NYC: Day 6

We spent most of our day at the American Museum of Natural History and then ended the night at a free comedy show.  Gotta love NYC.  :)

So we ended up going the wrong way towards the subway station and ended up in Riverside Park, near the water.  Whoops!  A really helpful, nice guy literally stopped walking and took out his headphones to help us go in the right direction.  Yay!

American Natural History Museum

The main reason I wanted to go here was because I had watched Night at the Museum, which technically takes place in the American Natural History Museum.  In honest, most of the scenes were filmed in a sound stage that was constructed and inspired by the ANHM, so in real life, the museum is toootally different.  For instance, this is the horse statue of Teddy, and there isn't a wax one inside, like depicted.  It was a little bit of a let-down, but still a cool experience.

At  four stories, it's a great place to learn and has something for every one.  Plus, the admission fee is suggested, so you can spend as much as you'd like to get in.

You'll find things here like the oldest rock ever found.

 You can also learn a whole lot about earthquakes.  This is a map of the most recent earthquakes, and I just found it hilarious how many of them were concentrated in Cali.

And how many of the recent ones were in Northern Cali alone.

The Rose Center is a part of the museum.  The big orb is the planetarium, and to get inside, you have to pay an additional fee.  The woman at the front was really nice and gave us child prices.  I've seen two planetarium shows, and every one has been narrated by Whoopi Goldberg.  What's up with that?  But anyway, this one was amazing and really made you feel like you were among the stars.  They also had a closed aquarium full of fish and algae that was reeeally dirty.  I really don't know how it will work.

LUNCH: Andy's Deli

A little grocery store with a deli counter, this place is great!  The guy at the counter was a super friendly, big Italian guy, and he kept yelling at his two employees, Palo and Mario-- or some similarly Italian names.  I got the turkey sandwich with a huge, pipping hot knish with mustard.  The knish was filled with potato and spicy mustard baked underneath the flakey dough.  Got some orange juice, and it was all decently priced.  I even had leftovers.

Back at the museum...

There's a bunch of stuffed animals here.  These were some of my favorite ones.

Reminded my sister of Peter Rabbit!!

This reminded my sister of Kung Fu Panda-- except with a skunk.

There were also some giant buffalo and baby skunks following their mother!

Me and sea animals don't mix very well, but this giant blue whale over the ceiling was pretty cool!

THIS, on the other hand, was creepy.

Swim turtle!

This the museum's version of a tree.  SO CUTE!

Every animal is made from origami!

Love these windows from the African exhibit.

Attack of the dinosaurs!  These aren't real fossils, since they'd be too heavy to pose.

 The view outside of the museum.  :)

Doesn't the baby penguin look so smug?  Haha.

The sight from the top of the museum from a cute circular view area.

And the ground at the museum's subway stop (yeah, it has it's own subway station).

DINNER: Flor de Mayo

A Peruvian-Chinese restaurant, Flor de Mayo is definitely an interesting and tasty eating experience.  There aren't a lot of Asian people on the streets as it was, so the first time I saw the store owner, I must have been a little too happy because he smiled back and said, "Long time no see."  Hahaha, he was totally faking knowing me!

Anyway, so it turns out that the majority of the population in Peru is Asian, so this combination isn't as weird as it seems.

We had the signature Pervuian-Chino mix dish, the lomo saltado, which is steak, french fries, tomato and onions stir-fried.  It was so tasty and went really well with their yummy, yummy green rice (which is basically cilantro flavored).  We also had their grilled chicken, which was really moist and tasty and has unsurprisingly won a bunch of awards (reminds me of Zankou in LA).

UCB's Whiplash

 At the spur of the moment, we decided to go to this free comedy show at the UCB, since I loved Assscat at UCBLA so much.

The MC was HILARIOUS and reminded me of Bobby Moynihan.   He told us this story about how we first came to NYC and decided he had to act like he lived there.  While on the subway, a homeless man came on, gave a sob story, and then threatened to throw pee on everybody if nobody donated.  The comic realized nobody made a move.  Me and my sister were in tears at this story simply because the other day, we had had a homeless man give our car an awkward speech, pleading for money, too.  We had a NYC experience!  Anyway, most people were funny (there was also another super nerdy, self-depricating guy telling us how he got a death-look from an audience member in the front row who seemed to question his very life choice to be a comedian).  The only guy that truly flopped was this Irish guy who just wasn't hitting it with Americans.  The "famous" guy the round out the night was this white guy who's supposedly the white guy in every black movie.  He joked about being drunk and forgetting to have a set that night, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't joking.

 Also, by the way, doesn't this guy totally look like Jason Biggs?

And that was our last night in NYC!!  I loved every moment of it, and it's definitely a great city to visit... I'm not sure about living though, haha.  Especially since every joke we heard that night was about how poor everybody is and struggling to just survive.  Plus, how do you ever get used to all of the tourists?  But man, the public transportation was amazing, and it really is a city that never sleeps.

Anyway, next post, I'll share some gorgeous photos from the plane ride back.  :)