There is so much to in New York and having spent 14 days here, we decided to split our posts by genre. This post is all about the museums in New York we visited. Read here for neighbourhoods and food in NYC.

America does museums well. Really well. They are huge and sometimes free. Therefore, you can get all the knowledge you want without a hefty cost.

9/11 Museum

I was 12 years old on 11th September 2001. Mum and I were sitting on our couch late at night watching TV when the first plane struck. We figured it was an accident and decided to sleep as it was a school day for me. When we woke up the next day, the world had changed. Nothing would be the same again.

While in New York, we had to visit the 9/11 site. The site itself is in downtown, close to Vasey St. It is a huge precinct and cannot be missed due to the new World Trade Center building. The site has two memorials, water fountains, for each tower and people that died in it as well as a memorial museum.

The entry ticket is $24 for adults. The entire museum is open to you with this ticket. Upon entering the museum, one is reminded and shocked by the images of that sad day. The museum is built several levels above the basement of the building. As you gradually travel down you learn about the building itself such as, why the towers were needed, the challenges in creating it and the geology which allowed such buildings to exist.

Shock and sadness are the repeated emotions in the museum as you learn of victims running through the fire escapes, fire fighters running in to save the people and phones calls of people calling their families for one last time. Through a series of exhibitions, we saw the victims photos and some of their belongings. You get the scale of the disaster when you see one metal pillar of the tower bent and broken like a piece of straw.

Finally, the events of the day are put in one section with news clips, quotes and air hostesses in hijacked planes. It has been nearly 15 years since 9/11 and one only understands what this day meant to America and other countries. What started that fateful day on 8:45am is still going and probably will go on for quite some time. Lest we forget!

Time needed: At least 3 hours
Visit site: National September 11 Memorial & Museum > Visit museum

American Museum of Natural History

This is one of the big museums in New York along with Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim. It is located next to Central Park. Due to Christmas holidays, the crowd was huge. As we got to the counter, we asked for general admission tickets. To our surprise, the cashier said “How much would you like to pay?”. “Excuse me?” we replied thinking we heard her wrong. The cashier then explained that the $22 price for adults was only “suggestive”. In Australian this means “Pay what you like, maaaate” and in Indian this means “Freeeeeeeeee!”. We still ended up donating $40.

As we entered the first section of the museum, we had to divide up the areas we wanted to see and ones we don’t. We visited the Asian peoples, African people’s and Native American section. At African section, Shruti had a panic attack about not being able to see the entire museum.

After this, we skipped an entire level and ended up at the extinct animals section. Seeing as time was running out and the crowd was the biggest in this section, we did a whirlwind tour of this section. However, the highlight was definitely seeing the large dinosaur skeletons as well as the dinosaur ancestors of modern birds.

American Museum of Natural History is gigantic. One could see it all in 8 hours and not read a single word in the museum. However, for most people it is impossible to do it all and that explains the “suggestive” prices. You pay according to what you want to see. It is not just big, it is incredibly detailed in humanities, astronomy and paleontology. Highly recommended!

Time needed: If you want to see and read it all, 3 days, otherwise split the visit by 6 hours for 2 days to go through everything. Lastly, do what we did, identify what is it you want to see and focus on it for 4 hours. Otherwise, this place will leave you information overloaded.
Visit site: American Museum of Natural History > Visit museum

National Museum of the American Indian

This museum is close to the Charging Bull, located in proximity to Battery Park. We happened to walk past this museum on Christmas day and I really wanted to see it. I felt that if we were in America, we should learn a little about the natives of this land. Actually I remember Shruti surprised me too – she wanted to see. AH WHAATT!

The museum is dedicated to all Natives of the Americas. You got to learn about the northern Canadian and Alaskan Tribes, Native Americans from all parts of the country, Native Central Americans, Incas, Aztecs, Maya, Mapuche of Chile, Brazilian Natives and even the Natives of the Caribbean.

In all, the museum is really detailed about tribes and their collections. They have interactive videos about some of the collections and one really gets to understand the differences and struggles of different tribes of this land. Even Shruti loved this museum as it had just the right amount of information. Unlike the American Museum of Natural History, it was not at all information overloaded.

