A Complete Novice In New York - Day 8 Museum Of Natural History, Farewell NYC We're Homeward Bound

[ally1966]

Today was our final day in NYC. It didn't feel as though we were leaving, even when the cases were packed and we'd checked out of the hotel.

Our flight wasn't due to leave JFK until 10pm so we stowed the bags in the hotel luggage room and set off to enjoy our last day in the city.

We headed into Central Park

We walked through Strawberry Fields and passed the Imagine memorial to John Lennon. There was a guy here singing Beatles songs, he was actually quite good so we stopped and listened for a while.

We then continued across the park towards our intended destination - The American Museum of Natural History. Chloe was absolutely fascinated with this place ever since learning that it was the museum from Night At The Museum. I'm not sure whether she thought the exhibits would really come to life, but it was one of the few places that she had asked to visit so we had to fit it in.

We were slightly disappointed to learn that the T-Rex from the film has been removed but apparently it wasn't real anyway. We did see these in the lobby whilst queueing to buy tickets.

There is a suggested ticket price here of $22 for adults and $12.50 for under 12s which they ask if you're happy to pay.
I'm not sure what would happen if you said no! Or maybe they're just hoping that you'll offer more, but we just paid the suggested amount.

The first room that we entered was full of animal exhibits.

Chloe thought this was King Kong!

We went from there into the African Peoples Exhibition. Nicola questioned whether we would be allowed into this room as we weren't African - I do sometimes wonder about her!

We wandered on through displays dedicated to Asian People's, Aztecs, Incas and many more.

It was all very interesting but we quickly realised that the place is vast and we could easily spend the entire day going round it all.

As time was limited, we decided to head upstairs to the main event - the dinosaurs!

Mission accomplished, we decided to call it a day in here but not before visiting the gift shop where Nic & Chloe each bought a Woolly Mammoth cuddly toy and I bought some dinosaur t-shirts to take back as presents for the grandkids.

We had a table reserved at The Boathouse for lunch as Ian and Georgie wanted a final look at their wedding venue.

However, Emily and Fiona had been wanting to eat at Bubba Gumps in Times Square all week and not got round to it. So we went our separate ways, agreeing to meet back at the hotel for 5.30pm to collect the luggage.

Our table was booked for 2.30pm but it was only about 1.30 when we arrived. As we didn't want to waste any time today we asked if it was possible to be seated any earlier. They promised to see what they could do and gave us a pager.

We went to the outside bar and ordered drinks while we waited but we'd only been there for about 10 minutes when the buzzer went off.

Once again we were seated at a great table with lovely views over the lake.

Ian, Georgie and I all had the New York Strip - which was amazing.

Daniel had the Duo of Boathouse Burgers.

and the girls both had the hotdog off the children's menu.

Ian and Georgie had the chocolate cake for dessert.

I had a caramel bread and butter pudding, this was amazing!

Dan and Nic had a trio of ice-cream. This got a mixed response, neither of them were keen on the mint choc chip (said it tasted like toothpaste!) but they enjoyed the other flavours.

Chloe had the children's chocolate ice cream.

The lunch menu here is slightly different from the dinner menu. The kids preferred the choices today from the ones that were available on the wedding day. It was significantly cheaper. I paid $211 including drinks and tip.

After dinner Ian took me to see the boating lake (from Stuart Little) and the Alice in Wonderland statue, both of which I'd failed to find by myself.

We also saw the statue of Hans Christian Anderson.

We then toyed with the idea of visiting the zoo but decided that there wasn't enough time left to do it justice. We had to bribe Chloe with the promise of a trip to Twycross on our return home and set off to buy some last minute gifts from the souvenir shops instead.

Shopping completed, we headed back to the hotel for the last time. We spotted Emily and Fiona in Langan's, the Irish bar next door and called in to have a final drink with them. We all agreed that we'd had a fantastic holiday and made many memories that will last a lifetime.

Sadly we collected our luggage and the concierge booked us 2 cabs for the return journey to the airport. We were picked up at 6pm and the journey back took about an hour and cost $70 per vehicle including tolls, taxes and gratuity.

We browsed around the airport shops for a while and I bought the kids a McDonalds as none of them had really enjoyed the food on the plane flying out.

We took off about half an hour late and the flight passed very slowly! Chloe slept for most of it.

I was disappointed to find that the film selection was exactly the same as flying out so spent most of the flight reading or listening to music.

The meal choices were beef, chicken or pasta. I had the beef which was OK.

The children's meal was chicken nuggets and mash which looked very unappetising and Chloe didn't eat any of it.

About an hour before landing we were served a breakfast which consisted of a pot of raspberry yoghurt, an oat and honey cereal bar and a glass of orange juice. This was nothing special and most of it went in the bin.

We made up some time en route and landed only 10 minutes behind schedule. However this coupled with a long wait at passport control was enough to ensure that we missed our train. So I am writing this from the train and after a very long day travelling, should finally be home in about 15 minutes.

We have had an unbelievably good time in New York and the wedding was amazing. There isn't much that I would change about it at all, except maybe a little more time to get everything done.

We are all totally exhausted and will probably need a holiday to recover from the holiday - I'm very glad that I've got the rest of the week off work.

Thanks for reading and I hope that you've enjoyed our adventures as much we did!