American Museum of Natural History and Wicked

By day two of New York City we were seasoned pros. Walk to the PATH station, ride to the WTC, connect to the appropriate subway to get to where we want to go. We even started walking across the street before the walking man came up, red hand still blazing a warning of impending doom.

The first stop of the day: the American Museum of Natural History where Lucas set out to recreate each scene of The Night At The Museum. Unfortunately that’s easier said than done and *spoiler* many of the exhibits from the movie are not actual exhibits at the museum.

Anyway, we started our visit slowly and deliberately, taking our time to inspect the ocean and forest exhibits, noticing the finest details. As the day wore on our viewing became more desperate. People’s feet were going to give out at any moment and Lucas still hadn’t found the Easter Island Head. We were dismissing exhibits left and right as not interesting enough or not located near enough to a bench with the former becoming more and more necessary with each passing moment. At long last! “Dumb-dumb want gum gum,” or the Easter Island head. Lucas’ life goal was fulfilled and we hightailed it out of there. Thankfully, we will again be able to relive most of the experience through Lucas’ wild-armed videography.

Exhausted as we were, some of our favorites were: looking for games people played throughout history and across cultures, the VR ocean experience, dinosaurs, Egyptian ruins and artifacts, and so much more. The museum is beautifully and richly detailed and the teacher in me couldn’t help thinking about research and dreaming of spectacular field trips.

Next we decided to check out Washington Square. As usual we walked one block in the wrong direction, Jason announced this fact, and then we turned around and found the subway station which plopped us out around the corner from the famous arch. Here we met Sephora, a six month old wearing a snow camo sun hat and a Mr. T/Chuck Norris onesie. Her sweet smiles perked us right up for another leg of our days journey. Off to Times Square!

The nearer to Times Square we got the more intense the foot traffic. Finally, Marcus’ vision of throngs of people was realized. After taking in the brightness and enormous scale of the area, and with a couple of hours to kill before Wicked, we ducked into Old Navy and gussied the boys up a bit with collared shirts. To be fair, Samus was already wearing a tuxedo shirt, but the kid loves a button down collared shirt like nobody else.

Now for one of my favorites: Nizza! A small but vibrant Italian restaurant in the Hell’s Kitchen area specializing in pizza. AND they make pizza on a chickpea crust that is totally gluten and yeast free!!!! YESIREE, I got to eat pizza!!!! Of course I chose the Margherita, hands down the best pizza ever, and I was not disappointed. We ate in typical Munsch fashion—ravenous lions with lunch recess duty. Marcus being the youngest in the pride and not yet fully versed in self cleaning, walked away with a face full of lasagna and a grin.

Bellies full we sauntered to the Gershwin theater to see Wicked. Not surprisingly the show was stupendous!

Once back at the camper we giddily discussed the day’s adventures. Lucas was sure that our subway car was being robbed on two separate occasions both when unstable men loudly announced their presence and began asking for money. Thankfully Jason has a look about him that wards off direct inquires and we were not approached.

As expected, we slept like dead horses.

 

Waiting to order at Nizza. Marcus was in the bathroom.