Art Makes Me Happy - NYC

While in NYC we had the opportunity to visit many museums. It does involve a lot of time and a lot of walking. But they do not disappoint.

We started with the Guggenheim. We took the Subway and caught our first glimpse of Central Park. From the web site: "An internationally renowned art museum and one of the most significant architectural icons of the 20th century, the Guggenheim Museum is at once a vital cultural center, an educational institution, and the heart of an international network of museums."

Not to mention the movie scenes that get filmed there, like Mr. Popper's Penguins. Director Mark Waters relates about going to the actual Guggenheim Museum, "We had to kind of shoot everything at night in between the time that the museum would close and reopen in the morning.  We'd have to bring in the entire carnival of people and light the whole place and shoot the sequence. And Angela Lansbury is 85 years old and it's 4:00 in the morning, and she's dancing around with Jim Carrey, getting spun around.  And I'm saying to myself, I can't believe this is real. They actually let us in here to shoot? Are they out of their minds?"

After viewing each floor, getting told not to take photos on the ramp and using the tiny rounded bathroom where you can hit your head on a column while getting up from the toilet, we then went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met.

As like so much of the city there was construction going on so part of the front of the building was blocked.

The Museum mission statement: The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded on April 13, 1870, "to be located in the City of New York, for the purpose of establishing and maintaining in said city a Museum and library of art, of encouraging and developing the study of the fine arts, and the application of arts to manufacture and practical life, of advancing the general knowledge of kindred subjects, and, to that end, of furnishing popular instruction."

This place was huge. You had to actually use the Museum map to get around in all the various exhibit rooms. It was multiple floors packed with so much to see. It was quite amazing.

Photo taken from the rooftop garden at the Met.

Remember the movie The Thomas Crown Affair, where the painting was stolen from the Met? Well, a set was built to look like the museum.

 

From Wikipedia: Filming took place throughout New York City, including Central Park. The corporate headquarters of Lucent Technologies stood in for Crown's suite of offices. Due to its being nearly impossible to film interior scenes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the producers' request was "respectfully declined"), the production crew made their own museum on a soundstage. Artisans were hired to create a realistic look to the set. Another scene was filmed in a different city landmark: the main research library of the New York Public Library.

 

After viewing these two museums we made our way across Central Park to Shake Shack for lunch.

The City That Never Sleeps

There is only one city I can think of where I can be in the M&M store at 11:30 p.m. and the store clerks are monitoring the number of people going up the escalator to the 2nd floor. It was that crowded. That would be New York City (maybe Vegas too).

On August 6th, my daughter Natalie and I flew to Newark, New Jersey. From there we spent three nights in midtown Manhattan and two nights at my friend's home in Middletown, New York.

For this post I'm going to keep it simple with some helpful tips and facts about the trip.

When: August 6 - August 11th. The weather was perfect that week. We were lucky.

How: Flew Alaska Airlines nonstop from Seattle to Newark, New Jersey. We used my companion fare. It's a good perk of having an Alaska Airlines credit card. From Newark we had a prearranged shuttle bus that took us into Manhattan from the airport. I would highly recommend it. There are other airports but we picked this one for convenience.

Hotel: Club Quarters Midtown Manhattan. We found the hotel through Alaska Airlines webpage. I believe it goes through Orbitz. It was a great location. We were literally on the back side of Radio City Music Hall. No matter where we went it was easy to find out hotel coming back.

Discount Tickets: New York Pass. We bought a 3 day pass online in advance, and discounted. And we had the booklet mailed to us. Great maps, great way to organize what you want to do.

Transportation: 1) my two feet - wear socks and good walking shoes, by day 2 I had blisters; 2) Subway - buy a metro card from the machine; 3) taxi - convenient; 4) train - Grand Central Station to go out of the city; 5) New York Water Taxi - very fun and discounted in New York Pass; 6) bus - we didn't do this option but it looks like a good idea around town. A coworker told me today that when he goes there they do they Subway for north and south and the bus for east and west travel. You can also rent bicycles, (maybe in Central Park but I would not ride them around the city). And there are Pedi cabs but they look to be quite expensive.

I observed a pecking order in traffic. Starting with who has the most power to the least power on the streets. This is my observation: tour bus, city bus, emergency vehicles, town cars, taxi's, personal vehicles, Pedi cabs, bicycles, and pedestrians.

Broadway: We bought our discounted tickets (courtesy of New York Pass) from the box office on Thursday for the Saturday matinee. We wanted a particular show. Otherwise (and next time I go) you can go to Times Square in the morning and get half price, same day tickets for many shows. The people sitting next to us on the 6th row had bought their tickets that morning. We saw a show called Once. It was very good, a really fun time.

Times Square