Yesterday was our first full day in New York 
. We arrived on Friday having picked Scott up from the airport on our way from Philadelphia. We have hotels just off Times Square so went out for a meal and drinks on Friday ( in pouring rain and 90° heat) then met up at the Guggenheim Museum on Saturday morning.
The Guggenheim museum is a fabulous example of architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright , but we weren’t as interested in the current exhibitions so we stopped to see inside the foyer and then took a yellow cab (of course) over to Central Park and the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art .
The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art is unbelievably huge and you could easily spend several days, if not a week, wandering around without duplicating anything. We managed to visit 5 or 6 of the halls and were amazed to see some of the most famous paintings and sculptures in the world, without glass cases or any ‘protection’ apart from a thin metal rope barrier: Monet’s “Water lillies” and “Bridge over a pond of Water Lillies”, van Gough’s “Self Portrait in a Straw Hat” and “Wheat fields with Cypresses” several Andy Warhol’s, plus, to our complete amazement, Rodin’s “The Thinker” mounted halfway up a wall (replicating, we think, its originally designed position above the gates of Hell, either that, or just putting it conveniently out of reach of visitors!)
We also spent a while in the Modern Art hall, with mixed opinions – Scott was particularly (un)impressed with a piece that looked very similar to a Dulux colour chart! (see it behind the white plaster woman in the photos below).
Our final tourist-stop on day #1 was The Top of The Rock , the observation platform at the top of the Rockerfeller Centre. Its not as high as the Empire State Building , but from it you get to see the ESB itself, and we were there at night, so the lights and colours of New York were just fantastic.
By the time we came down, it was 11pm, so the perfect time to revisit Times Square for night time photos: Another cab ride (I have no idea how they get the cars through spaces so small, it seems to defy any known laws of physics) and Jon spent a little while taking some great pictures of the neon lights, his favorites are below.
By this time our feet were exhausted and we realised we hadn’t eaten since lunch so we found a restaurant off Times Square where I had my first authentic New York bagel (toasted, cream cheese & lox (smoked salmon) with capers on the side; I could move here just for these!)
More tomorrow…