New York adventures, part 2

How do you begin to describe the Metropolitan Museum of Art? We decided to go here and take our chances, even though the Museum of Natural History had been so crowded we could hardly see a thing the day before. We were pleasantly surprised with the lack of crowds at the Met, though. It was amazing that either many fewer people were there in the first place, or that the museum was so huge and open that it absorbed everyone much better. Whatever the reason, it was a heavenly place to spend the day. We were there for about 7 hours, and barely saw a fraction of what the museum had to offer. It was incredible. We also discovered the secret lower entrance to the right of the main steps--no lines for admission, plus a restroom right there as well.

I loved this picture of the buildings across from the Met. There were several spots in Manhattan where someone had held out and didn't sell their building out to high rise development on either side. This is one of many such holdouts we saw.

We were so delighted to find this Joseph-Siffrede Duplessis orignal painting of Benjamin Franklin, dated 1778.We were stunned to see Van Gogh's self portrait just sitting there in the middle of a gallery where anybody could walk up and touch it. Not that we did. It is just such a priceless work of art to be hanging out in the middle of the floor.
I love Monet. That Claude was a genius.

This is the Van Gogh we would buy if we could.

Jacob and Abram liked this "manly" painting.

We accidentally wandered into the "Modern Art" wing, because it was the closest way to get to a restroom. But we found some really, really cool stuff there.

The piece behind us on the wall is made up of several thousand hexagonal mirrors, all somehow attached to each other at just the right angle to give some very excellent reflections when you look into it from any angle.

Mark took this one of the four of us looking into the mirrors. Each tiny individual mirror has its own unique reflection, and if you zoom in on the picture, it is very cool. Looking into it made me sick, though. My brain couldn't figure out if it should focus on the whole reflection or the individual ones, and it sort of messed with my head. Well worth it, though.

We never quite figured out how somebody came up with this idea to paint rectangular pieces of canvas each a solid shade. Looks like a paint chip sample from Home Depot to me.

Not sure what this was, either.
Or this.

After so many hours at the Met, we decided to call it a day and go back the next morning. We headed down to the Plaza Hotel to meet up with my friend Emilee as she finished her gig. We walked through Central Park. Emilee and I had some honey roasted nuts as we talked about things old and new.

Jacob was just along for the ride.

Abram had wanted to eat a pretzel in Central Park while sitting on the grass the whole time we were there. This was finally the day that it was warm enough to do that.

Next up, Lady Liberty's guts.