Day at the museum

Yesterday marked the first of our 3x per week hospital trips, which would naturally be a pretty dull 2 hour round trip, most of that spent in the car. So instead of coming straight home, we went further afield instead, to the Auckland Museum!

It's free for locals, and a wonderful resource! We haven't been in a while, so the kids were very keen. Unfortunately someone forgot to replace the memory card in the camera, so it was the dodgy phone camera to the rescue!

First stop is always the volcano room! The museum is actually built on the crater rim of Pukekawa, one of Auckland's oldest volcanoes.

It's nice getting to watch a volcano being created right outside your window, whilst being in complete safety!

Then off to explore...

Spotting the live cave wetas -

Mealworms and assorted things in jars -

Playing with the electronic microscope -

Watching crickets -

And finding Nemo -

The armoury and WWII planes are always interesting -

There's also currently a free special exhibition on called Moana - My Ocean, which takes you from the tiny creatures that live near the surface of the water, right down to the denizens of the deeps in the Kermadec Trench.

I thought this was a cool idea, a giant pink anemone made from pool noodles forming the walls of a 3D cinema space!

And this was cool, a wrap-around projection room showing how a 'Bait Ball' of small fish is created & how the various predators manipulate it - 

And who can resist some sharks?!?!