Beat the Heat – Day at the Museum

Yesterday was one of the hottest days on record in New York. The temperature was forecast to reach 38C, but ended up being 43 in some spots in town. Our plan to beat the heat had been to spend the day inside the air-conditioned American Museum of Natural History.

The museum is only 4 blocks away from our anchorage in the Hudson River. We love going there. Yesterday was our fourth visit since we’ve been here.

Cool Dead Stuff

The first two times we went with our friends on Mrs. Chippy. We started our first visit with the dinosaurs and ended our second visit, via the African mammals, in the ocean section. The kids loved seeing the dinosaur skeletons, the models of extinct animals, and the stuffed modern animals. “So they killed all these animals to put them here?” Ehm, yes… Well, they say that most of the animals on display were donated by zoos after they died. Does that help?

Our last visit was yesterday. We can now proudly say that we have seen every room. I wouldn’t say that we have seen ‘everything’ because some rooms were more interesting to the kids than others. So we ended up being dragged out of certain rooms fairly quickly.

Irish Pub to the Rescue

We succeeded quite well at staying inside, until just after lunch: we hit ‘the wall’. After seeing some more dinosaurs, Asian mammals and peoples, we needed to get outside. So we spent some time sweltering in a Central Park playground, then found an Irish pub! After a Guinness, a cider, and Shirley Temples for the kids, we felt refreshed enough to get back to the museum.

Back inside the museum, we traveled through space, drank some lemonade, then decided we had had enough. So we strolled back to Spacegrazer. It is usually cooler on the water, so the temperature on the boat was not too bad.

The forecast for today is more heat. We’re staying on the boat today. Unfortunately we won’t be able to jump off the boat to cool down. The Hudson looks filthy after all the rain we’ve had. Wish us luck 🙂