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Published: April 1st 2006
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Not surprisingly we slept in longer than we had planned, but we still headed out fairly early. We rang Travvy to try and organise lunch with him and Bec before we left. It depended on Bec being able to get away from work so we told Travvy we'd call him closer to lunch.
On foot again we headed towards Central Park after we had put our baggage in the hostel's storage room. It had snowed a little bit overnight, but it was actually warmer than the previous 2 days.
As soon as we stepped into Central Park a hawker managed to con us into buying a print off him. Central Park is a lot bigger than I had pictured, and it is the only place in New York that still has snow after the record dumping they received in one day less than two weeks ago. There were squirrels everywhere, and the many ponds were all frozen over. Much of the grass and trees were brown due to the winter, but it would be a very pretty park in spring/summer. Despite this there were still people using the park, and surprisingly there were a few people walking their dogs. How could
you own a dog in New York?
It would have been nice to slow down and take in Central Park a bit more, but our time line was very short. We rushed into a museum before realising it was the wrong one, luckily before we had paid anything. We thought it was The Museum of Modern Art, but it was another Art museum.
Now I've never been a big follower of the arts, and I was always a bit sceptical of some things that were decidedly odd and yet were called 'art'. You know the painting that was done by an elephant, or the one where random tins of paint were thrown at a canvas. Also, the sculptures that look like they are made out of four knives and a fork, or from random bits of junk taken from the wreckers. The fact that such 'art' fills the Guggenheim Museum is probably why I didn't enjoy it. Granted I was tired and we had to rush, but I guess I 'just don't get' this form of art. I have really started to take an interest in art since we've been travelling, eg. Charlie Russell prints etc, so this was a
bit of a reality check for me. The only pieces of art I liked at Guggenheim were by Pablo Picasso.
The main culprit for my distaste was David Smith (1906-1965). He is allegedly widely considered as the greatest sculptor of his generation. His work is distinguished by the use of industrial materials, especially welded metals and the integration of open space. In other words junk and stuff chucked together.
The museum is currently celebrating the 100th anniversary of David Smith's work, and is the reason why his work is featured prominently in the exhibition. Mr Smith was a prolific Abstract Expressionist, with the museum showing nearly 125 pieces of his work, as well as many of his drawings and sketchbooks.
His greatest sculpture is called 'Australia', and other than the title I can't for the life of me work out what all the fuss is about, even after I read about 'drawing in space'.
After rapidly walking around the many levels it was time to go and catch up with Travvy for lunch. We didn't have a mobile, so we had to use a payphone, but it kept eating up our coins without even connecting us. This left us with
a dilemma we weren't used to. We weren't sure where Travvy lived so we walked around looking down streets hopefully, but we soon recognised we were kidding ourselves. Unfortunately we just had to keep on our way, which would have to include some form of food as we hadn't eaten all day.
We walked across to the other side of Central Park with the intention of seeing the Dakota apartments where John Lennon was shot. Also on the other side was the American Museum of Natural History, but we just didn't have time to go in even though we had a free pass. The map said that the Dakota apartments were another block up, but there were no signs to it anywhere so we decided to miss it. This area is very expensive to live in, and is where some of the New York sitcoms are set, eg. Friends.
We'd had enough touring so we dived into a cafe and got some sandwiches. Time was running out, but I quickly dived into Times Square Information and emailed Travvy apologising for standing him up. Then it was back to the hostel in time for the shuttle that Beck had ordered for
us earlier.
The shuttle was running a bit late, and had a couple more pick-ups after us. Traffic was also very bad, but the driver took it all in his stride. He swerved in and out of lanes, pushed his way in where he shouldn't, and took detours to avoid traffic that had built up due to an accident/construction. The end result was that we got to JFK with plenty of time to spare. At JFK I was still hungry, but I thought I would wait until we got to the other side of the x-ray machine. It was a bad idea, there was only a bar with not much on offer. Apparently you can go back through to the other side, but I couldn't be bothered and just made do.
Although New York was great we were looking forward to leaving so we could get some R & R in Holland. When we had checked our bags in the lady said that we couldn't sit together, and that there would be a seat between us, which seemed quite bizarre. We were one of the first ones on the plane, and we watched praying as each passenger got on that
they wouldn't be sitting between us. Luckily that turned out to be the case.
There was a huge queue of planes lining up to take off which reinforced how big JFK is, but before long we were in the air. It has to be said that KLM is by far the best airline we have flown with so far. The meals (note plural) were all excellent, and the in-flight entertainment was many and varied. I didn't actually watch the movie, although Beck's laughter seemed to indicate she was happy with it. I did however catch Mr. Bean, some music clips, and the surfing chefs from Australia - can't remember their names. They were at the Mornington Peninsula, and we both took a close interest in the show.
I also feel that there was more room in the seats, or they were more comfortable, or both. So even though I hadn't slept I didn't feel too bad when we landed at Schiphol Amsterdam at eight in the morning.
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title???
sounds like fun...hahaha