Sightseeing

Its quite strange to be a tourist again - quite lonely being on my own again - but nice to be in charge of my own time! My sightseeing has been somewhat marred by the exceedingly heavy rain to hit the Manhattan Island the last couple of days... seeing the drizzle on Thursday I decided to opt for a museum day, I should however have checked the weather forecast and realised it was going to get worse and save museums for today. Oh well hindsight is a wonderful thing, right?!?

Thursday morning I set off across Central Park towards the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Central park is actually surprisingly small, in fact Manhattan is surprisingly small, very walkable if you have the time. After racing the joggers (some of whom were jogging slower than I was walking) I made it to the Met, which is a caviverous maze of a building with lots of different wings and three floors each dedicated to different areas of art and design. Armed with the Lonely Planet, I checked out the Egyptian collection which is probably the most famous collection at the Met. Sorry to all the Egyptologists out there but Ancient Egypt just doesn't do it for me. Its amazing to look at all the statues and the mummification's are cool (if not a little gruesome), but there just isn't the wow factor for me... or at least that's what i thought until i reached the Egyptian jewelry section. Wow! I didn't realist how much gold, beads and intricate jewelry the Egyptians had, some of it is just stunning and its amazing how alot of the pieces wouldn't seem out of place if worn today. Another impressive part of the exhibit is the Shackler wing which house a temple donated to the Americans to save it from being flooded, it was quite surreal to be walking through an Egyptian temple housed inside a very modern (very beautiful) glass exhibition room complete with its own moat to surround the temple.

After making my way haphazardly through the Egyptian collection I found myself in the American rooms exhibit. This covered three floors and involved walking through living rooms from famous houses through the ages of America. Again i am showing my ignorance, but I didn't realise how wealthy some parts of America became so quickly. Some of the interior design was incredible and wouldn't of looked out of place in the palaces and gentry homes of Europe. Although it was interesting walking through all these rooms and quite impressive looking at wealth of these early American, it would have been quite nice for the exhibition to show more variance. I am quite sure that not all Americans lived in such opulence! I'm also quite certain that alot of the immigrants to America brought alot of their own culture with them and it would have been nice to see more on how these people married their own culture with the American one in their homes. The high point (for me anyway) was the open storage at the end of the exhibit, this consisted of a huge room with rows and rows of glass cases each containing hundreds of chairs, clocks, chests, dolls houses etc all lined up. This represents the part of the collection that couldn't be placed in the exhibits. Its nice to see it all on show, I know lots of museums lock away the non-permanent collections in the vaults, it was quite nice to see some of it on display - although to be surround by all these cases was a little disorientating.

Next I headed up to the Model as a Muse exhibition, which is sponsored by Marc Jacobs and details the rise of the super model and how models help designers change the face of fashion. This was a really well put together exhibition, there were some incredible exhibits showing some beautiful dresses ( I sneakily took photos of loads to see if I can recreate them at home - although just how many Galliano, and Dior imitation ball gowns does a girl need?). It was particularly interesting to note how the ideas of what a model should look like changed through the ages, and also to chart the fame of the super models...

It then took me 15 minutes to find the exit to the museum as I skipped through European painting (interesting but...), suits of armour (not that interesting), photography (really good, but I was hungry at this point!) and eventually the gift shop (which seemed to be larger than most exhibition halls...)

I then finished my stroll through central park along 5th Avenue, stopping for a hot dog and pretzel from a street vendor. I then reached the the end of Central Park and Millionaires row, complete with the De Beers, Bulgari, Gucci and Armani shops to finally reach the Rockefeller center my next port of call.

The Rockefeller center land was originally intended as the home for the Metropolitan opera, but then the Great Depression hit and the opera pulled out. Rockefeller decided that he still wanted to build something on the site and decided to fund the project himself. The resultant 70 floor building is now home to part of NBC studios - I saw the end of the 'Today Show' being filmed - the Rockefeller music hall (home to the Rockettes) as well as being a business and shopping complex. My destination is the 'Top of the Rock' observation deck on the 67,68 and 69 floor which afforded some stunning views over the city.

I ended the evening at a Belgium themed jazz evening, complete with moules et frites! A half of Belgium beer cost $8! All in all quite a good night though and I was defiantly ready for bed by the time I climbed off the subway at 11pm.

Today I decided (rather stupidly) to brave the rain and check out Wall Street, the Statue of Liberty and then the original plan was to walk back through Soho, Little Italy and into Greenwich Village (the 'hip and arty' areas of New York). However as the rain got worse and my shoes began to leak I called it a day and decided to head back after seeing only Wall Street and the site of the World Trade Center (now just a big building site). I've decided that sky scrappers are distinctly unimpressive from under an umbrella!

Tonight I'm heading to the Lower Eastside to hear a New Orleans DJ doing something new with 60's dance tunes.... could be interesting!