New York Day 5: Museums and Stuff

By this point, the whole trip was becoming a blur.  We started the day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a.k.a. "The Met."  This place is enormous!   We didn't know where to start.  We decided going on the "highlights" tour might be a good idea...but it wasn't.  We did look at some stuff that we probably wouldn't have looked at otherwise, but the guide was giving us WAY too much background for an hour long tour.  We "lost" our group after about a half an hour and only seeing 2 things.  I am not extremely "artsy."  I don't know a lot about art, so to me it looked like they had paintings of every wife of every rich man who could afford a self portrait in Europe.  Probably not the case, and I most likely missed something awesome...hopefully someday I will put time into understanding art.  

We made it a goal to find some of the more recognizable or "famous" paintings and we did actually find a few.  

Who knew that George Washing crossing the Delaware picture was sooooo huge?  I certainly didn't!  There was an Andy Warhol exhibit going on, so we went through that as well.  Not going to lie....it was strange.  Again, showing my lack of education on the subject, I had heard the guy's name before, but never knew who or what he was.  It was very interesting.  I know that I wasn't able to appreciate it for what it was....we'll just say that!

Next we went to Serendipity!  We ate lunch and of course got the famous frozen hot chocolate for dessert.  That stuff is seriously amazing!  Matt and I had tried it before in Las Vegas, so this time I opted for the peanut butter frozen hot chocolate and Matt got mint frozen hot chocolate....peanut butter wins!  It's even better than the original...if you like peanut butter...which I do!

This place is adorable!  And once again....in a part of town that feels completely different from the other parts!  The weird part is they all feel like NYC.  

We heard there was a fun candy store in the area and it ended up being just down the street, so we went to check it out.  It has like every kind of candy in ever color imaginable.  That's about it.  We each got a bag of candy.....which turned out to be a good thing a little while later.

Next we made our way to the Guggenheim Museum.  We really didn't have a huge desire to go to another museum, but we knew we had to go check this one out for the architecture.  Matt's (other) sister is married to an architect, and we knew he would die if we had gone all the way to New York and not gone to the Guggenheim.  This ended up being my favorite museum!  It was small (in comparison to the other museums) and easy to navigate!  It was totally manageable!  They had a Picasso exhibit.  It was all of his black and white art.  Again, I definitely don't understand art....but there were some pretty cool pieces.  This might show how much of an amateur I am, but the names of his paintings cracked me up!  "Woman in chair" etc.....very descriptive titles....I enjoyed it :)  

Next, we took our first NYC bus.  The subway is not super convenient in this part of town.  It was nice to be above ground and see all the buildings as we drove across town.  Our next adventure was FAO Schwartz.  The "guard" out front was super nice, and funny.  We hurried through the store....it had some incredible stuff that I hadn't seen in the local Walmart toy isle before!  FAO Schwartz is next to the Apple Store.

When I noticed both Matt and Jenny using their iphones to figure out where we were going next I felt this picture was necessary :)

Next we went to Grand Central Terminal (apparently Grand Central Station is what tourists call it or something like that).  I kind of love this place.  It is GREAT people watching!  

We were there during rush hour which made the people watching even more entertaining.  As we were wandering around we ended up downstairs.  We were all exhausted and weren't in a rush.  We sat down on a bench and started watching all the people running for their trains (and eating our bags of candy from the candy store).  All we could see were the doors to the platforms, and next to the doors the electronic signs that said when the trains were leaving.  The closer it got to that time the faster people moved it to their doors.  The most exciting part was the last 2 minutes before the departure time, people would be booking it across the station!  People seriously had this stuff timed to a science!  We would watch people wait in lines at the food vendors and then book it.   At one point there were 4 or 5 doors in a row whose departure times were all within a 10 minute time block..it was quite exciting to watch :)

Matt got to watch a lot more than Jenny and I did, because we ended up falling asleep and taking a little power nap.  Seriously, we had walked so much that day, and it was our 5th day of hard core New York City power walking....I couldn't keep my eyes open!  

Next we headed NoHo (I think that's where we were....we were close at least).  It is just one of those little areas of the city.  We walked up and down the streets looking for a place to eat or get a snack.  Honestly, this place felt a little sketchier than a lot of the other places we had been so far.  

We had tickets to see STOMP!  Matt and I had gone on our fist date to STOMP (aww) when it came to Salt Lake City.  We loved it and thought it would be fun to see again.  It's in a tiny little theater, at least compared to the other theaters we had been to.  Such talent!  The performers are amazing!  We were so much closer in this little theater than we were in SLC.  I'm amazed at what things they can make "music" come out of!

The bottom left picture is the stage.  Click on this one to see it better...at one point people are hanging down from the top and swinging around playing all the different stuff on their set.  It's awesome!

On our way back to the subway we stopped at a taco truck.  We just shared a couple of things, then we went and got pizza (yea for 2 Brothers!) once we got back to "our side" of town.  Not going to lie, this day was exhausting!  We still had a lot of fun!