Hey, come on, let’s go!
We’ve got a whole museum to visit
We should probably pick up on the pace!
We’ve got a lot of ground to cover on day three of our perfect three-day New York City trip, and not much time in which to cover it – so I hope you got a good night’s sleep last night.
Day Three
When breakfasting in New York City, 2 or 3 lines does not live by bagels alone – on occasion, he has avocado toast instead. Fortunately, the Blue Angel is near the avocado-centric Avo restaurant.
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It’s a short walk from Avo to the Lexington Avenue/53rd Street MTA station, where you’ll catch an uptown 6 train and ride four stops to the 86th Street station. From there, it’s a short walk from the Metropolitan Museum of Art – which we art connoisseurs refer to simply as “the Met.”
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The Met is the largest and most-visited museum in the Western Hemisphere. Last year, over five million people dropped in to view its encyclopedic holdings, which include not only paintings and sculptures from all over the world, but also galleries full of arms and armor, musical instruments, costumes, and the decorative arts (e.g., furniture, ceramics, glassware, metalwork, textiles, and jewelry).
The centerpiece of the Met’s massive Egyptian wing is the Temple of Dendur, a sandstone structure that was dismantled by the Egyptian government to save it from being submerged when the Nile River was as a result of the damming of the Nile River in the sixties.
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| The Temple of Dendur |
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The Met’s display of medieval armor is certainly eye-catching:
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Perhaps the most interesting suit of armor in the Met is the one that was made for Henry VIII a few years before he died. As you can tell from its ample girth, the once-fit king had put on quite a few pounds by the time that suit was fitted. (Historians think good ol’ Hal weighed between 300 and 400 pounds when he died shortly thereafter.)
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The Met has room after room filled with Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. If you’re a fan of painters like Renoir, Monet, Gauguin, and Van Gogh – and who isn’t? – you gotta get to the Met, dude!
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Van Gogh’s “Self-Portrait with a Straw Hat” |
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While the Met has just about any kind of art you can think of in spades, there’s one thing that was in very short supply the last time I visited – and that was food.
The Met has four restaurants and a food cart, which sounds like a lot. But one of the Met’s dining rooms is only open on weekends. Another one was closed the day of my visit because they were setting up for a posh soirée for the museum’s biggest donors. The third one I visited closed early that day because it ran out of food. And the food cart’s supply of sandwiches was long gone by the time I got there as well, so I lunched on a grossly overpriced bag of peanut M&M’s.
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Four hours is only enough time to scratch the surface of the Met’s extensive collections, but flesh and blood can only handle so much walking and gawping before exhaustion sets in. And we have a train to catch!
So after a brief detour to catch a glimpse of the Central Park Reservoir, it’s time to head back to the Blue Angel to retrieve luggage before making your way to the subway for the ten-minute trip at Penn Station.
Once you arrive, you can quaff a beer at the faux-Irish pub situated in the middle of the unbelievably noisy Moynihan Food Hall, and then pick up a sandwich and a Dr. Pepper to consume on the train.
If you’d prefer not to spend the next few hours hearing your fellow Amtrak passengers yak on their phones, make sure to grab a seat in the quiet car – no talking allowed on the quiet car! (If you’re lucky, some jerk*ff will ignore the quiet car rules and take a call – it’s very satisfying to have an excuse to give him a dirty look as you pass him a nasty note.)
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| Ssshhh! |
On my last trip, I got to my destination on time – sort of – and in one piece. I chose to stay out of the filthy restrooms on the train and drain the lizard after debarking. But the Amtrak Nazis were out in force, informing the passengers in none-too-polite terms that we could not use the restrooms because the station was officially closed. (There were three more trains scheduled to come through that station later that evening – I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do if you want to board one of those trains and need to consult with a ticket agent first.)
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In the next 2 or 3 lines, I’ll provide you with a detailed breakdown of the costs you’ll incur on my suggested New York City itinerary. (If you’ve got a weak heart, make sure you’ve got a nitroglycerin tablet handy – the numbers may come as a bit of a shock.)
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“Ordinary Days,” a sung-through musical that had its New York City premiere in 2009, tells the story of four young New Yorkers named Claire, Jason, Warren, and Deb, who all find themselves at the Met on Saturday afternoon – hence the title of today’s featured song.
Deb and Warren are there because he has found something that she lost, and suggested that they meet in a Met gallery containing a particular Monet painting so her can return the lost item.
Deb becomes more and more frustrated as she searches unsuccessfully for the correct gallery. She asks for help from Jason and Claire, a couple visiting the museum. The “Saturday at the Met” lyrics quoted above are sung by Jason, who is annoyed that Claire is moving so slowly through the museum – he urges her to pick up the pace. (It turns out that the couple not only have different ideas about the proper way to explore the Met, but also have very different tastes in paintings – I’m guessing that there’s trouble ahead for Jason and Claire!)
Click here to listen to “Saturday at the Met.”
Click here to buy “Saturday at the Met” from Amazon.
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