Harvard Museum of Natural History - Cambridge, MA

The Museum of Natural History was a HUGE hit with our two year old.  It was $9 for each adult and $6 for kids under three, so we got in for $18.  We parked very easily at a metered spot around the corner, and it was an easy walk to the door.  Unfortunately, we should NOT have brought the baby in the stroller.  There are tons of stairs, so people leave strollers at the bottom level.  The museum was WAY bigger than we anticipated, so our little 10 month old got pretty heavy by the end, and we cut it short.  It would have been better off with the bjorn.

There is a area to hang coats, which is very convenient, and our two year old was already going wild over the displays of vivid photographs of spiders and other creatures.  We had no idea how many cool bugs and huge displays of fossils they packed into that museum.  Because of the narrow hallways, we let our son walk on his own for most of the way, but he really couldn't get away (awesome).  The stuffed animals could really creep a kid out, but ours were fine.  If he couldn't name the animal, we read him the sign.

The full size fossils were so amazing.  There is one GIANT alligator looking thing that was absolutely overwhelming.  In that area, there was a museum worker who had us touch a fossilized shin and fossilized poop (jerk).  Our son was dumbfounded that the poop didn't stink

After the areas of all of the stuffed creatures, there is a huge room with a whale skeleton (and others) hanging from the ceiling.  There was so much too see, and the museum wasn't very crowded, even on a Saturday afternoon.  

It turns out that the Peabody Museum of Archeology is connected on the third floor, so that is free admission.  After leaving the minerals area that had giant crystals and meteorites, we went into a small area about the planets and found the restrooms that our son desperately needed.  He wasn't really into the (I think Egyptian) paintings, but when we got to the Mayan sculptures and displays, he loved them.  He called them "the castles" and asked if we were in one.  We could see that there was more to the museum, but without the bjorn, we had to throw in the towel, but we will definitely be back.