Whenever we walked up from the apartment to the subway station at 28th Street, we'd see Chrysler Building to our right and Empire State to our left at the junction of 29th Street.
Chrysler Building
Empire State Building
Who, me? Yes, you!
Miss Korea for lunch with WY at Little Korea, between 22nd and 23rd Streets near the Empire State Building and Macy's.
Guggenheim Museum by Frank Lloyd Wright on 58th Street along 5th Avenue. I always thought it was bigger!
View from Central Park across the road
Unfortunately the ramps were closed for installation of Art of Another Kind exhibition opening on June 8. We weren't allowed up the ramps and had to take the lift or stairs to view the other ongoing exhibitions. They halved the ticket price and i paid $10 to view whatever collection was on.
First was the Francesca Woodman exhibition which really was a collection of black & white self-portraits (some nude) through the years, and a video of her standing behind a large piece of paper and she's tearing the paper shred by shred, revealing a bit more of her naked body each time, and finally when the paper is almost all torn up, she walks towards the camera butt naked and i swear i heard some muffed giggling and saw some eyes rolling from the small crowd that had gathered to watch.
In another blackened video room titled Being Singular Plural (i kinda liked this title and was intrigued going in), i watched some 10 minutes of a video filmed at an ongoing construction site, where cranes were lifting metal and there is clanking here and there and after 10 minutes of what seemed to be an ordinary day at the construction site, i'm thinking to myself, so if i were to film a day in the construction of the project i was working on, i could submit it as art? I read the text on the wall and it says "The works included in this presentation reveal the quiet principles of practice, process, and perception, while being grounded in a vital social consciousness...Recognizing the interconnectedness of all beings, the selected films, videos, and interactive sound installations invite visitors to reassess conventional boundaries between such categories as fiction and non-fiction, art and cinema, the still and moving image, documentation and poetry, and objectivity and subjectivity. By manipulating sound, image, and text in experimental ways, these practitioners shift viewers’ positions from passive spectatorship to active participation—to places where the “we” of “being together” is in the immediate here and now."
In contrast, i checked out another collection, A Year with Children, which featured art by children, including a process book of the children's thoughts behind their art. Which really was most endearing and unpretentious, compared to a lot of contemporary adult art and their intentions, which sometimes makes museum-going a bit frustrating but then again, what do i know about art. At this point and until i visit more art museums and increase my knowledge of art, my conclusion is that anything can be called art, and art to you may not be art to me but hey, it's a free world!
View of the ramps from the lobby. Photo-taking was allowed only at the lobby level.
View of the city from across the reservoir at Central Park.
I really love how green Central Park was. This was the stretch between the Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum. Central Park was huge and i am determined to visit the rest of it with ZY and WY another day, hopefully we can do a picnic or something.
The Met as the Metropolitan Museum of Art was popularly known. The sheer size of it. Running out of time so I decided to give it a miss.
Another view of The Met walking out from Central Park. From here we randomly took a public bus down 5th Avenue and caught a glimpse of the Apple Store along the way. Bus drivers were most helpful in offering advice. So were NYC cab drivers i found.
The New York Public Library was awesome!
The interior was absolutely stunning.
Entrance lobby from street level.
Galleries
Passageways to galleries
View of the street when exiting the New York Public Library.
This is Bryant Park. I love how green it was, right smack in the middle of the city and so accessible from all sides from the streets.
New Yorkers simply live in parks! i love it!
The parks are clean and green, really.
It's interesting the large grass patch is cordened off and everyone kinda just occupies the peripheral, it really makes for great visual-spatial unclutteredness. I think during winter, Bryant Park is turned into one huge ice-skating park.
Back at Times Square, we were walking from Bryant Park on 42nd & 5th to 9th Avenue, between 47th & 48th, to have dinner with ZY and WY.
Guitar hero crossing the road.
Dinner at Room Service, a thai restaurant in Hell's Kitchen, near the Theatre District, since i was taking Dad & Mum to watch their first Broadway Musical, actually make that their first ever musical.
A couple of NYC restaurants we went to had this long horizontal ribbon mirror on the walls.
WY's blackened fish wasn't very black.
My pad-thai. Not all that authentic.
Tuna appetiser. I always don't have a habit of recalling the names of dishes.
Mum's salmon.
Stopping traffic, heh.
Then it was off to our broadway musical, Mamma Mia!
It was very entertaining. And i thought a bit too similar to the Meryl Streep movie version, down to how her denim overalls had to have one shoulder strap hanging loose.
Thursday 1 June
Just another working day on Wall Street.
Many people were photographing the New York Stock Exchange i wonder why.
Huge american flag. Largest i've seen on this trip so far.
The Wall Street Bull, symbolising agressive financial optimism and prosperity. Maybe they should think about not putting it behind um, bars? There was an unbelievable queue for tourists to take photo with it. We sneaked a photo in between takes, from outside the railings.
