When I was small, my parents always knew what I wanted to do that weekend when my reply would be, “I want to see the big elephant!” Unlike soldiers, for whom “going to see the elephant” was a metaphor for combat, my big elephant was just that—a taxidermy elephant mounted in the entrance of the American Museum of Natural History.
As a child, I was absolutely astounded by the sheer size of the museum. Located on a quiet city block across from the idyllic Central Park, the museum was much like the TARDIS on “Doctor Who,” larger on the inside than it is on the outside. Room after room spread out before me, bringing exotic animals and far away cultures closer to me than I could imagine.
On school trips, while most students flocked to the dinosaur exhibit, I headed off for the Meso-America exhibit, where the shrunken heads and Olmec statues were. Here, I would spend ages pressing my nose to the glass as I stared at Mayan flints and Aztec sun disks that I would finally see in person a decade later.
Unlike other museums, this is not just for the wide and wondering eyes of children. On our weekend in the city, David and I dropped out luggage in our hotel room and immediately hopped on the subway to the museum. We were famished, so our first stop was the cafeteria, which, admittedly, leaves a lot to be desired. I remember the cafeteria being on an upper level, in the Oceania room, complete with salads and sandwiches, but it seems to have disappeared in favour of the ground-floor cafeteria. This menu is, without a doubt, geared toward the young ones, with plenty of pizza and french fries at exorbitant prices and very little in the way of adult food. We ended up splitting a $5 kid’s meal of dinosaur chicken nuggets, fries, and a Coke just to tide us over until the museum closed and we could head to Hard Rock for a real meal.
Unlike the downstairs cafeteria, the museum does not disappoint. Back in my old favorite, the Meso-America room, I pointed out the model of the El Castillo in Chichen-Itza, explaining how I’d seen and sat on the steps of the real thing, dragged him to the shrunken heads, and essentially became a small kid again. New displays (or at least displays I haven’t noticed before), such as the Chilean mummy, fascinated me, while the Pacific Island exhibit, including items from Easter Island and Samoa, fascinated my boyfriend.
We waited until about 30 minutes to closing before heading to see the über-popular dinosaur exhibit. While the skeletons did impress, I found myself gravitating more toward the mammal fossils, including a small set of teeth you needed a magnifying glass to inspect. Finally, we headed downstairs, past my childhood favourite–the elephant–before heading home for the night.
The museum is open daily 10am to5:45pm. For more information, visit www.amnh.org.
From journal Midweek Weekend in Manhattan