29.7.2012 – 29.7.2012  31 °C

Early start today with me leaving M&D (who went to the Empire State Building) and heading for the Natural History Museum. It’s one of the places I’ve always been keen to see! Dinosaurs here I come!!

The subway drops you right at a side entrance to the museum so I hopped in and got going. I bought myself an additional ticket at the front office for entry to the planetarium. I’ve never been into a planetarium before (although I’ve got a pretty good idea what happens!) so was pretty keen to spend some time star gazing. I had to kill an hour before my session of the planetarium so I started my wander thru the museum.

At this point in my narrative, I need to voice a complaint about this institution. The Natural History Museum is one of the most famous museums in the world… When I think world class museums, I think British Museum quickly followed by the American Museum of Natural History. If you have followed my blogs since last year, you might remember that I wasn’t super stoked with the British Museum and I was even more disappointed with the Nat Hist Mus… For starters, the museum had run out of English maps! This museum is a rabbit warren (probably owing to its age) so no map is a bit of a problem. On top of this the many of the exhibits have been there for YEARS… I mean, styrafome backed dioramas went out of fashion before I was born!!

Taking away these couple of issues I actually had a pretty good day. I started in the American mammal section. This is display case after display case of taxidermied American mammals placed inside painted native scenes. I make it sound pretty ordinary but it was actually pretty good. I’m happy to report that on this trip we’ve seen nearly all of the native American mammals that we could have seen! We have only missed a few; wolves, wolverines, racoons and armadillos! We’ve still got time so who knows…

By the time I had wandered thru this section it was time for me to make my way over to the planetarium. On the way I discovered that I could download a free app (with the free wifi) that would show me around the museum.. Yeah! I now had a map of the galleries… you would have thought the info people could have told me this when I went hunting a map wouldn’t you? As it turned out the planetarium was right near me so I didn’t have to travel too far.

The planetarium is inside one wing of the museum. It is a big sphere that hangs right in the middle of the wing! Just like a star.. but I’ll come back to that later. The movie I watched inside the planetarium was truly inspiring (so much so, that I downloaded a book later on Amazon all about astrophysics… could be a bit hard going, fingers crossed the grey cells can work it out). It was all about the birth of the universe, what makes up the universe, our star and how stars work. I had walked in expecting to sit and watch the roof whilst the constellations were shown to me, and instead was transported thru our galaxy using hubble photographs. Just incredible! The clouds of hydrogen (like the Magellan clouds) are truly beautiful.

The part I found most amazing was just outside of the planetarium. As I said earlier, the planetarium is this big sphere in the middle of the wing of the museum. Alongside the planetarium sphere is a walkway that helps put the universe into perspective. At first it tells you that the planetarium is the universe and then shows a small football shaped plastic model that represents the Virgo Supercluster that our galaxy resides in. Next it says that the planetarium symbolises the Virgo Supercluster and that a small sphere (about the size of scoop of icecream) is the Milky Way. This description goes on and on until it gets you down to the Earth and our Sun. I still cannot comprehend how large our universe is (and probably never will) but this is the best representation I’ve ever seen of trying to put the Universe into a scale that us mere mortals can understand. The scale actually continues to try and explain how small things like protons and quasars and stuff are…. All in all the “stuff” that makes up our Universe is both incredibly small but turns into something unfathomably big.

After spending hours in the space part of the museum I actually spent very little time in the remainder of the museum. I was so inspired by the space stuff that I just didn’t have the energy to give the rest of the museum its due course (not to mention that the museum is pretty big so I had no chance of seeing it all anyway!). I instead used my new Museum app and walked to find some of the highlights. I wandered up to the 4^th floor to look first at the dinosaurs. The museum does have a pretty good collection but considering we were at Drumheller not a couple of months ago, it was feeling lacklustre. Honestly, this museum has a great collection, there is a T-Rex, some mammoths, Triceratops so if you have never seen Drumheller (or are unlikely to ever go to Calgary, Canada) then I’m sure it is impressive.. for me, it was lacking….

To be fair, after the planetarium anything I saw in the museum was going to have to be better than great to compete, so I did find the rest of the museum a bit lacking.. But that is just me! I also went and had a squizz at some moon rocks and the largest meteor in the world and I spent some time in with the beautiful mineral and stone collections. They have a sapphire here in the museum that has four lines running thru it. The lines aren’t fault lines (although this was my initial thought) it is a special type of Sapphire, a star sapphire. Would I pay thousands for one of these very precious stones… Nope! But I guess some people somewhere like these very rare (albeit strange) looking sapphires!