I wish there was a museum of Australian aboriginals like this!

Cost: free
Time: 2.5 hours
Visit site: National Museum of American Indian > Visit museum

Museum of Jewish Heritage

Museum of Jewish Heritage is close to Battery Park as well. We picked it primarily because it was close to the  National Museum of American Indian. We visited it on Wednesday night and it was free to visit with donations.

While we had no one reason to visit this museum, we had always been intrigued by Jewish people and their stereotypes. The first part of the museum is primarily about Jewish practices, language, religion, politics and their arrival in America in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The second part is all about the build up of anti-jewish sentiment in Europe and the rise of Nazi Germany. It is quite scary when one sees the ghettos, media control and violence by Nazis. Even more sad is the fact that very few western nations at the time wanted to help the Jews.

The final part is about the end of war and creation of Israel and the future of Jews in the world. While we went in with no expectations, we ended up learning so much about the Jewish people, their plight and their future.

Like the Nation Museum of American Indian, this museum had just enough information and the events were recited in a visual story format making it very easy to follow.

Cost: $10 donation
Time: 2 hours
Visit site: Museum of Jewish Heritage > Visit museum

Conclusion

America has amazing museums. They are grand, well kept, detailed and extremely knowledgeable. Some can also be free depending on the day and time of week. If you are on budget, we recommended checking the timings of the museums so you can plan a good day out without hurting your wallet.

While we left out some big names, those were primarily art museums and we didn’t think we would enjoy them. New York City has a museum for all types of interests and can keep one occupied for a week.

So if you have been following our blog or the insta gallery, you know we are in Big Apple. There is plenty to see and do and lots of our friends and families here as well. When we had a chance of spending Christmas with Shruti’s family in New Jersey, we just could not say No! Although our wish to experience White Christmas went down the El Nino drain, we had the family trump card with us.

Christmas Eve

We were walking around Manhattan and googled events happening on Christmas eve. Turns out, there was a carols session taking place in Washington Park. We finished up with what we were doing and headed to the park.

We got there about 45 mins early only to realise we got there late. Most of the park benches were already taken.  We strolled around and snapped photos of the big Christmas tree by the park arch and massive colour patterns. It did look really pretty at dusk time. Btw, fun fact, Christmas trees in America are the real trees, the actual pine trees, not the plastic ones we pick up from a store back home.

After waiting for about 20 mins or so, the choir lined up and started singing the carols. We didn’t know this earlier, but this session was a ‘sing-along’, so the member of public were singing alongside the choir. Though at times the public missed the high pitch notes, it was all in Christmas spirit and laughed off.

I very quickly realised that Shruti knew some of the carols and I suppose that came from here schooling in a Christian school. While she was singing bits and humming most of the time, I stood there smiling and taking in the first-time-experience. Next Christmas in Sydney, I will definitely be googling for it.

The Busy Bull

The travel from Brooklyn to New Jersey is more than an hour so we decided to knock off a tourist spot along the way, the Charging Bull!

Based on a report in 2014, over 50 million tourists visit New York every year. Unfortunately for us, a large number of those visiting during Christmas had the same idea as us. When we got there, we were almost shocked to see the massive crowd.

As it is considered lucky to touch the bull’s head, there was a massive queue for it. We quickly realised that if we were to queue up, we would be standing around for 30 odd mins easy. So we decided to head to the backside of the bull. Turns out, we weren’t the only ones thinking of it too. There was a queue to take pictures with the bull’s bum and that wasn’t short either.

We quickly gave up and tried taking shots from whichever angle we could. Any part of the bull was acceptable by us.

The Ride to Jersey

New Jersey is adjacent to New York City but is separated by Hudson River. There is a train link between the two called the PATH train. Shruti’s cousin told us to get off at Exchange Place and he would pick us up from there. Turns out it is a great spot to admire the NYC skyline and the river.

New Jersey is home to many Indian immigrants and this was proved by an ad for ‘Comedy nights with Kapil‘, a highly successful Hindi comedy show, in the PATH train. Almost felt like India!

