New York - Day 3

We covered a lot of ground today, firstly by taking a bus tour right around the north of Manhattan - through the Upper West Side, Morningside Heights, Harlem and East Harlem, and back down through Yorkville and the Upper East Side, stopping in Midtown/Theatre District.

We finally found a decent diner in Hell's Kitchen and got ourselves a big feed of flapjacks. Thus fortified, we began our day of touring the museums and galleries, starting with the Natural History Museum. I had fond childhood memories of their dinosaur collection, and I wasn't disappointed.

It also fits into a world class display relating to bio diversity, and covers similarly exotic periods of evloutionary history as the Cenozoic. Likewise incredible was their stunning gemstone collection, surely worth a pretty penny.

It was a large and exhausting museum, but we put in a few good hours before crossing into the idyllic Central Park for some R&R with a can of coke and some classic American hotdogs. (The Coke tastes better in NYC - for real!)

We wanted to a series of sights down the Upper East Side, so we walked to the north end of Central Park in order to double back and knock them off one by one. This also enabled us to have a walk around Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Of course we went the wrong way, against the constant stream of lunchtime joggers...

First stop, the celebrated Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. We didn't bother with the actual exhibition (any place that 'showcases' Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian gets a thumbs down in my book) but did enjoy the interior.

Second stop, the magnificent Frick collection. Housed in the former residence of steel magnate Henry Clay Frick, it's a Roman style villa crammed with beautiful works by major artists. The rooms themselves are as delightful as the art. Artists include: Bellini, François Boucher, John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, El Greco, Francisco Goya, Holbein, Rembrandt, Titian, Turner, Velázquez, Whistler, van Dyck and Van Eyck.

Third stop, the mind-blowingly monstrous Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has a collection of antiques to rival the British Museum AND an art gallery that contains more noted works than I've seen in one place before. "The Met" has a permanent collection containing more than two million works of art, divided into nineteen curatorial departments, measures almost a quarter mile long and occupies more than two million square feet. Yes, this is an entire Egyptian temple:

Enjoying an art/study session...

We were in the Met so long that we ended up eating dinner there, and then having to catch a cab to our fourth and final stop, the MoMA. (Catching cabs is an interesting observation too - as soon as you stick out your arm, they descend on you like an eagle after a rabbit.)

It was free night at the MoMA, so the place was a freaking madhouse. It terms of significant works, however, it even outdid the Met. In fact, I believe it is considered by many to have the best collection of modern Western masterpieces in the world, including: The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon by Pablo Picasso, The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí (maddeningly on loan while we were there!), Campbell's Soup Cans by Andy Warhol, Water Lilies triptych by Claude Monet and much, much more!

Found my favourite Max Ernst painting, Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale:

And Damien Hirst's famous shark-in-formaldehyde, The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living:

New York - Day 2

The world's finest newspaper, free on the side of the road! The headline? Re: Barack Obama - "Black guy asks nation for change."

New York has a lot of important architecture, and we made several trips so that Anna could see various interesting buildings. The first of these was the Flatiron Building, so called because it was built on a triangular island block and has a steel frame. Designed by Daniel Burnham in the Beaux-Arts style, it has a lovely textured facade in limestone and glazed terra-cotta.

I found myself agape, admiring a skyscraper — the prow of the Flatiron Building, to be particular, ploughing up through the traffic of Broadway and Fifth Avenue in the late-afternoon light. – H.G. Wells (1906)

It was also a very well-appointed spot, beside a lovely little park, with a view of the Empire State building.

I couldn't resist taking the time to greet the local squirrels, who seemed slightly more active than their UK relatives. Squirrels, attack!

We then made our way to the Empire State building, and explored the atrium. The queues were far too long to consider a trip to the top, and we had already planned to get the view from the Rockefeller instead. I enjoyed the King Kong exhibit, however...

Macy's flagship department store in Herald Square, with its one million square feet of selling space, is billed as the "world's largest store". We were fortunate enough to visit during an exotic flower show...

Popped by Madison Square Garden for a peek, then off to the Rockefeller Center! An international symbol of modernist architectural style blended with capitalism, this complex of 19 commercial buildings includes the famed Radio City Music Hall and (of course) the 70-floor GE Building, which we ascended to get the views from the "Top of the Rock".

Close up of Central Park:

The famous ice skating rink at the base of the Rockefeller Centre:

Time for a hearty lunch, so we walked up 5th Avenue, admiring all the extremely pricey shops, and stopped for a bite at Trump Tower, home of my favourite TV show, The Apprentice! The Donald wasn't anywhere to be seen, and neither was his hair. (I suspect it has a life of its own, and goes hunting for food in the wee hours.)

Revisited FAO Schwartz, but it wasn't as big as I remembered it (from when I was 7 years old). Still a very impressive toy shop, with lots of super large cuddly toys and nifty Lego sculptures. The walk-on piano from Big wasn't much to look at though, and is always covered in sprogs making random and awful noise...

Another big, big day for us - we also managed to squeeze in a walk to another architectural marvel, Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson's Seagram Building, plus the Ferrari showroom, Grand Central Station, the Chrysler building, the UN headquarters, and past the MoMA.



The finally up the Rockefeller again, this time at night!

New York - Day 1

We weren't looking forward to flying very much, having just returned from New Zealand recently. But the flight wasn't too bad, though the movie selection was limited and, I must say, particularly awful. (Don't EVER watch "August Rush". You have been warned.)

We arrived close to midnight, and caught a yellow cab to our hotel on Manhattan Island. It was very exciting entering via tunnel, and spotting the famous buildings each time we drove through an intersection. It was hard not to go out straight away, but we played safe and went to bed.

Rose early the next morning and braved the free breakfast room. We were disappointed. Instead of being met with the imagined excesses of American dining (stacks of juicy pancakes smothered in cream and maple syrup) it was cereals, hard pastries and a fast food like hot plate. We resolved to find a proper diner during our trip...

Took our first ride on the NYC subway, which is more like the Parisian Metro than the London Underground. There aren't many shared stops (ie. over multiple train lines) so you don't have to enter very far undergound, which was a nice change. It also means you can in and out a lot faster.

We alighted at the World Trade Center stop, and walked to the Ground Zero memorial. It was very poignant to see the wide break in the skyline, and we had an excellent view of the vast, and deep, foundations.

From there we did some shopping at Century 21, an immensely popular department store with label remainders. For once we were travelling on a currency disparity in our favour (£ > US$), so we both went a little nuts. We actually had to go back to the hotel to drop off our purchases, so that we could get around unencumbered.

After exploring on foot for an hour or so, we caught the subway to Battery Park at the south end of Manhattan Island, and caught the ferry to Staten Island and back. This afforded a great view of the island, and also our first close-up of the Statue of Liberty. She looked a lot smaller than I imagined!

From there we walked over to the lower east side, and took the footbridge over Brooklyn Bridge. This iconic landmark was the largest suspension bridge in the world on its completion in 1883. Every step of the way is a photo opportunity...

We weren't done pounding pavement for the day, so we snuck back over by subway, and re-emerged to explore Wall Street, with a long stop at Tiffany's, ending up back at the eastern waterfront with another great view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

After a slap-up feed of tasty burritos at Mexican restaurant Chipotle (chi-poat-lay) we bought cheap theatre tickets at TKTS Times Square, and went to see Ian McShane in Harold Pinter’s brutally misogynist "The Homecoming" at the Cort Theatre.

There was a relentlessly freezing wind accompanying us on the walk home. Rather unpleasant, but nothing the 24-hour hot chocolate stand in the hotel lobby couldn't fix.