A Day at the Museum(s)

Today we are again very fortunate to have good weather, so headed off about 9.30, up Central Park West past the famous Dakota Building - where John Lennon lived until his death (he was killed outside the building) - to our first stop, the American Museum of Natural History. Here we spent a couple of hours going through many of the exhibits, including the African mammals, Asian mammals, Dinosaurs, the Primate display, Birds of New York, Wildlife of NewYork, Pacific Island exhibition and American Indian Exhibit.

We then headed across Central Park to the East Side. In the Park we passed the Delacorte Theatre (where Shakespeare in the Park is performed), Turtle Pond, the Great Lawn, a statue of Hamilton, and the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. With all the beautiful autumn leaves, the Park is just spectacular at the moment.

Once across the Park, we then headed to the Guggenheim Museum where we saw an exhibit on "Art and China after 1989: Theatre of the World". It was a collection of paintings, experimental film and video, installation and performance art - not really my thing, but we gave it a go. We were also fortunate to see the Thannhauser Collection, which included paintings by Cezanne, Picasso, Kandinsky, Monet and more. We also saw the Brancusi collection of sculpture.

After the Guggenheim we headed to the MET, located close by, and on the way saw some dog walkers that were walking between 8 and 10 dogs. We also met a local lady who was walking her 7 month old French Bulldog called Marlowe, who was very friendly but overwhelmed by the large groups of dogs being walked en masse.

At the MET we saw the Michelangelo and David Hockney exhibits, as well as the 19th century painters such as Van Gogh, Degas, Monet, Manet, Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne, Gaugin, Matisse and others. It is amazing to see so many wonderful paintings under one roof. We also saw a number of Rodin’s sculptures.

After that we were a bit over museums and so we started the long walk (36 blocks) back to our apartment, via the Magnolia Bakery, for a well earned cup of tea!

Tonight we had dinner with the Greens at Cafe Balthazar in SOHO. We had a lovely evening and, after a delicious dinner, we headed off to the Empire State Building to view the city at night. The city lights are great but it was extremely cold out on the observation deck on the 86th level. We said our good-byes to the Greens - who are leaving NY on Wednesday - but we will meet up with them again in San Francisco next Monday.

We then walked the 10 blocks home past the Lord & Taylor Christmas Windows. We also recorded the highest step count of the holiday (so far) of 28,104steps, which equates to over 20 kilometres - no wonder we are all knackered.Read more