New York Day #3: Boy ain't nature fascinating, when yous gotta walk?
I'm so exhausted that I can barely write. We did SO much today. We really only went to two places, Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but obviously, they were both so big and had so much to see that we were on our feet almost all day. The Met didn't open until 10, and we got there early because breakfast is only from 7-9. While we were waiting for it to open, I decided to do some extra walking to see how many mezuzahs I could find in the neighborhood. The answer: not as many as I'd hoped. :\ (Sara complained about it, even though it didn't effect her. She said that I'd better not whine to her about much my feet hurt. Yeah, she complains that I complain too much, even before I start complaining.) Then I went back to the Met... only to discover a huge line of people waiting to get in! Fortunately, it moved pretty quick.
Seen on my morning walk: In an old house in New York that was covered with vines... was the French Embassy! I was so excited to see it.
My view while waiting in line on the steps of the Met.
I wandered around inside the Met for a while and saw a ton of famous old European paintings... and some of the wing of Asian artifacts, which I had to walk through to get to the bathroom. It was very out-of-the-way behind a ton of twists and turns in one corner of the museum. The wing had nothing but Asian tourists and a few other white people (who I suspect were also looking for the bathroom). For 2012 and '13, Sara had page-a-day calendars of artwork from the Met, so a lot of the pieces looked familiar to me.
On my quest to find the bathroom: a typical view of the mostly empty Asian gallery.
Just to make "Jew York City" (as I've been calling it) a little more Jewish, I took note of all the paintings that I saw depicting scenes from the Torah.
The Destruction of Sodom (mid-1800s), oil painting by Camille Corot. Genesis 19: Lot and his daughters flee the burning city, while at right, Lot's wife has turned into a pillar of salt.
Hagar in the Wilderness (1835), oil painting by Camille Corot. Genesis 21: Cast out into the desert with her son Ishmael near death, Hagar begins to cry, and an angel appears to her.
Esther Before Ahasuerus (early 1600s), oil painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, a rare prominent female painter. Esther 7: Jewish heroine Esther pleads with her husband King Ahasuerus to spare her people from a planned massacre. Basically, the story of Purim.
We ducked out of the Met for a while to take a free tour of Central Park, which I really enjoyed. It was a walking tour, but we saw so much of the park. We started out in front of the Samuel Morse statue and saw...
The Boat Pond
The Alice in Wonderland statue
I gave some money to this old man playing an instrument (I believe it's an erhu) near Alice. The music was so pretty and you could hear it for so far.
The Hans Christian Andersen statue (although I was more interested in the duck statue at his feet)
Bethesda Terrace and the Angel of the Waters fountain. There was a woman there making huge bubbles with some cords and wands as long as my arm. They were SO pretty and we watched her for a long time.
The Lake and the Ramble. The two-towerd building behind Sara is The Eldorado. The tourguide said that the city required some buildings that were built within views from the park to be more decorative than usual.
I know the quality is awful, but this is something the tourguide showed us, and I thought it was so interesting. It's the design for the park that was submitted 1858, when it was no more than an idea in the designers' heads. Walking through it in 2014, it was so incredible to think that the whole park once only existed on a piece of paper.
We finished the tour at Strawberry Fields, and just as we reached it, the sun came out for the first time this whole vacation! (Yesterday was overcast all day.) There was a man there playing the guitar and butchering "Imagine" to the point that I wanted to pay him to shut up.
We wanted to see the carousel before we went back to The Met, but that was waaaay easier said than done. The tour guide had given us all free maps of the park, but it still was hard to tell which path to follow and which direction to take. It took us forever not only to find the carousel, but just to get out of the darn park! We did buy some treats from an ice-cream from a vendor and eat them on a bench overlooking Sheep's Meadow. (At least, I think it was Sheep's Meadow. Again, the park was huge and we were lost.) I had a peanut-dipped chocolate bar, and Sara had a rock-hard frozen lemonade.
The front display of the ice-cream cart.
As soon as we left the park, I walked down Fifth Avenue to Temple Emmanuel, a famous historic old synagogue. It was the first Reform congregation in New York City, and it's still the largest synagogue in the world. (Joan Rivers's funeral was held there recently.) The sanctuary is usually open to the public for self-guided tours... but when I arrived there, I found it was inexplicably closed today. I had REALLY been looking forward to seeing that temple and was SO disappointed that I couldn't even go in. They didn't give any reason at all. Maybe it was because tomorrow is Kol Nidre night, or because they just wanted to disappoint me. I was so bummed that I almost started crying.
