Snakes! In a zoo!
Jul. 10th, 2006 09:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhuA quick review of our time in New York.
Thursday: Mom took us and the kids to the Bronx Zoo. Highlights: the bug carousel; the reptile house (Snakes in a herpetology exhibit!); the monorail; butterflies alighting on Alissa's hat; watching them feed the tigers. In short, all the stuff that costs extra (but we bought "Pay One Price" passes so it wasn't too expensive) was well worth it. Tani brought his FRS radios and had a blast calling from one "Skyfari" cable car to the next (which had![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
introverte, Mom, and Alissa.)
Thursday night: The Drowsy Chaperone was delightful. We laughed and laughed.... it was far more entertaining than it had any right to be, given the flimsiness of the concept, but it was masterfully executed and kudos to them. My nits are few; I give it one kvetch. Cole Porter is giggling in his grave.
Dinner at Le Marais, on the other hand, was a disappointment. The meat was underdone and fatty rather than marbled; the service was very poor. The warm chocolate cake was wonderful as always but H and I left thinking that it may be time to find another favorite restaurant in Manhattan. We still haven't made it to Levanah, and a friend mentioned a great place across from J2.
Friday we want to the American Museum of Natural History. The kids were not very cooperative. In retrospect, we were expecting too much of them; they were probably still exhausted from walking all over the Bronx Zoo the day before. I found the Rose Center very disappointing; it was a nice work of art based on astrophysics but I thought as a pedagogical tool it sucked. They had this whole thing about "scale" and powers of ten, with examples of physical items approximating each power of ten meters, but at 10^0 they had nothing that indicated how large one meter actually is. And at 10^-1 the panel said "At this scale, the Hayden planetarium sphere is actual size" which I would have thought should have been at 10^0. Meanwhile, some of the scale models are so near the ceiling that you really can't see them from where their descriptive plaques are; you can only see them out of context from across the room. Etc. Four kvetches for the Rose Center.
On the other hand, you apparently really can't go wrong with the classics. The kids were transfixed by the dioramas, and frankly so were we. (Quoth Tani: "Those aren't real live animals, they're real dead animals!")
And at Shabbat dinner my precious not-quite-three-year-old-daughter caught herself talking about the "aminals" and very carefully pronounced "a-ni-mals" (and then promptly reverted for the rest of the conversation. *Phew!*)
Shabbat was low-key. We had a lovely time at the playground near my parents' house.
Sunday was my dad's 70th birthday surprise party. It got off to a rough start (mostly because of the confusion regarding the kids' table) but in the end everyone had a good time, my dad was touched and my mom was happy. I gave a short toast (to be posted under separate cover) which went really well.
Sunday night H and I went to a milchig cafe a few blocks from my parents' house for dinner. It was nice, if a little overpriced. But I haven't had crepes in years and they were excellent.
And today we drove back.
Thursday: Mom took us and the kids to the Bronx Zoo. Highlights: the bug carousel; the reptile house (Snakes in a herpetology exhibit!); the monorail; butterflies alighting on Alissa's hat; watching them feed the tigers. In short, all the stuff that costs extra (but we bought "Pay One Price" passes so it wasn't too expensive) was well worth it. Tani brought his FRS radios and had a blast calling from one "Skyfari" cable car to the next (which had
introverte, Mom, and Alissa.)Thursday night: The Drowsy Chaperone was delightful. We laughed and laughed.... it was far more entertaining than it had any right to be, given the flimsiness of the concept, but it was masterfully executed and kudos to them. My nits are few; I give it one kvetch. Cole Porter is giggling in his grave.
Dinner at Le Marais, on the other hand, was a disappointment. The meat was underdone and fatty rather than marbled; the service was very poor. The warm chocolate cake was wonderful as always but H and I left thinking that it may be time to find another favorite restaurant in Manhattan. We still haven't made it to Levanah, and a friend mentioned a great place across from J2.
Friday we want to the American Museum of Natural History. The kids were not very cooperative. In retrospect, we were expecting too much of them; they were probably still exhausted from walking all over the Bronx Zoo the day before. I found the Rose Center very disappointing; it was a nice work of art based on astrophysics but I thought as a pedagogical tool it sucked. They had this whole thing about "scale" and powers of ten, with examples of physical items approximating each power of ten meters, but at 10^0 they had nothing that indicated how large one meter actually is. And at 10^-1 the panel said "At this scale, the Hayden planetarium sphere is actual size" which I would have thought should have been at 10^0. Meanwhile, some of the scale models are so near the ceiling that you really can't see them from where their descriptive plaques are; you can only see them out of context from across the room. Etc. Four kvetches for the Rose Center.
On the other hand, you apparently really can't go wrong with the classics. The kids were transfixed by the dioramas, and frankly so were we. (Quoth Tani: "Those aren't real live animals, they're real dead animals!")
And at Shabbat dinner my precious not-quite-three-year-old-daughter caught herself talking about the "aminals" and very carefully pronounced "a-ni-mals" (and then promptly reverted for the rest of the conversation. *Phew!*)
Shabbat was low-key. We had a lovely time at the playground near my parents' house.
Sunday was my dad's 70th birthday surprise party. It got off to a rough start (mostly because of the confusion regarding the kids' table) but in the end everyone had a good time, my dad was touched and my mom was happy. I gave a short toast (to be posted under separate cover) which went really well.
Sunday night H and I went to a milchig cafe a few blocks from my parents' house for dinner. It was nice, if a little overpriced. But I haven't had crepes in years and they were excellent.
And today we drove back.