After that we walked across town to the USS Intrepid Air Sea and Space Museum. That's a fair long walk to be honest, but I thought it was worth it. The Intrepid is a WWII aircraft carrier. So it's big. The hangars have been converted into a museum on such things as the Purple Heart medal, NASA endeavours, and a couple of missiles. It's impressive seeing the size of the lifts used to transport ordnance and aircraft up to the flight deck, but you can't see the arrestor cables or the steam catapults or the engine room. On the deck is a slightly rusty collection of aircraft from an F16 Falcon to a Blackbird (not an SR71, an A12 - a slightly earlier model), with F14D and some foreign fighters aswell. There're some whirlybirds too!
Just on the far side of the dock to the Intrepid is a Concorde sitting sadly on a barge. What a beautiful airplane. A very graceful line on what is a surprisingly small plane! You can walk through the cabin, and view the cockpit but you can't sit on the seats as they're walled in with perspex. Shame. And there's also a missile submarine, the USS Growler, which is a bit of fun to scramble through. It's quite warm in there though.
In fairness, the Intrepid was away for refit in October, so we can't really complain about getting to see it while we were there!
After that we headed to the Natural History Museum. The original moans of "do we have to go in" from a certain travelling companion changed to a "do we have to leave" when the museum closed at 6! This is a fascinating and well laid out museum, charting the evolution of animals, explaining certain body structures and so on.
There's a slice from a redwood tree that's 1341 years across. Most importantly, they have DINOSAURS!!!! They have really gone all out with it, and we could have spent a whole day in here. This was a real highlight, and I can't recommend it highly enough for a visit.
After a quick stroll in Central Park (it was getting darkish) we went for dinner in TGI Fridays which wasn't at all bad - if it's good enough for the NYPD it must be good enough for tourists!
Just on the far side of the dock to the Intrepid is a Concorde sitting sadly on a barge. What a beautiful airplane. A very graceful line on what is a surprisingly small plane! You can walk through the cabin, and view the cockpit but you can't sit on the seats as they're walled in with perspex. Shame. And there's also a missile submarine, the USS Growler, which is a bit of fun to scramble through. It's quite warm in there though.
In fairness, the Intrepid was away for refit in October, so we can't really complain about getting to see it while we were there!
After that we headed to the Natural History Museum. The original moans of "do we have to go in" from a certain travelling companion changed to a "do we have to leave" when the museum closed at 6! This is a fascinating and well laid out museum, charting the evolution of animals, explaining certain body structures and so on.
There's a slice from a redwood tree that's 1341 years across. Most importantly, they have DINOSAURS!!!! They have really gone all out with it, and we could have spent a whole day in here. This was a real highlight, and I can't recommend it highly enough for a visit.
After a quick stroll in Central Park (it was getting darkish) we went for dinner in TGI Fridays which wasn't at all bad - if it's good enough for the NYPD it must be good enough for tourists!
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