In the morning, we walked down to a little neighborhood bakery for breakfast. I had a roll that had some sort of sweet crust on top, and asked if it had a name (because I would like to find it again). The girl said, yes, it was called sweet bread. Uh, ok, that's helpful. :) We then went to the subway and bought Metro cards for the weekend, and took the subway to near our first museum, the Museum of the City of New York. As we walked along the street, someone was playing Latin music (Megan's neighborhood is largely Hispanic), and I said that it totally fit my image of NYC - the ethnic neighborhood, a soundtrack like in a movie. The weather was sunny but brisk, so we were glad we had winter coats. The night before it was absolutely freezing by the 9/11 museum.
The Museum of the City of New York was great. It is fairly small. Megan got in free because she lives in the same zip code, but Cathy and I got our tickets 2-for-1 on Groupon for $15. The best part of the museum was a video presentation about the history of New York City. It was narrated by Stanley Tucci and used old photographs and film to trace the roots of the city from its earliest days. Did you know that the Bronx is named after a family named Bronck, who originally owned the land? It was.... the Broncks'. Get it? :) There was also a room about the NYC Marathon, a room displaying some of the fancy belongings (jewelry, dishes, paintings) from NYC society's Gilded Age, and artwork depicting important people in New York's history, including - tadaa! - Alexander Hamilton. It was a really nice stop on our little tour.
Next, we took a bus to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Before going in, we got lunch from a food truck in front of the museum. A little known fact about the Met is that the admission charge is actually optional. The sign says that $25 is "suggested", but when you get to the desk, they ask how much you want to pay. Cathy paid $5 for Megan and her, I paid $10 (ok, I felt guilty), so it averaged out to $5 each. We didn't intend to see a lot, so we went to the area with prints and photographs, then made our way down to the American Wing, seeing what we could along the way. The Met is massive, and you could spend days there and not see it all, so we had to be selective. My favorite thing there was a house (an actual building that appeared to have been joined to the museum by an atrium) where the rooms had all been purchased and reconstructed from various other places. Some were from famous people's homes, others were representative of different styles. By that time, we needed fresh air, so we left. We had intended to go to the Neue Gallerie to see the Woman in Gold, but there was a line outside. We sat and watched for awhile to see if the line moved quickly or not, and finally decided to skip it, since, even after waiting, it would undoubted be crowded. And it was too expensive for a bad experience. So we proceeded on to Rockefeller Center.
When we got to Rockefeller Center, there was no one on the ice rink because the Zamboni was making its rounds. We hung around for awhile, walking around to see it from both sides, watching people skate. The NBC building where they film the Today Show is right there, too. Then we caught an Uber to the Carnegie Deli for dinner. There was a long line outside when we got there, but we decided to get in it and watch for awhile to see if it moved quickly. After waiting about 45 minutes (I think), we decided it was a lost cause. Megan found out that her friend Leigh was at a restaurant in the theatre district, Junior's, which also had a long wait time, but she put our names in while we made our way downtown (I think). One thing that I had previously believed about New York was that Broadway was a street with theatre-theatre-theatre-theatre all along it. In truth, the theatres are scattered around the whole area. There aren't many theatres actually on Broadway itself. Before we went into the restaurant to wait, Megan took me a block over to see the theatre where "Hamilton" is. If I couldn't see it, I could at least see where it is housed! Even though we had spent part of our waiting time just getting down there, we still faced a lengthy wait. The pre-theatre crowd was out in full force - and it was Saturday, so..... Leigh waited with us. We finally scored a corner table on one of the theatre alleys, so we got to watch workers arriving to get ready for that night's show. I just loved it! I don't usually order dessert, but the coconut and lemon cake was calling my name.
After dinner, we walked down through Times Square (which is not, as one might expect, an actual square or even a plaza). The New Year's Eve ball sits high atop its building, waiting for next year. The signs and lights were incredible, and lights were coming on on buildings all around. There is just so much to see! (That's probably the understatement of the year.) Then we made our way back to Megan's. It was only 8:30, but it had been a busy day, and we had planning to do for the next day.
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