We had been a bit depressed by the weather of the day before…this Monday will be on par.
As soon as we got up, I logged onto my account to see that our flight had been cancelled due the Air France strike…We came to a solution after spending 5h30 on call with Expedia‘s customer care (a really good customer service that went beyond what was expected). We found a solution but with a change of airport in Paris and a 8h30 layover there…I was so angry and sad to see that the vacation I had carefully planned was down the gutter because of the strike. I felt we had been robbed of 36h of holidays actually.
All in all, we managed to escape from the heavy rain falling on NYC that morning. We even got Flash Flood alerts on our cell phones. We are not accustomed to that in France and we were a bit surprised by the shrill sound!!!
We left the Wyndham at 10.30AM and headed to the American Museum of Natural History.
The American Museum of Natural History
The AMNH is the museum featured in the movies Night at the Museum. We do love these movies and the kids asked to visit this museum. So we stopped on the 86th street, but since it was almost lunch time, we decided to make our way to the nearest Shake Shack, the one we couldn’t get into the day before.
It was only 11.00AM on a Monday and it was rather empty. Everybody had told us that it was amazing, that the burgers were tasty etc… but we were disappointed: small burgers and fries, expensive (tasty indeed, but…what a day 🙄 )
The rain had stopped while we were eating and the waiting line for the AMNH was loooong. It seemed the French tourists had decided to gather there!!! That was funny.
Once again, the Explorer Pass saved us from long waiting lines.
This museum is amazing and we should have planned 2 full days to fully appreciate it.
The dinosaur rooms were crowded (to say the least), but since they have high ceilings they didn’t feel stuffy.
The Teen was a bit disappointed to see that the gem’s rooms were being refurbished (I wasn’t!).
We spent quite a few hours at the museum before leaving. We stopped to buy some donuts (a walk down memory lane, when we had donuts during our first trip as a couple in Florida!!!). We had troubles finding a Dunkin’ Donuts shop and ended up finding one at the entrance of a subway station. We got the big box and eased ourselves onto a bench at the bottom of a office building!!! We tried not to make a mess of ourselves with sugar/jelly/multicolor sprinkles.
Then we went back to the hotel, to start packing. We were thankful to have taken the space-saver bags with us (since Miss G had bought quite a lot of Ufufy’s).
The evening
We still had 3 possibilities with our Explorer Pass. Our plan was to get on a Big Bus and tour uptown, but the weather being what it was and the hour late, we opted out. We took the children to the Mme Tussaud’s museum…and they had a blast!!!
We, as adults, also enjoyed our time there…some selfies will remain private…but we had a good laugh!
This girl knows how to behave!
We had a look into the m&m’s store (very expensive). We just bought lanyards for an upcoming trip.
We had a late dinner on Times Square.
Back to the hotel, we started packing. We were leaving the day after at 10.00PM so we still had a full day of shopping ahead. I needed some Sharpie pens, Miss G wanted to experience a K-Mart (and buy some typically American sweets!), and the boys wanted to visit…something related to a video game!!!
- Preparing our visit
- Travelling day
- From JFK to Manhattan Leaflet
- Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island
- Financial District and Empire State Building
- Brooklyn Bridge and the Intrepid Museum
- MoMA and Top of the Rock
- Cold day in the Big Apple
- American Museum of Natural History, Tusseaud’s and a strike
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