Bowling Green, the only park i came across that had a sign that said No Dogs Allowed. We walked quickly through it to grab a quick sandwich lunch.
Interesting information counter and bench design outside the Staten Island Ferry Terminal Building.
Heehee so touristy.
View of the Manhattan Skyline on board the ferry that took us to Staten Island and back.
The window bays were crowded with so many people taking photos.
This is a cropped zoomed in photo of the Statue of Liberty.
Cooper Union designed by Morphosis.
Ooh the Mermaid Inn for my Happy Hour Oysters finally!
The Mermaid Inn's menu.
I like how the restaurant opens out to the sidewalk. This was on 2nd Ave, between 5th & 6th in East Village.
We ordered one and a half dozen oysters at a dollar a pop and a dozen clams at the same price and all too soon it was gobble up and we promptly ordered another dozen oysters just in the nick of time before the 7pm happy hour was over. Mm-mmmm.
These are called sliders, i wonder if it's because the layers keep sliding off each other. They look like mini-burgers to me!
This appetiser dish was really yummy but i forgot what it's called.
Oooh... Ahhh....
Main courses after the awesome appetisers. I was kinda distracted by the waiter who took our order cos he looked a bit like Aaron Eckhart. Also there was this understudy who stood next to him wherever he went and didn't say a single word the entire time, she was like his shadow or something.
Food was great! Oysters were the bomb!
Walked past Madison Square Park at night and this is how it looks like, pretty charming with the hanging lights under the trees.
WY brought us up to this rooftop bar near her office so this is the night view of the Empire State building.
New Yorkers chilling after office hours.
Friday 2 June
Took a 2-day trip to Boston, a 4 1/2 hour coach ride north of NYC. Boston is in Massachusetts.
Dad outside the New York Times building, designed by Renzo Piano and interior by Gensler Architects.
I was semi-shocked when ZY announced we were staying at the Hotel Intercontinental. I'd left all the planning to him and he checks us into a 4.5 star hotel? Haha. Turns out he got really good rates via this website called Hotwire.com where you kinda key in the location, no. of persons, budget and hotel rating and this website does a search for you and you have to agree on the price and pay before they announce the hotel's name. So it's kinda luck of the draw really. I think we paid something like USD168 for 4 pax per night. That's like USD40 per pax.
Lunch at James Cook, walking distance from the hotel.
Lobster sandwiches, lobster bisque and clam baked stuffings.
Boston weather was a lot colder than it was in NYC and i was shivering as i ate cos i didn't bring along a windbreaker.
Girder bridge by the Charles River.
A really thin slab of sweeping concrete canopy with steel structures.
Taking the subway to Harvard.
At Harvard Subway stop. I feel intelligent already. Or should that be less intelligent since i think i'm surrounded by smart people in Harvard ha ha.
Entrance into Havard. The surrounding area was known as Harvard Town.
Almost idyllic, like a resort of sorts.
No one's in school today.
Detention Class.
Sometimes i think i'm in Hogwarts. I think it's the red brick buildings.
Nearby was the Carpenter Centre for the Visual Arts, designed by Le Corbusier and built in 1962. Apparently this is the only building he built in the U.S.
Again i find myself being tested on my memory for Le Corbusier's 5 points of Architecture. The last time i tested myself was when i was writing my travel journal entry for France, Villa Savoye in particular. I think i managed only 3 then. Uh this time round, i'm going to just copy it from Wikipedia.
Ice-cream break at J.P Licks
ZY said i would like the illustrations on this shopfront.
Hello Mr Chaplin!
Dinner at Pomodoro (thanks WY for locating the restaurant for us back in NYC!). Waitress offered us a sampling of calamari and it was a huge portion! But i'm not complaining!
Pinching the chef's fat cheeks.
Outside Quincy Market.
Area around Quincy Market on our walk back to the hotel at night. It was freezing and i had to borrow ZY's windbreaker.
Saturday 2 June
We dropped our parents off at Macy's then cabbed to the Insitute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Museum, designed by New York architects, Diller Scofidio and Renfro. It was raining this morning.
A very cold and windy morning in Boston.
Breakfast at Starbucks before meeting up with the parents at noon.
Church closed. Wedding inside.
Boston Public Gardens. Or Boston Common. Hmm i think these are two different parks we walked through in the same stretch.
Newbury Street, this never-ending street of 19th century brownstone buildings with high-end designer shops at street level. I think Newbury Street connects the Boston Public Garden to Massachusetts Avenue.
Popped into The Creperie for afternoon tea.
I had a savory crepe while ZY had a sweet one.
Outside The Creperie.
Dad is happy with his chinese food at Boston's Chinatown before heading to the Bus Station for our 7pm bus that will put us in NYC by midnight.
Next: NYC and making the most of the last day
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