Chicago, Chicago - let me show you around
Two posts in one day! Gosh, I'm really on to it.
As you may have guessed, on Sunday I went to see Chicago on Broadway!! What I really really wanted to see was Les Miserables, but apparently after how ever many decades on Broadway it's not running anymore. Bummer. Still, Chicago was also one I wanted to see and it was fantastic! The theatre was smallish by my standards, and apparently teensy by Broadway standards, but we had fantastic seats right up the front for like a third of the usual price! It was an amazing performance, full of fantastic music and dancing, and very raunchy. I went with my sister-in-law and I was a bit worried she might not like it because of that, but she seemed to like it fine. Somehow I don't think she'll go see it again. On the way there and back I walked through Times Square, which is just crazy. There's sooooooo much advertising, it's all over the place! Makes me wonder what this place might have looked like in the 30s, when all the craziness was getting started. Broadway, it turns out, is actually a pretty narrow street. When I get back to NY in a week I plan to dedicate a whole day to wandering around downtown NY, including Times Square.
Sunday morning, before Chicago, I went the the Guggenheim Museum. There are lots of pictures of it online, but it's bascially this big round beehive type shape, and inside there are no floors, but a continous spiral that moves slowly upwards. Pictures are displayed all along this ramp, and there are openings into individual galleries. It's really well designed, very aesthetic. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take photos above the ground floor. The Guggenheim has a lot of abstract art, mainly Kandinsky. This year is museum's 50th anniversary, so they had a retrospective exhibition of Kandinsky's work showing the evolution of his style and abstractionism in general. It was fascinating - I've never really looked at any of Kandinsky's work before, but I really enjoyed it. There were also some other works being displayed in other galleries, like this lightbulb trapped in a block of frozen ink which melts over the course of the day releasing a puddle of black ink that makes it's way across the floor. When I saw it, it had already melted and dried. Or this giant iron zeppelin like thing which was so huge it filled the gallery completely and could only be viewed from three vantage points: one at either end, and the other as an opening in a wall leading to the interior. The idea behind it is that because you only see pieces of it, you have to try and construct the sculpture in your mind, thus completing the work. It was well-titled: Memory.
That night I took my brother and his wife out to dinner. We went to this really nice Italian place, which was bursting with atmosphere, but wound up being a bit more expensive than I was hoping. It was on my Mum's tab, of course, but at this stage of the trip I'm starting to eye the budget and think about future plans for theme parks and Vegas. Luckily everything in DC is free - all the museums and monuments.
I got to DC around lunchtime, on a bus from NY that took about 4 hours. I met and had lunch with my mother's cousin, with whom I am staying in the huge house previously mentioned. I spent the afternoon wandering around DC looking at things. DC itself is very small, and everything is close together. I saw the White House (from outside), the Washington Monument (got to go inside, and up to the top) and the Lincoln Memorial - all very impressive. There's a lot of Roman-style architecture around here. No one lives in DC, it's all museums, monuments and government buildings. Well, except the Preseident - he lives in DC. Didn't see him though.
Tomorrow I'm going to hit up a bunch of museums :)
As you may have guessed, on Sunday I went to see Chicago on Broadway!! What I really really wanted to see was Les Miserables, but apparently after how ever many decades on Broadway it's not running anymore. Bummer. Still, Chicago was also one I wanted to see and it was fantastic! The theatre was smallish by my standards, and apparently teensy by Broadway standards, but we had fantastic seats right up the front for like a third of the usual price! It was an amazing performance, full of fantastic music and dancing, and very raunchy. I went with my sister-in-law and I was a bit worried she might not like it because of that, but she seemed to like it fine. Somehow I don't think she'll go see it again. On the way there and back I walked through Times Square, which is just crazy. There's sooooooo much advertising, it's all over the place! Makes me wonder what this place might have looked like in the 30s, when all the craziness was getting started. Broadway, it turns out, is actually a pretty narrow street. When I get back to NY in a week I plan to dedicate a whole day to wandering around downtown NY, including Times Square.
Sunday morning, before Chicago, I went the the Guggenheim Museum. There are lots of pictures of it online, but it's bascially this big round beehive type shape, and inside there are no floors, but a continous spiral that moves slowly upwards. Pictures are displayed all along this ramp, and there are openings into individual galleries. It's really well designed, very aesthetic. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take photos above the ground floor. The Guggenheim has a lot of abstract art, mainly Kandinsky. This year is museum's 50th anniversary, so they had a retrospective exhibition of Kandinsky's work showing the evolution of his style and abstractionism in general. It was fascinating - I've never really looked at any of Kandinsky's work before, but I really enjoyed it. There were also some other works being displayed in other galleries, like this lightbulb trapped in a block of frozen ink which melts over the course of the day releasing a puddle of black ink that makes it's way across the floor. When I saw it, it had already melted and dried. Or this giant iron zeppelin like thing which was so huge it filled the gallery completely and could only be viewed from three vantage points: one at either end, and the other as an opening in a wall leading to the interior. The idea behind it is that because you only see pieces of it, you have to try and construct the sculpture in your mind, thus completing the work. It was well-titled: Memory.
That night I took my brother and his wife out to dinner. We went to this really nice Italian place, which was bursting with atmosphere, but wound up being a bit more expensive than I was hoping. It was on my Mum's tab, of course, but at this stage of the trip I'm starting to eye the budget and think about future plans for theme parks and Vegas. Luckily everything in DC is free - all the museums and monuments.
I got to DC around lunchtime, on a bus from NY that took about 4 hours. I met and had lunch with my mother's cousin, with whom I am staying in the huge house previously mentioned. I spent the afternoon wandering around DC looking at things. DC itself is very small, and everything is close together. I saw the White House (from outside), the Washington Monument (got to go inside, and up to the top) and the Lincoln Memorial - all very impressive. There's a lot of Roman-style architecture around here. No one lives in DC, it's all museums, monuments and government buildings. Well, except the Preseident - he lives in DC. Didn't see him though.
Tomorrow I'm going to hit up a bunch of museums :)