Cool U.S. museums you’ve never heard of

One quick look at your average guidebook will tell you about the “museum biggies” like the Field Museum in Chicago or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but what about those smaller places that might be less overwhelming for kids?

I have an educational travel article up on Education.com that gives a brief description of some low-key U.S. museums that are family-friendly, including these gems:

** The California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, California.

** The Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City.

Check out the article for more info.

As long as we’re at it, here are two museum-related roundups from the Family Travel archives:

** 7 museums where history lives: Bunratty Castle & Folk Park in Ireland, Edo-Tokyo Museum in Tokyo, Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, Bokrijk in Hasselt, Belgium, Indian City USA in Anadarko, Oklahoma and the Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo, Norway.

** 8 cool European museums you’ve never heard of: the Chocolate Museum (or Schokoladenmuseum) in Köln, Germany, the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, the Cluny Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris, the Thermenmuseum (of Roman baths) in Heerlen, the Netherlands, the In Flanders Fields Museum (of WWI) in Ypres, Belgium, the National Maritime Museum and Royal Observatory in Greenwich, UK, the Foynes Flying Boat Museum in Ireland and the Eyeglasses Museum in Amsterdam.

Of course, if you have a teen as I do, you’ll hear, “Oh, why do we have to go to another dumb museum?”

Just forge onward — they’ll thank you someday!

Technorati tags: travel, family travel tips, family friendly museums