NY..day 2....Museum and subways and umbrellas..oh my!

Oh boy..I am so excited when I wake up and realize I am THIS close to Monet, Manet, Renoir, Rothko and Seurat, Gottlieb, Pollack and Oh Boy!
So, I pull out my trusty NY guide to all things arty and prepare for the Museum mile and think I can achieve visitng 4 museums in one day.


Okay stop laughing, it is not that funny!
I didn't know!!!!!!

D and I embark on the subway experience and other than getting on the wrong way, yes, it was my fault..sigh...we realize quickly and head to the Gugenheim.......so excited.........walking from station..oh boy there it is....... and I look at a sign..

'UNDER RENOVATION"

WHAT???????? nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
We go in anyway, at a reduced rate, to see 2 small ,....small....really small room of sketches and drawings and can sort of see the general architecture of the museum.

We mock a pompous tour guide discussing abstract art to an eager group of looky loo's...sigh.
I visit the round ladies room ofcourse, wouldn't miss that Miss Kramer... tee hee....and then decide to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and spend the rest of the day there....yes....I have realized 4 museums isn't going to happen...stop giggling already..i was hopeful.

We hop in a cab and then find it is ummmm right there..around the corner...oh well...we are in!
Holy crap batman! The place is ENORMOUS !
We decide to focus on the Impressionists and the Greek and Roman sculpture.
I walk in a state of emotional turbulence....the sights, the energy, the brush strokes....the colours...amazing.

D and I spend hours taking it in and discussing in hushed and reverent tones ( sometimes not so reverent..bawdy artists :) ) and I am totally overwhelmed at the magnificence of some of these paintings.
Sitting on a bench with a security guard in one corner, tourists and looky loos taking in the art through the lens of their cameras..(what is with that anyway?) I am swept through the past and into worlds I had imagined but not in full colour.

After almost 6 hours, we relaize it is time to head back to the hotel and get ready for dinner and "Spring Awakening..our first Broadway show.

I leave D at a dark entrance under construction and use the ladies...not round.... and when I come out , D is chatting up a little bird faced woman with tight, short curly dark hair...thick round grandma glasses and the best Bronx accent. She asks me for my drivers license>
"huh"
D says..."show her we are from Victoria.....
"huh. okay...pull out license......and woosh...we are immediately escorted into a preview fpr the highest subscription holders. "the money" for the Turner exhibit that is not scheduled to open for a week. Regular subscription holders were being turned away in droves yet D managed to convince her to let us in. :)
He is so good at chatting up people.:)

The looky loo's left behind, no sign visually of security guards and a lot of art officianados who you just know have money trees in their swanky apartments, and their walkers, we are taken into the world of this brilliant man who was the predecessor to all thing Impressionist.
The absolute silence....the space to see the paintings...the PAINTINGS.....oh how to describe what that was like....that feeling that we had been taken into something so special, that was such a gift. A place tourists don't get to experience.....the heart of the art world.
No one was looking through the lens of a camera.
It was amazing.

We stayed and then we had to leave in a hurry......eekkk.......mom and R were waiting at hotel.

We run out to catch a cab and woah.....there is a sideways drenching , sheeting down rain/wind storm. I buy a $5 umbrella from a dude on the museum steps, stay dry for 5 more steps and the umbrella then turns inside out and whacks me upside the head. This is not how I imagined leaving the sanctitude of the museum.

I am determined to grab a cab...I stand in front of the cab stand and stick my arm out, waving like an idiot all the while getting drenched in my white and yellow suntop..quickly becoming invisible.

I try a new tact 10 minutes later and move to where the locals kept stealing my cabs down a ways from the cab stop.....I hail.... a cab stops......I start to sit down , hand on door and seat....soooooo excited...and BAM....I am tackled by a whirlwind of fast talking aggressive, TINy New Yorker woman....she tackles me but I stand strong, i argue..."this is MY cab" she is relentless and pulls me out of the cab...seriously...out of the cab.

D is astonished as he was heading for the other door and I am pissed.....no really....really.....pissed!

I am soaking wet, more wet than any west coast storm ever.....I am late..R will be waiting and I am pissed and the cab drives away.....now what?

at that exact moment, I have my "sex in the city moment"

A long dark black limousine pulls up to me.....I expect Big to appear..really...but instead a window rolls down and an angelic voice says " Do you need a riode?"

Do I????? hell ya I do.....
I ask how much to Times Square and amazingly it is about the same as a cab...we hop in.
sigh...the luxury, the DRY TOWELS! the leather seats....sigh...it was a perfect New York moment.
A perfect New York day.

I realize why people love this town in that instant. It is unlike anywhere else.....it should have its own gravititational force.....it is simply New York.

I know that " I heart NY!"

to be cont....