New York: The American Natural History Museum...

The last time myself and the Missus were in New York and planned to visit the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), we were with the Boy and we got as far as buying tickets and going in through the entrance hall... before he started throwing up and we had to leave.

Five years later and the Boy is off living his own life with his girlfriend, so myself and the Missus were back in New York and determined to visit. And it started off as quite an odd experience.

A chunk of the ground floor is taken up by the diorama rooms, which are essentially painted scenes populated by stuffed and mounted animals. The information attached to each diorama is succinct and the staged scenes are fascinating to see, but it does feel a bit of an anachronism in the age of 3D nature documentaries. There were times it felt like a glorified version of the Stuffed Animal Museum at Tring.

But the thing about the AMNH is that it's a vast building with loads of other stuff. The art gallery houses an amazing collection of work, the Native American Indian rooms are stunning, and the collection of gemstones and the meteor gallery are fabulous.

The star of the show, however, is the dinosaur gallery, which is brilliantly staged and blends both old-school displays of skeletons with film and other hi-tech, on-screen information.

We spent about four hours there and didn't even scratch the surface. It was fab.