Tree at Rockefeller Square

Yesterday Kasia and I went into Manhattan to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It turns out that while Kasia had explored far more of Manhattan than I known, she hadn’t been to the Met, so it was a must visit opportunity.

Riding the train from Sea Cliff into the city with Kasia Friday morning allowed us to catch up on a number of her adventures in Manhattan. In fact, just the night before (Thursday night) my nineteen-year-old daughter was invited to a work-oriented christmas party at Times Square. Near midnight, she left the city for the hour and a half trip back via subway and buses to her current quarters in Franklin Square. Let’s see, traveling late at night by herself through New York . . . sometimes, it is better for a father NOT to know these type of stories.

Yesterday turned out to be a good day to vista the Met. At times we had whole rooms of art to ourselves. Kasia didn’t realize that I knew a thing or two about art, so I shared what I knew and admitted what I didn’t. We walked for what seemed like days, but that might have been because I have been walking for days. Eventually we both tuckered out, stopping for a quick smoothie before leaving.

I’m not sure what those two statuettes were doing behind us.

From the Met we walked to my great aunt’s place on the east side to deliver some cookies (special German lebkuchen from an old family recipe), before proceeding to Rockefeller Square so we could see the lights.

As we took photos, we noticed the sky was darkening and the temperature was falling. We felt that signaled it was time to head home. Besides, we didn’t want to be caught up in the evening’s protests.

It took us a couple of hours to return to Sea Cliff. By then we were starving. We pulled out the Yelp app on our iPhones and settled on a peruvian restaurant called Manka in Glen Cove. It proved to be a great choice. We enjoyed a Pervian feast of chicken leg, chicken heart, beef, pork chop, and port sausage, accompanied by fried casaba and plantain.

I know it doesn’t quite look like it in the photo, but she was enjoying the food!

On Saturday we are going to do a little shopping. We’ll have fun, but I doubt there will be anything interesting to report.

I took a quick trip to the New York Transit Museum in Downtown Brooklyn. Housed in the decommissioned Court subway station, the location is not only home to the museum, but has also been used in several movies, including the French Connection and the Taking of Pelham 123 (1974 and 2009 versions).

And, the facility sure feels like a subway, so they got that part right, from the entrance on down.

Museum entrance. It is easy to miss.

The museum tells the story of mass transit and rapid transit solutions in the New York area. There are old trains, old photos, times lines, turnstiles, an array of tokens used (now cards and not tokens are used) and more.  It was fun and the museum people were very accommodating (I got to park my extra bag in the stroller waiting area). I was surprised there were no video or audio demonstrations (or I missed them somehow).

Their subway trains were pretty cool (not my photo):

A set of early cars.

A collection of scale model trolleys showed how the local trolleys evolved over time.

An interior shot of the facility

Me driving a newer bus.

Me driving an older bus.

Horses, trolleys, rains and people all navigating the same space in 1895 Manhattan. Craziness! Click on it, as I made it extra large.

The evolution of turnstiles.