So having ended day one in NYC with a headache and a piece of crappy cake, day two had to look up, no?
It was still hot on day two, so we decided to avail ourselves of the air conditioned goodness that is a “museum day”
We started out from the hotel around nine am.
This turned out to be a big mistake.
You know that whole “city that never sleeps” thing they like to prate on about in NYC?
Well, it turns out that the city does, in fact, sleep. It sleeps late. NOTHING in that city opens until 10 o’clock.
We arrived at the Natural History museum at 9:30 (it was only about 20 blocks from the hotel, so even though it was a bit warm, it was a nice walk)
People milling around outside.
Doors shut.
Hey, guess what? No times posted either!
From the number of people doing the milling, we came to the assumption that the place would open at 10 and decided to wander just a little in Central Park to kill some time.
Finally 10 rolled around, we went into the museum, saw some cool stuff, looked at some dead, stuffed animals, and after about an hour and a hafl concluded that we had seen pretty much all we wanted to see and headed back out to the street.
(this is the beauty of free admission with a corporate membership… no feeling like you have to see EVERYTHING in one visit because you just paid a gagillion bucks to get in the door)
Next on the hit parade was The Met. That meant crossing Central Park, so we went in and sort of wandered / crossed and took paths that looked like they might generally lead to the other side of the place (there are a LOT of paths ion that park).
We came out a bit South of where we wanted to be, but headed up the road to find the Museum right where it ought to be.
The whole time we were doing this, we were also on the lookout for a Sabretts cart (lunch time, you know) and we just couldn’t find one.
There seems to be some kind of franchise on carts around Central Park – they all sell EXACTLY THE SAME THING. We found one lonely little Sabretts guy across the street from the Met, but he wasn’t ready to sell yet… we ended up with one of the Central Park Stepford Dogs… it was good, but not Sabretts… ah well.
So, into The Met… we looked at Egyptian, Medieval, and Chinese things (again, free admission means you don’t have to sweat seeing everything!)… by then it was lateish in the afternoon and we decided to head back out.
I still wanted to go visit the International headquarters of the company I work for (just to say I had been to the Mother Ship).
So, we went wandering back through Central Park to get over to the west side.
A word about Central Park…
Turns out, it’s kind of in a hole. There is no wind there (or not where we went). The maps, they suck.
So.. if you are ever in Central Park for just a nice wander about the park, that is fine… if you are looking for something specific, I suggest you take a New Yorker in with you, because otherwise you aren’t finding it.
We completely failed to find Strawberry Fields.
We saw many other things we were not looking for at all.
We were much sweatier and tireder that we had planned for when we finally found a path out of the place.
Oh… and about 15 blocksaway from where we thought we would be.
Note to self… Do not go to NYC to go walking in the woods. If you want woods, go to the mountains where the paths are BLAZED!
So, from there, we went to the company headquarters to gaze upon the glory that is the building they built (It really is quite nice).
We took a break in the hotel, then walked down Broadway to Times Square to have dinner at the Heartland Brewery Chophouse… a ROCKIN’ local brew chain. It was yummy. If you ever go there, order the spinach dip… it totally tasted like spinach dip clam chowder. mmmmmmm.
To make up for the cake disaster of the night before, I stopped in at the Roxy Deli on Broadway and got the world’s heaviest slice of carrot cake. Seriously… one slice. He handed it to me, it must’ve weighed a pound… maybe more. It was soooooooo tasty, but I couldn’t finish it (and if you know me and cake, that’s really saying something).
After all that, we were pretty tired. Plus, I am a fuddy duddy and I don’t like to stay out past my bed time, so we crashed at the hotel and watched the crappy cable reception and went to bed.
Well, I went to bed. Alas for the Hubby… I did not realize when I booked the room that the whole hotel was non-smoking. So he had to make a couple of trips to the sidewalk. I, however, slept like the dead for about 12 hours.
Thus endeth day two. Not quite so funny as day one, but ever so much more enjoyable!
That’s it… I will now resume complaining about the heat and such.
