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After a successful subway expedition, I came out into the dazzling sunlight, heat beating down so much I regretted bringing my jacket. There was a long line to get through security and into the museum, and I almost decided I'd walk around Central Park instead, but decided that the museum's air conditioning (and exhibits) would be worth the wait.
The Natural History Museum is the one in the movie Night at the Museum, and there are definitely a lot of animal exhibits that look like they could come to life. I passed these and headed for the Human Origins area, which has displays of homo ergaster and homo erectus, homo neanderthalensis and homo floresiensis (aka hobbits). They also have a room next door with displays of meteors (with one massive one in the centre of the room) that would have to fulfil the 'space' part of my visit, because there is far too much to see and (unfortunately) they won't let you stay the night (the space section did look amazing, though, inside a massive sort-of floating white sphere inside a storeys-high hall). I checked out the Native American halls and the Margaret Mead Pacific Peoples exhibit, then made for the dinosaurs in my remaining forty-five minutes.
The dinosaurs did not disappoint. The head of an enormous not-a-brontosaurus-but-you-know-what-I-mean stares down at you as you enter the galleries, and you pass under it and around, coming across pterosaurs, T-rexes, triceratops and dinosaur eggs (amongst a lot of other things). Then you come to the early mammals, the mammoths (huge) and then the museum was closing.
Outside, it was pouring with rain. I figured out the secret way to the subway in the bowels of the building, and managed to make my way to Hudson Yards without getting wet - though then I had to dash through the now-half-hearted spitting to get to the huge Vessel sculpture, which is a ten-ish-storey high bronze lattice of staircases. They'd closed it during the rain, so I stared up at it for a bit before taking shelter in the mall beside it. This area is quite near the Hudson River, with views over it, and has only just opened to the public so some parts of the mall were still to open. One wall on the first floor was covered in two-way flipping sequins (which seems to be everywhere - cushions, diaries, handbags, clothes) that people were drawing and writing in.
The rain cleared, but you had to get a ticket to climb the Vessel and it was getting late, so I took some photos of it and headed back to my room in Brooklyn.
I was flying out of Newark Airport in the morning, so after saying goodbye to my room and roommate I took the subway to Penn Station, got myself a ticket by New Jersey transit and sat next to a woman who wasn't sure she had enough time to get to her flight. When we reached the airtrain (a futuristic sixties monorail) she dashed off to try to make it with forty minutes to spare - hopefully she did.
The airtrain gives you some great views of Manhattan as it takes you (no driver) around the futuristic sixties terminals. My plane to Toronto was a small four-seats-across turboprop aeroplane, which apparently have much better fuel efficiency than jets. There were even free snacks and drinks onboard, which I was impressed with, given the norm of air travel in the States as well as the norm of budget airlines. We landed on the Toronto Islands about an hour and a half later, and I walked through the tunnel to the mainland (I had been worried there would be an expensive ferry ride, but no, the ferry is free and is apparently the shortest ferry ride in the world at two minutes, and if you don't want to take the ferry you can walk).
B-Ball-Bro was waiting for me at the other end of the tunnel, and we walked into the city a little (this is an airport you can WALK TO THE CITY from), had a nice coffee and some lunch at a new shipping-container boutique development and caught a car back to B-Ball-Bro's apartment in Little Italy. Toronto (at least, the parts I saw) is a mix of very new condominium apartment buildings, all mirrored glass and chain stores at street level, and fine-grained old semi-detached houses, walkable streets with trams, parks (one had an outdoor ice hockey rink) and interesting little shops and restaurants. When Fab Fabric Gal got home from fabricking school, we took a walk around the neighbourhood and checked out the local wine and cheese scene, which is pretty good, saw SQUIRRELS and browsed some cool little shops. I decided I quite like Toronto.
Raccoons visited in the night, I think, though I did not see them :(
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