Week Off

I had a week off after my Hematology and Oncology rotation before starting my Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.  There were tons of things that I wanted to do in NYC, but I had to limit myself because I had to fly out for residency interviews (exciting and expensive).  I spent a lot of time at the gym and doing things around the house, but I decided to go to one museum on my week off: The Natural History Museum.  It was a beautiful October day so I walked rather about 25 blocks rather than taking the train directly to the museum.

A picture of the museum from across the street in Central Park.

There is a giant dinosaur on exhibit in the main entry way.  I am not a dinosaur expert, so I'm not sure what it is, but it is huge.

There is a butterfly exhibit on display.  I loved all the beautiful colors.

After seeing all of the butterflies on display, I went into the butterfly room.  The humidity was high and it was a tropical feeling area.  Once I got into the room, I thought "What were you thinking?!?!  There are insects flying all around."  But after a few minutes, I got used to it and enjoyed observing the butterflies in their environment.

After seeing the butterflies, I headed up to the fourth floor to see the largest dinosaur exhibit...IN THE WORLD.  Dinosaurs are not my favorite thing, but I  was amazed by their size.  There were different rooms of dinosaur fossils and other pre-historic animal fossils.  I posted a few of the better pictures below.

 After going through the fossil rooms, I went through the exhibits of animals from around the world.  They took skins of animals and made exhibits with the skins on molds and the environment.  I took tons of pictures, but none of them really turned out too well.  There were animals form every continent.  It was like going ton a safari, but I never left NYC.

After finishing up with the animal exhibits, I headed to the anthropology exhibits.  This was probably my favorite part of the museum.  There were some amazing pictures and artifacts.  They had things from South America, the Pacific Islands, Africa, and Native Americans from North America.

This was one of my favorite artifacts.  It is a map of the constellations from the Pacific Islanders Exhibit.  The seashells are the stars and the sailors would hold it up to the sky at night to determine where they were.

They also have an exhibit about space.  This is is a meteor!

A giant seashell that I just liked.  I dont' remember anything else about it.

 I had a great day at the museum, thankfully, I didn't have a night at the museum (like the movie).  Here is a sign from the entrance leading to the subway station just below the museum.