All that I ever saw of Temple Emmanuel.
So instead of touring the temple, we walked back to The Met and saw the New American Wing. I must've been tired of taking photos at this point, because there aren't many.
Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851), oil painting by Emanuel Leutze. Obviously, this painting is really famous and I was so excited to see it in person after seeing it in American history textbooks for years. It is HUGE! Seriously, it took up almost an entire wall of the gallery by itself.
Seeing it in person, I was able to notice a few details that I never did before, like this rower in the red jacket who really looks like a woman to me. Specifically, her hair and scarf are so Katherine Hepburn.
The Forest in Winter at Sunset (mid-1800s), oil painting by Theodore Rousseau. Another HUGE painting. I sat in front of this one for a long time, partly because I was so tired of standing and partly because it was so powerful. The enormity of the forest, the tangled branches, the color of the clouds, and the two tiny peasants in the clearing (you can't really see them here, but they're there, traveling through this spooky, gloomy forest just as it's getting dark). It was all so powerful and overwhelming.
Sara in front of one of her longtime favorite paintings, Joan of Arc, by Jules Bastien-Lepage. I hate that I cut off Saint Michael's head.
Haven't we all had days like this on vacation? You start out wanting to see and do everything, but by the end of the day, all you want to see is a bench, and all you want to do is sit. So we left The Met, subwayed back to our hotel, bought some dinner from a Pret a Manger (I found a pulled-pork burrito! overpiced but yummy), and rested for a bit. Fortunately, our event for the evening involved a long stretch of sitting: We saw Cabaret on Broadway! Sara is such a fangirl for Alan Cumming, who starred as the Emcee, and I went with her because she's going to Les Miserables with me. I did enjoy the show (Alan Cumming was amazing!) although I didn't know what to make of The Gorilla Song, or of the Emcee showing up in a concentration camp uniform at the end. (I don't think most people did. There was, like, one person clapping in confusion.) I did love the bit when the Emcee waved up to the mezzanine and yelled, "Hello up there, poor people!" Sara and I both cheered. My favorite songs were Willkommen, So What, Don't Tell Mama, and It Couldn't Please Me More.
Alan Cumming and the company performing Cabaret's opening number, Wilkommen, at the 2014 Tony Awards. The setup and choreography here are very similar to what we saw in the play.
Sitting in traffic on the cab-ride back from Cabaret.
As exhausted as I am, I'm glad we got so much out of today, because tomorrow is our last full day in the city! And if all goes well, it will also be the day when the dream I dreamed in time gone by comes true! Sing it with me: ONE ... DAY ... MORE!!!
Seen on my morning walk: In an old house in New York that was covered with vines... was the French Embassy! I was so excited to see it.
My view while waiting in line on the steps of the Met.
I wandered around inside the Met for a while and saw a ton of famous old European paintings... and some of the wing of Asian artifacts, which I had to walk through to get to the bathroom. It was very out-of-the-way behind a ton of twists and turns in one corner of the museum. The wing had nothing but Asian tourists and a few other white people (who I suspect were also looking for the bathroom). For 2012 and '13, Sara had page-a-day calendars of artwork from the Met, so a lot of the pieces looked familiar to me.
On my quest to find the bathroom: a typical view of the mostly empty Asian gallery.
Just to make "Jew York City" (as I've been calling it) a little more Jewish, I took note of all the paintings that I saw depicting scenes from the Torah.
The Destruction of Sodom (mid-1800s), oil painting by Camille Corot. Genesis 19: Lot and his daughters flee the burning city, while at right, Lot's wife has turned into a pillar of salt.
Hagar in the Wilderness (1835), oil painting by Camille Corot. Genesis 21: Cast out into the desert with her son Ishmael near death, Hagar begins to cry, and an angel appears to her.
Esther Before Ahasuerus (early 1600s), oil painting by Artemisia Gentileschi, a rare prominent female painter. Esther 7: Jewish heroine Esther pleads with her husband King Ahasuerus to spare her people from a planned massacre. Basically, the story of Purim.
We ducked out of the Met for a while to take a free tour of Central Park, which I really enjoyed. It was a walking tour, but we saw so much of the park. We started out in front of the Samuel Morse statue and saw...
The Boat Pond
The Alice in Wonderland statue
I gave some money to this old man playing an instrument (I believe it's an erhu) near Alice. The music was so pretty and you could hear it for so far.
