Day 11 - New York City
Today, Katie and I decided to divide and conquer with her tackling some more shopping and me hitting the museums and galleries.
We had breakfast in the apartment, then as Katie headed towards Banana Republic and Victoria’s Secret, I set off for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). I have to be honest and say that I’m not that much of a fan of modern art, and even less of most contemporary art. Still, there were some interesting works and the Warhol/Dali/Magritte pieces were particularly good.
Next up was the Metropolitan Museum of Art which has a simply obscene number of amazing pieces. Every square inch is crammed with bits and pieces. The armour and weapons section was pretty interesting and I got to check out some old art to balance out the modern stuff. I was looking forward to seeing the drawing section, including bits from Leonardo, but this was unfortunately closed for works.
At this stage, Katie had shopped and was starting to queue for Broadway tickets at the TKTS last-minute booth in Times Square, where you can get tickets for shows that night, although there may not be much choice about where you get to go. After a very long wait, she managed to get tickets to ‘Bengal Tiger in the Baghdad Zoo’, starring Robin Williams - not bad at all!
My last stop for the day was the Museum of Natural History, across Central Park from the Met. This place was great - stacks of interesting exhibits and lots of things for the kids running around everywhere to do and poke at. The dinosaurs were amazing, as were the dioramas and models of global landscapes. The space section and the models about the development of the galaxy and Earth were also very well done.
Katie had made it to the Metropolitan Opera for some more shopping for Tiina by this stage and we were both pretty pooped, so were rendezvoused at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel - at the bar on the 35th floor that has a great view of Central Park. We had a couple of cocktails while thinking about how hard we have it, then dropped our stuff off at the apartment before heading around the corner to see the play.
Robin Williams was excellent as the titular tiger and the rest of the cast were also really good. The story revolves around two American soldiers based in Baghdad and the effect that their deployment has on them, their translator and the tiger that they are guarding in the Baghdad Zoo. The play itself was quite interesting, with some really good ideas and funny lines; however, I think that the whole was much less than the sum of the parts, with some aspects, particularly the comedic lines given to the character of Uday Hussein, missing the mark by quite a distance. All up, it was a great night out. We also managed to secure tickets to a preview show of ‘The House of Blue Leaves’ later in the week, which will be a chance to see Ben Stiller on stage.
