, insects, plants, human civilization and the universe. It consists of 28 connected buildings housing 45 exhibition halls and over 33 million exhibits and finally it has a planetarium and library, which basically means you could spend over a year of your life living at the natural history museum and still not see it all.
Below we’ll list some of the exhibits that left us speechless and that made such an impression on us that we still retain vibrant memories.
The Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life
This hall highlights the vibrant life of the underwater world, the diversity and complexity of this immersive environment. But the exhibit you can’t miss ( you simply mustn’t!) is the huge 29-metre blue whale. This particular mammal hangs spectacularly over the centre of the room. The coral reefs as one can see them from the bottom of the sea, the collision of the whale with the huge squid and the huge dolphin and tuna exhibit are what we kept in our memory among other things. During our visit to this particular hall, we also had a VR experience based on the underwater world. Similar themed events are held in other halls, so don’t miss the chance to try something similar if you get the chance.
Hall of Biodiversity
The Hall of Biodiversity presents in the most intense and vivid way the beauty and abundance of life on our planet, highlighting the different species and the factors that threaten them. The most impressive exhibit for us is the Dzanga – Sangha. A rainforest with its flora and fauna and the exhibit The Spectrum of Life, which shows the evolution of different species from microorganisms to terrestrial and aquatic giants.
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6 rooms with Mammal exhibits
The Akeley Hall with African Mammals is one of the most famous. One of the most famous is the Akeley exhibit. In the middle of the room is the exhibit with a family of African elephants. The other halls are the Primate Hall with monkeys, apes, monkeys and the evolution of man. Mammals of Asia Hall, focusing on the large mammals of India and Thailand. The room we unfortunately saw very hastily due to lack of time, was the North American Mammals’ room. There one can see bisons, bears, reindeer and many more. Yes we did see the latter in a hurry, however that doesn’t mean we weren’t impressed!
Fossil Halls
Of the 6 rooms housing exhibits with dinosaur fossils, we were blown away by the 37-meter Titanosaurus, which is so large that its tail and head protrude from the entrances of the room. In the Vertebrate Origins room hangs the skeleton of Pterosaurus and the exhibit with the dentition of the famous extinct shark of Megalodon.
Rose Center for Earth and Space
The Rose Center for Earth and Space includes the spectacular Hayden Sphere. There are also exhibitions exploring the vast range of sizes in the universe, the 13-billion-year history of the universe, the nature of galaxies, stars and planets, and the dynamic features of planet Earth.
Harriet and Robert Heilbrunn Cosmic Pathway
This is a 110-meter educational pathway that exposes the 130 billion year history of the universe. Artifacts along the path include a meteorite dating back to the birth of our solar system, a specimen from the oldest rock formation on Earth, a trilobite, the first animal with eyes, and the fossilized tooth of a giant carnivorous dinosaur.
More information for the American Museum of Natural History can be found here.
These were the highlights in our opinion and the ones that caught our interest during our visit. All of them have interactive educational exhibits in which you can learn a lot of information about the topic of each room. Inside the museum you will also find the three-storey shop to buy your souvenirs.
A visit to the American Museum of Natural History in New York will not leave you indifferent! You’ll leave with enough information to bring up in conversations with friends and kids for years to come!!!
