Woke up this morning in pain! After a 10 hour walk-a-thon the day before, I was certainly feeling the after effects of it. Good thing today would probably end up be alot of sitting around compared to yesterday - since part of today's agenda was to watch Billy Elliot!Today's scheduled activities: Guggenheim, Central Park, MoMa, Mesa Grill, Billy Elliot, and then a walk around Times Square/Theatre District. All pretty artsy! :). I keep thinking how funny it is that someone like me - who is so artistically challenged - is always interested in this stuff. I don't know much about the stuff I look at, nor do I really prepare for it in advance and read articles about what I am about to see, but seeing these pieces of art awes me at times, not to mention I swear it makes me smarter!... lol. The other thing I guess I realized that I like about going to 'culture day' events is that I feel very peaceful there, and it gives me alot of time to just let my mind wander and think about stuff... maybe that's the main pull that makes me like having 'culture days' every so often. I find that I don't think enough or reflect enough these days :P. Always going from one place to another, and when I do stop, I am stopping only to rest, not to just think. I gotta watch out for this and set some time aside to think some things through...
At Guggenheim
There were 3 things that jumped out at me. One was the architecture that this Lloyd Wright guy built. Looking at his work, the coolest ones were the ones that did not get built. Some of these ones were really futuristic, others were really great ideas - but none of these ones got built. Don't know enough about architecture to know why that is the case, but interesting nevertheless.
The second was this quote I saw at the entrance of one of the 'sub galleries'.
"Yesterday is not quite out of sight; tomorrow is not yet clear in view. But the atmosphere of vitality is unquestionable" -- James Johnson Sweeney, 1953
The past haunts the future, the future is murky, but happiness was knocking right at the footsteps. I keep looking at this and wonder, is there going to be a chance that things will just be like the way it was before I took this vacation?
The third one was this room where they showed off works of art of students. I think it's really cool that kids at such a young age can create something like this with guidance. This one particularly looked sooo cute. Not quite sure if I was allowed to take pictures, but I couldn't resist. I think my tour guide for Victoria Island would have really liked this section of the museum...Central Park
With Guggenheim being next to Central Park, we walked around in it. The whole time, I keep thinking, wow, if this was a sunny day, how much Victoria Island tour guide would have liked it here! There was a walkway right along this lake, with the buildings just protruding out from the horizon, yet very much looking like its part of the park. Didn't take any pictures of this though, because it was pretty drizzly today.
Anyway, originally the plan was to head in a southerly direction, so we get closer to MoMa, but being the pure tourist that I am, I decided to not look at the map, and we ended up walking in a big semi-circle. With yesterday's toll of walking, this walk felt really loooong! After getting back onto the east end of the park, we gave up and took the bus to MoMa.
MoMa
In my opinion, I liked the MoMa in Seattle more than the one in NYC. Even though the NYC is much bigger, I didn't particularly see any 'wow' pieces... there were a few Picassos (I still don't get these pictures...), but for the most part, there wasn't anything that jumped out at me.
Mesa Grill
Busing further down south, we reach our dinner location at 4:45pm. Being 15 minutes early, we left our name and then walked around. Stumbling into a 30% off sale at Kenneth Cole, I emerge out of it with 2 more pair of jeans :D. Finally I have new jeans to wear. My old jeans that I got 2 years ago should have been thrown out weeks (if not months) ago. One had a hole in the back pocket, the other had a hold at the right knee area (that expanded as the NYC progressed), and the last pair - well the zipper broke! For the rest of the night, I would carry this big shopping bag around... lol.
The food at Mesa Grill was nice. Had bison for the first time. Didn't really like it too much though -- felt really smokey and just a big too gamy. The service was really good here though, but seems a bit overpriced (especially when compared w/ the prime card specials in the west coast :P).
Billy Elliot
Then for the main venue of the day, it was time to watch Billy Elliot! A story about a kid who stumbles upon ballet and falls in love with it. This part of the night deserves its own entry. In summary though, I really liked this musical... more to come on this in a later entry.
Times Square
Alot of people, even at 11:30pm at night! This whole day, I keep thinking how much Victoria Island Tour Guide would have liked this place. There was a nice buzzing shops area, a nice park right in downtown that has a nice pond and trees.
I have to say, Neko was a great company -- I didn't end up having to plan much for the trip. Good thing this was because when I did try to fit everything we were doing this weekend, I had things scheduled at 8:30am...! Also seldomly did I look at the map, because we had these trip planners map all printed out. My only roles were to figure out adhoc routes to our destinations, and to guide others to j-walk.
Got back to the hotel at around 1am today. Another eventful day of touristy activities. Lots of thoughts going through my head today - among one of them, as weird as it feels, in a way, I was glad that this vacation was coming to an end. This silly 3 hour difference was just very hard to deal with... much harder than I had imagined it to be.
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