The Hans Christian Andersen statue (although I was more interested in the duck statue at his feet)
Bethesda Terrace and the Angel of the Waters fountain. There was a woman there making huge bubbles with some cords and wands as long as my arm. They were SO pretty and we watched her for a long time.
The Lake and the Ramble. The two-towerd building behind Sara is The Eldorado. The tourguide said that the city required some buildings that were built within views from the park to be more decorative than usual.
I know the quality is awful, but this is something the tourguide showed us, and I thought it was so interesting. It's the design for the park that was submitted 1858, when it was no more than an idea in the designers' heads. Walking through it in 2014, it was so incredible to think that the whole park once only existed on a piece of paper.
We finished the tour at Strawberry Fields, and just as we reached it, the sun came out for the first time this whole vacation! (Yesterday was overcast all day.) There was a man there playing the guitar and butchering "Imagine" to the point that I wanted to pay him to shut up.
We wanted to see the carousel before we went back to The Met, but that was waaaay easier said than done. The tour guide had given us all free maps of the park, but it still was hard to tell which path to follow and which direction to take. It took us forever not only to find the carousel, but just to get out of the darn park! We did buy some treats from an ice-cream from a vendor and eat them on a bench overlooking Sheep's Meadow. (At least, I think it was Sheep's Meadow. Again, the park was huge and we were lost.) I had a peanut-dipped chocolate bar, and Sara had a rock-hard frozen lemonade.
The front display of the ice-cream cart.
As soon as we left the park, I walked down Fifth Avenue to Temple Emmanuel, a famous historic old synagogue. It was the first Reform congregation in New York City, and it's still the largest synagogue in the world. (Joan Rivers's funeral was held there recently.) The sanctuary is usually open to the public for self-guided tours... but when I arrived there, I found it was inexplicably closed today. I had REALLY been looking forward to seeing that temple and was SO disappointed that I couldn't even go in. They didn't give any reason at all. Maybe it was because tomorrow is Kol Nidre night, or because they just wanted to disappoint me. I was so bummed that I almost started crying.
All that I ever saw of Temple Emmanuel.
So instead of touring the temple, we walked back to The Met and saw the New American Wing. I must've been tired of taking photos at this point, because there aren't many.
Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851), oil painting by Emanuel Leutze. Obviously, this painting is really famous and I was so excited to see it in person after seeing it in American history textbooks for years. It is HUGE! Seriously, it took up almost an entire wall of the gallery by itself.
Seeing it in person, I was able to notice a few details that I never did before, like this rower in the red jacket who really looks like a woman to me. Specifically, her hair and scarf are so Katherine Hepburn.
The Forest in Winter at Sunset (mid-1800s), oil painting by Theodore Rousseau. Another HUGE painting. I sat in front of this one for a long time, partly because I was so tired of standing and partly because it was so powerful. The enormity of the forest, the tangled branches, the color of the clouds, and the two tiny peasants in the clearing (you can't really see them here, but they're there, traveling through this spooky, gloomy forest just as it's getting dark). It was all so powerful and overwhelming.
Sara in front of one of her longtime favorite paintings, Joan of Arc, by Jules Bastien-Lepage. I hate that I cut off Saint Michael's head.
Haven't we all had days like this on vacation? You start out wanting to see and do everything, but by the end of the day, all you want to see is a bench, and all you want to do is sit. So we left The Met, subwayed back to our hotel, bought some dinner from a Pret a Manger (I found a pulled-pork burrito! overpiced but yummy), and rested for a bit. Fortunately, our event for the evening involved a long stretch of sitting: We saw Cabaret on Broadway! Sara is such a fangirl for Alan Cumming, who starred as the Emcee, and I went with her because she's going to Les Miserables with me. I did enjoy the show (Alan Cumming was amazing!) although I didn't know what to make of The Gorilla Song, or of the Emcee showing up in a concentration camp uniform at the end. (I don't think most people did. There was, like, one person clapping in confusion.) I did love the bit when the Emcee waved up to the mezzanine and yelled, "Hello up there, poor people!" Sara and I both cheered. My favorite songs were Willkommen, So What, Don't Tell Mama, and It Couldn't Please Me More.
Click to viewAlan Cumming and the company performing Cabaret's opening number, Wilkommen, at the 2014 Tony Awards. The setup and choreography here are very similar to what we saw in the play.
Sitting in traffic on the cab-ride back from Cabaret.
As exhausted as I am, I'm glad we got so much out of today, because tomorrow is our last full day in the city! And if all goes well, it will also be the day when the dream I dreamed in time gone by comes true! Sing it with me: ONE ... DAY ... MORE!!!