Meandering Life Rating: [usr 5]
Houston has an enormous amount of museums, an entire museum district, in fact. If any of them are even close to as awesome as the Museum of Natural Science, you should go to all of them! On Thursdays, the museum is free for the last three hours (during the winter that is 2pm-5pm). We were trying to save some money so went during the free time. We should have paid and spent the day there! Three hours was not enough time and it would be well worth the money.
We mainly went to three areas of the museum since we were pressed for time. The planetarium, the Hall of Paleontology and the Hall of Ancient Egypt.
The planetarium had a 3D movie about the universe. The auditorium was very nice and it was worth going for the quick 20-minute film.
The Hall of Paleontology was amazing. We had never seen full-size dinosaur skeletons before and they had numerous examples. They also had many other animal skeletons and a very fascinating exhibit about human evolution. We probably could have spent half day just in this area reading all the information and really examining each specimen. It was well laid out with the oldest pieces first and then moving forward in time.
We only had about 40 minutes left after Paleontology so we ran up to the Hall of Ancient Egypt and again, we seriously could have spent a half day just in that one area. I have never seen anything like this exhibit in my life. I keep using the same word to describe everything, but it was amazing as well! So many sarcophagus tombs and ancient artifacts and actual mummies! I have to admit the mummies made me a bit uncomfortable. I kept waiting for Brendan Fraiser to wake them up then save us all!
If we are ever back in the area, we will pay full price and really experience it! Three hours was just the tip of the iceberg! Would highly recommend.