Wednesday: the MET, Central Park, St John's, Tom's Diner

Wednesday we slept til about 8:30 and didn't get out of the hotel til about 9:45 putting us a shocking hour behind schedule right off the bat. But we didn't have any 'set in stone' things Wednesday; meaning, we hadn't already paid money to be at a certain place at a certain time, so we were fine with it. We road the subway uptown to central park and then walked through it to the MET. I immediately felt more comfortable in the Park and uptown. The Park is beautiful and green and full of mom's with strollers and small kids: my kind of people! We had seen very few children up until this day and, I kinda really like kids and had missed them. So we strolled through the Park to 5th Avenue which is where the MET is located. It was very different uptown then midtown and downtown. The sidewalks were wider, people moved at a slower pace, there were still lots of tall buildings but they seemed to be more residential, and there were lots of folks with kids. Here's what I mean:

Down town:



Uptown:

Now I don't know if this is the case everywhere but these were differences I noticed.

The MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art) was very impressive. We had heard that you could spend all day in there and I suppose that's true, if you really like museums. They had a really neat Ancient Egypt exhibit with artifacts (and pieces of pyramids) that are thousands of years old. I really enjoyed the art from the Renaissance period and their exhibit of musical instruments, and the religious art exhibit. I get all that stuff. I have really no appreciation for modern art, unfortunately. I don't understand how a large canvas that's painted brown (and only brown) constitutes something that is MET-worthy. We ate lunch on the roof of the MET amidst a giant bamboo structure that is also art somehow.

The view was great from up there.


We spent about 3 hours looking at everything and then decided to be finished. We headed back to the park. We wanted to see the fountain that Giselle dances around in Enchanted which happens to be called the Bethesda Fountain. We found it without much trouble. Since there were lots of folks there, I decided not to reenact that part of the movie!


It was a really beautiful place. Incidentally, when we were done in the park and making our way to the subway, we were back on schedule, just in case you were wondering!

We were headed further uptown to St. John the Divine's cathedral. We wanted to go here because it is the biggest Anglican cathedral in the whole world and the 4th largest church in the world. The place is massive. No pictures we took could capture the gigantic scope of this place. Here's some of our attempts:

the high alter
the above picture is taken from the steps up to the high alter facing back to the front door. It's a long way. Surrounding the back of the high alter are several small chapels that are dedicated to this or that saint. They were pretty to look at too. Eric was interested in this plaque:

there were a few more plaques having the Morton or Livingston name on it, this is near the organ the others were near the choir stalls. Funny that these Livingstons were musical as well!

After looking around St. John's we headed over and up a couple of blocks to Tom's Diner. This is the diner that Seinfeld's hang out on the show was based on. Look familiar?

I ordered a salad, but not a Big Salad, because I wasn't all that hungry :)

After supper we navigated 2 subways to get to Grand Central Station. That place was BUSY. It was like an ant hill that had been stepped on. Everyone was going a different direction really fast. We made our way into the middle and snapped a few pictures.


We saw what we wanted and then headed back to the subway to go to the hotel. It wasn't all the late but we were ready to be in. It was a great day and with a relaxed schedule, but we still got a lot done.

Next time, I'll tell you about our last full day in NYC. It went too fast!

Blessings to you
D