The Met

My mom woke me up at 8. I thought today was the day we slept in, or else I wouldn't have stayed up until 2 last night. After getting ready, we left around 9 and had breakfast at a cafe. The breakfast was really good, a chicken blt panini, cup of fruit, and blueberry muffin.

Breakfast

Then we got on our bus to go to the Museum of Modern History. It was a short drive to Uptown and the weather was gorgeous. Everyone kept talking about it.

We got into the museum and took a few minutes to get oriented. I thought I understood the place fairly well so I led the way. Mostly the museum had animal displays where you would walk up and look at the fake displays set up. It was cute I guess. Having seen most of the animals in person in Disney World, I can't say I was too excited to see these stuffed animal replicas. There was a disease wing that reminded me of Ian.

Then we were promptly lost. This was 1 room and 1 wing in and we were turned around. We found our way and decided to skip African people, Asian people, and some other people. Instead we went to the monkeys and birds.

"Did I leave the stove on?"

The monkeys were cute and the birds were neat too. This would have been a lot of fun if I was 7. We spent about 3 seconds on each display, or the amount of time it took to walk past a display at a slow pace. It wasn't boring. The most fun part was seeing birds that were native to South Dakota.

At the museum were lots of school groups. These kids were significantly way less adorable than the kids we saw at MoMA. These kids were loud and obnoxious and only good for shoulder checking when they stepped too close to me.

My mom wanted to see the dinosaurs and they were on the fourth of four floors. We walked around for a bit trying to find the carnivores. I guess it was fun. More fun for children. There were plenty of adults without children though. The dinosaurs part had a lot of bones.

"This is my design."

With the museums tickets came another ticket to one of their four movies they offered. We had the choice between a space movie, narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and a movie about mammal heroes. My mom didn't care, so I picked the mammal movie because space scares me. After we got tired, we went to our movie at 12:30.

There were annoying people in front of us. My mom has an italian couple that would not shut up and I had this middle aged french lady that wouldn't get off her phone during the film. Finally the lady next to me snapped and told her to turn it off.

The movie reminded me of this show I had seen months ago with Remo. It was this "documentary" (I don't know what else to call it) about a squirrel that had his nuts stolen. Ten minutes in I realized it was the same documentary. Since I already knew the epic conclusion (SPOILER: He gets his nuts back), I took a little nap.

After the film, we decided to leave. The museum had other plans because on what we thought was the way out, we ended up in some forest division where you could look at different types of trees. I didn't even see this place on the map. We finally left the museum at 1:30.

Can't believe these dinosaurs come alive at night. Gotta get out while you can.

Across the street was Central Park. Across Central Park was the MET, a museum of art. We went through Central Park and that was exciting because you hear about it so much and it sounds so swanky and upscale. The park was merely okay. Nothing special. I saw a bird that wasn't a pigeon. Walking through the park, my mom told me a story about a lady jogger who was brutally attacked and raped here. I love my mom.

Central Park

The MET was easy to find because it's huge and beautiful on the outside.

Lots of people hung out on the steps. I don't know why they would hang out here when central park was just a stones throw away.

The museum is massive and my aunt Sherry said to find 2 places you wanted to visit because that was really all you would have time for. My mom picked her top places she wanted to see and I picked my top least places and from that we worked out a plan. The plan went out the door as soon as we turned a corner and ended up in some Egyptian section and decided to hang out there. They had a cool pyramid you could walk through, with tight corners and dead ends. My mom got claustrophobic so we moved onto the next exhibit.

There was so much stuff to see. I could have spent 10 minutes staring at the same thing and not get tired of it. My favorite thing I saw kept changing but I loved the vintage rooms they had decorated to look like it was for real aristocrats.

Let them eat cake.

Something really interesting about the MET were the amount of amateur artists they had. A woman sat in front of a sculpture and drew in with charcoal, a man had clay and was sculpting a different sculpture in another room.

I could have stayed and watched them as well.

We found the paintings we had been looking for. I don't know art and I don't know what any of this stuff is called. But it was more Picasso, Braque, Manet, Rembrandt, and Monet. Monet had a whole room to himself, it was wonderful!

And the crowd levels were really great. You could be in a room with just yourself and the security and never had to wait to get up close to a painting. There were also very few children. The children were mostly located near the entrance.

My mom was hungry so we went to the cafe and had a snack. It took a bit of navigating, but by now we understood the map and layout of the MET so it wasn't hard. On the way, we passed by a Jackson Pollock painting that made me angry. I hate that stuff.

We went down some stairs and I was surprised to see a sculpture I recognized, Lilith.

She's a bronze statue that is a little frightening with these piercing glass eyes. In Jewish lore, Lilith was said to be Adam's first wife but she saw herself as his equal whereas Eve was made from his rib. Lilith was evicted from Eden and sent to hell. I've heard about the statue before, and how creepy it is. I was surprised to find it without trying because had I known the statue was here I would have tracked it down. It made me happy. I think this was the highlight of my trip to the MET.

We left the MET and found where our bus was to pick us up. We waited for the bus. And waited. And waited. The rival bus drove by several times. After 40 minutes, someone from the rival bus came up to us and asked if we would like to ride with them. We got on.

The bus experience with them wasn't much different then with the other bus. We got to Times Square and I led the way back to the hotel. We hung out at the hotel until 7, then we caught a cab to Uptown for a stand up show.

We went to the comedy club my mom had bought tickets for several nights ago. I truly did not want to go and was a little bit annoyed at being there. There had a 2 drink minimum and I didn't know what that meant. Were you automatically charged for 2 drinks, or were you required to drink 2 drinks? Obviously you can't force someone to drink when they don't want to so I was confused. Anyways, I had 2 jameson and gingers before the show even started and my mom had a margarita and they I had her second margarita. She also ordered something called focaccia. It had cheese, sauteed spinach and truffle oil.

"You can scrape the cheese off." My mom told me. Then she added. "In fact, you probably should."

The food came out and was really good. It was creamy and I was feeling pretty chill after inhaling my drinks.

I didn't scrape the cheese off. Decisions were made.

Then the show started at 8. It was hilarious. I laughed at everything. I sat next to some ladies who were also laughing at everything. I'm sure we were really obnoxious but I didn't care. The comedians were so funny. They were also very inappropriate. For a lot of jokes I would not have been able to look my mother in the eye but I heard her laughing as well.

The show ended at 10 and I loved it. I'm glad I was wrong about it earlier because it was a great experience. We took a cab back to Times Square and had plans to get bubble tea but the shop was closed. Instead we went to the same bakery as last night and got a cup of fruit and cheesecake. I mourned for the bubble tea but fruit is never a bad decision so I liked it as well.

We relaxed at the hotel and I went to sleep around midnight.