NYC Diary - Day 3

Another early start. I think when you’re in New York you can make one of two choices. Choice a) is wake up early, spend all day ploughing around the city shopping and sightseeing, and be passed out asleep by 10pm; or choice b) go out partying until 6am and spend all day in bed. I don’t think it’s possible to mix the two, and we’ve gone for choice a!

So we decided that after two days of shopping we’d have a bit of culture – it was time to hit the Met! It’s about forty blocks north of us, but after twenty blocks you hit Central Park so the next twenty are a pleasant stroll. Johanna still hasn’t grasped this navigation malarkey yet, asking at every corner “Which way now?”, “Up, honey. We just keep going up.” “Oh, okay…. Which way now?”. I’m not quite sure how she finds her way downstairs in the morning.

Anyway, we got distracted on the way there by the ‘World of Disney’ store, in which we spent about an hour running around like little kids. That’s including the ten minutes I spent staring slack-jawed at the Jessica Rabbit portrait in the art section upstairs.

We hit the Met at about 11, and spent pretty much all day there. It’s an amazing museum; my only issue with it is there’s simply too much too see! It’s impossible to cover it all in a day. I was gutted to discover that most of the Japanese wing was closed for renovations; I really wanted to see Hokusai’s Great Wave. It was still a great day though; we took about a hundred photos across all the exhibits. There was two special exhibits going on too; the first was a Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy one, which had actual costumes from films, as well as ones inspired by them. The ‘inspired by’ ones were absolute shite, but seeing the actual costumes from films – Michelle Pfieffer’s Catwoman, Tobey Maguire’s Spiderman, Christian Bale’s Batman, Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man prototype, the old Wonder Woman costume – was ace! Photography was not allowed, but that didn’t stop me sneaking a few shots when the staff weren’t looking.

The next exhibit was Jeff Koon’s ‘On The Roof’. The artwork wasn’t up to much, but, as it was on the roof of the Met, the views across Central Park and Manhattan were stunning! We got a few photos fired off there, but then had to escape back in to the air-conditioned halls before we melted.

We had dinner in a rather fancy Italian restaurant called Salute!, which served good food, but was loud and overcrowded. Seemed to be quite a fashionable place to eat, which immediately puts me off! ‘Twas very nice though, I’d love to eat it again right now… must find breakfast…

Oh, and to all of you that have sent me messages asking what on earth I’m doing blogging / facebooking on my honeymoon in New York – I still wake up at least two hours before Johanna does, married or not!