American Suburbia

Shruti’s cousin, Nikhil bhaiyya picked us up Exchange Place in Jersey City. We drove through small towns of New Jersey which serve as the suburbs of NYC. Along the way, we saw the port of New Jersey. However, the best thing for me was seeing all the trees completely bare in winter. We don’t see that back home.

The suburb are home to huge houses, lots of trees and lots of cars. The distances make public transport less frequent and making cars an absolute necessity. On the way back, we saw American McMansions, huge houses built on big blocks of land. While we thought Australia has huge houses, American houses out do those easily. It is the land of big food and big houses!

The Christmas Lights

We reached Edison, suburb in New Jersey named after Thomas Edison, as the sun was going down and we realised the houses were all decorated for Christmas. Living in Brooklyn and moving around in Manhattan didn’t really give us the full blown Christmas feel. Soon Nikhil bhaiyya realised that we were enjoying the lights so he decided to take a detour and show us more. Like back home, here Americans try and outdo one others. Some houses had the lights over including the the trees in the front yard.

We soon drove up to one particular house which was lit from roof to ground, leaving so spot unlit. I suppose that put all the neighbors in a weak spot as there was no other house lit up on that street! Talk about wiping out the competition.

Note: sorry we couldn’t take any photos as we were driving along and it was raining.

Meeting the Extended Family

Nikhil bhaiyya’s house was full of people Shruti and I had never met. Apart from his wife and twin girls Gauri and Shefali, there was his brother-in-law and cousin sister’s family. His brother-in-law, his wife and two daughters had driven over for Christmas from Washington DC while the cousin sister, her husband and two kids had driven from Pennsylvania.

Apart from being wowed by meeting so many people, I was impressed by them following the American culture so religiously (pun intended). They drove across states every Christmas and Thanksgiving to see one another.

The American Life

Bhaiyya and his relatives are all immigrants to America. They migrated here over 20 years ago for better opportunities for themselves and their kids. We had long conversation about America, its governance, states, weather, its culture and the life in this country.

Contrasting it to Australia, it couldn’t be more different. We have 6 states and 2 territories with little difference between some of them. USA has 50 states and most of them are vastly different to each other. The relatives were from 3 adjacent states next to each other but from their conversation they appeared to be vastly different.

While Jersey was close to New York, it’s culture was remarkably different. Similarly, Virginia sat on the edge of Washington DC and Southern America making it a political melting pot. Pennsylvania was between the two but was still different and even had Amish communities which are against the use of technology for religious reasons.

The weather was another major difference. While Australia is mostly hot, it had mild temperature and lack of major destructive forces except fire. America though can be very cold and has several different types of natural disasters. While we whinge about a rainy day, America gets snow storms where everything shuts down. They told us stories of snow storms and frostbite which certainly scared us for Alaska.

Another interesting aspect of America is the politics. The contest in Democratic and Republican convention is heating up. Though almost everyone at the Christmas dinner were Democrat supporters, they had all been hit by the costs of Obama Care. On the other hand, almost everyone agreed that Trump was a douchebag. Guys we’re all the same after all!

Indian American Ambitions

There were a few kids and teens at Bhaiyya’s house as well as Siddhant, ‘a grown up kid’, who was in 3rd year at university. The conversations with them and their parents revealed the high aims in education and in life. Moreover, the teens were already thinking of university, sometimes 3-4 years before entry.

There seemed to be a culture of following each other to the pursuit of the American dream with importance placed on family, background and knowledge. Perhaps this is how it had been for Jewish, Irish, Chinese and Italian immigrant families. Not long to go till we rockstars, judges, academics and politicians with the Indian background.

Goodbyes

We were having so much fun enjoying the food and conversing with the family that we ended up staying the night in Edison. The next day, we said our goodbyes to everyone. A few hugs, feet touches and waves later, we were out and back on the way to NYC.

The Spirit of Christmas

It was unexpected but we ended up spending the “real” Christmas with family. Having lived with my parents and not have many relatives in Australia, I couldn’t “go home” for Christmas. It was a similar case with Shruti. Surprisingly, a Christmas on the road ended up taking us “home for Christmas”. While we had never met the family before, a “home” afterall is a warm place, with great food, good vibes and amazing conversations. And that’s the spirit of Christmas!