New York Vacation Day 5 - Central Park (North), Guggenheim, and The Met

Wow, today felt like an early start for some reason. It wasn't any earlier than other days, but maybe it's because I finally slept pretty well (hearing from my brother that the kitties were doing good yesterday seemed to help). Today we had the plan to do the North part of Central Park, go through the Guggenheim Museum, and then finish at The Met Museum.

The park wasn't too far from our hotel, but because it's such a large park and I wanted to start at the top we decided today we'd try out the subway system. It's funny because when we first showed up here I couldn't find a subway entrance to save my life, now that I've gone through it I see them everywhere haha. I will say the entrance we went to today was disgustingly dirty, but it's cheap, fast, and easy and I've heard it's really the best way to travel (now that I see how packed the roads get I'm more of a believer). It was a little complicated figuring out which side we needed to be on to make sure we went the right way, but we figured it out quickly.

Seriously, super dirty and warm

Oh boy, the park was an amazing start to the day! It was so pretty and filled with tons of runners and bicyclists. After being there I'm now kind of bummed we didn't get a hotel that was closer to that side of town. I mean, I'm glad we got one that was located to so many things we wanted to see, but compared to the park we're in a dumpy area. After seeing so many overheads of the park and seeing it from afar yesterday I am really surprised at how much they are able to fit into it. It's definitely easy to get lost in the park. There are tons of trees, fountains, little gardens, sport "fields", and pathways. One thing I was surprised at is how angry people seemed in the park. We didn't hear one pleasant conversation the whole day except for ours. One guy was yelling on the phone to someone about money (which we thought might be some sort of skit to ask for money since he stayed close to us, but he never did), another couple got into a fight because the girl was trying to take a photo of them and she wasn't happy with the face the guy was making (to be clear he wasn't making a face, he was just trying to smile for her).

 

 

 

Lots of pics, but I was obsessed with the park!

First stop was the Guggenheim, and it was really cool. I loved the design of the building. It made it easy to navigate through. Luckily it's small enough that it only takes about an hour to get through. Maybe more if you're one of those people that stops and stares at a painting (I'm so un-artistic, I enjoyed what we saw, but I just don't see a point in staring at a painting). The art here was definitely different, but still kind of what I expected in that I wasn't expecting to really "get it". There was a wall with a black block painted with white lines on it...I'm sorry but I literally could do that myself. I will say there were some pieces that I became obsessed with, but they were more sculptures and other pieces like that, not really paintings.

Outside view

Inside. You just walk those
Outside circles to get to the top

Favorite #1, it was blinds that were painted or had some sort
Of design paper on it. I couldn't stop staring at it though.

Another favorite. There were many
Sculptures like this around. I stared
A lot at these too.

My other favorite. Those were nails (the hammers are on the ground)
To make it have that saying. Loved it!

This is art? Really?

Funny/weird piece at the entrance

The next stop was The Met, which was on the same side of the park so it was easy to get to (plus it's actually IN the park so you know where it is when you're near it). Now this museum was amazing! I almost missed out on this one too. You see, it was getting to be really hot and because my feet started out sore from the night before (damn heels! How does Carrie do it?) I was pretty exhausted by this point in the day. We started in the Egyptian display and made it over to the American area and I just threw in the towel. My back was killing me, my feet hurt, I felt gross and sweaty, my burn was still hurting from Niagara Falls, and I just wanted to chug a gallon of water. Luckily I have an amazing husband who helped me realize that if I left now we wouldn't get a chance to be here again and I'd be upset to miss out on it. So he let me complain and relax for about half an hour (I also popped my back and stretched out a bit) and then he made me walk through the rest of the museum. I could tell right away the stretching helped a lot and we finally started using the map and that helped make it easier to navigate through (it's very hard if you don't follow the map). We ended up picking the areas we HAD to see and then figured after that if we wanted to see others we could decide then. Oh man, the art in this museum was extremely stunning! I wish I had taken pictures of my favorites, but I loved them and just wanted to look at them and soak them in. We were able to go into the Medieval, Asian, Tuscan, & Roman areas, but just happened to stumble upon some other artsy areas. I wish we had more time to do this museum too. I recommend it to anyone else who goes to the City, but plan for at least half a day there. The cafeteria is even pretty yummy, it's like a school cafeteria where you grab a tray, go get whatever food you want (they have a mixture of different foods in different areas) and then pay for it at the end. Larry wasn't too hungry, so it was mostly just me that tried the food, but it was really good.

This was an Asian Tomb of some
Great leader (if I remember right).
The details are amazing!

Also in the Asian part, too pretty
Not to take a picture of.

This is the Medieval Area

Side view of the museum

We were out of the museum by 1:30 (I know it's early when I just said I wish we had more time, but like I said, we got an early start so we were there for a while) and we decided since we saw the one side of the park for the museums we'd walk up the other side back to the subway. Once we got to the subway area (which wasn't as easy to find as I thought it would be) we found our train pretty quickly and were able to make it back to the hotel in time to rest a bit before dinner.

We decided to try that 50's diner we saw last night with the long line, it's called Ellen's Stardust Diner. We left early in the hopes that the line either wouldn't be there or would be short enough. It wasn't too long, but we found that they moved people through it extremely quickly. This is my favorite place we've eaten so far. They sing songs as they serve food and it's so awesome, loud, and has such a great energy about the place! The only negative was the spoiled brat sitting next to us (who felt the need to constantly complain that we got stuff before them even though they ordered before us. But what he didn't realize is we ordered an appetizer and got shakes instead of drinks). We also found out that each waiter/waitress was aiming to be an actor and/or be on Broadway. One girl had been hired onto Broadway so she was only there until the show started. It was pretty cool to see their head shots that was on a wall behind another table.

The line for dinner

 

So overall this vacation just gets better and better! I feel that things were planned out perfectly for this trip so we shouldn't miss anything...fingers crossed. I'm loving this trip so far (minus how much we'd love to see our kitties).