I left the Met mid afternoon and decided to do a meander down thru Central Park. The park is pretty awesome, there is everything from gorgeous lakes, to wide open spaces. I think the most gorgeous part of the park is the “Mall” that is lined with big Elm trees. I sat down near the Elms and had myself an ice cream and people watched. A model and her camera man decided to take some shots near me so I got to see plenty of classic poses! I find it funny when you see professional camera men out with their models and realise how much they use those big reflective dish things to enhance the light falling on the subject and thereby making the model “glow”… Trust me without photo shop some of these great looking models might just struggle a bit!

When I arrived down the bottom of Central Park I came out right near 5^th Ave so I decided to cut across to Lexington to see another New York icon, Bloomingdales! Like all big department stores it was very bright and colourful but it actually had a bit of character! I was expecting a really old beautiful interior (marble floors, corinthian columns.. that style of architecture) and was disappointed when I realised that it was just another dept store! Regardless, I decided to do a walk around and see what sort of gear they had on sale. On the 3^rd floor I hit the jackpot!!! I found my favourite jean brand and was able to buy a pair of jeans and a skirt at three quarters of the price I would pay for 1 pair of jeans in Au!!!! Very happy with that!

So after exercising my skills with my credit card I decided I needed to leave the store (rather than go and have a look at the shoes or handbag areas) and headed off to find the subway as tonight D and I are heading to Yankee Stadium to see the Boston Red Sox play the New York Yankees…

The game began at 8pm, we left at 6.30pm and only just made the start of play! The subway was jam packed (as you would expect) with Yankee and Red Sox supporters. When we arrived at the stadium it was a slow shuffle off the platform, down the stairs and to the ticket booth! I guess when a stadium has a capacity of 50,000, and is filled, it will be a slow old trek to your seat. We got our tickets and then had to work out where to go inside the stadium to find our seats. This stadium is only a few years old so it is pretty state of the art.. LED screens run right the way around the stadium (under the upper tier and above the lower tier). We walked in and had to ask someone where we needed to go. As it turned out we had to go up a set of escalators and then start walking up this endless ramp right to the top! Yep, we were sitting up in the boon docks… But what do you expect for 50 dollars a ticket (when we could have bought tickets for 300 dollars each!)

We were pretty lucky, we had two Japanese students sitting on our left (who were just crazy about this Japanese batter, Ichiro) and had a local Yankee supporter with his family on our right, so we spent the whole game chatting to the two of them about baseball, the rules and the intricacies of great baseball play.

The first seven innings were pretty dull (but were punctuated by the old organ music that you hear relating to baseball!). Today’s game is the third game of this round of the competition (each round they play three games). So for the past two days the Red Sox had been playing the Yankees at this stadium. Yesterday about 12 home runs were hit in the game, and the Yankees won, so I was hoping for plenty of action….. Not tonight! The Red Sox had scored twice in early in the innings and then nothing…..

The bottom of the seventh (Yankees are batting) the game started to heat up, a home run for the Yankees and then two batsmen on bases… Just need to get those two batters home and the Yankees are in the lead.. Ichiro (who I soon discovered is some uber famous baseballer here in the US—and a huge crowd favourite) stole a base—super exciting to watch—and then, the batsman hits the ball, the ball rockets up in the air, and is then caught in the outfield! All out and still only 1 run on the board…

Eighth innings, Red Sox are out quickly, Yankees get a few men on bases but no runs…. Ninth Innings, again no runs for Red Sox and last innings for the Yankees to score to even up the match or win… Apparently, they have special pitchers in the last few innings of a game. These pitchers are the cream of the crop and are brought in to make sure that they get the batters out quickly with no runs. In some games, they don’t even come out to pitch! Imagine getting paid to just sit around all night watching the tv?

Anyway, the Yankees come out and score another run!!! OMG the crowd were just going CRAZY… The game is now tied and the game had to go to overtime.. Overtime works that they keep playing innings after innings until one team scores and the other team does not.. Sadly, at the top of the Tenth the Red Sox scored and the Yankees couldn’t back it up… Game over, Red Sox are the winners..

Another slow ride back on the subway and 1.30pm fell into bed exhausted but still excited by the finish to the game! Last night in NYC.. L Back on the road tomorrow for the last leg of our trip!

Song of the Day– The Starland Vocal Band, Afternoon Delight