Day 9: Wednesday

Day 9:  Wednesday

Today we started by visiting MOMA (Museum of Modern Art). I thought this was going to be a quick visit, but it is jam packed with art, again including all types of media. Now I can’t even draw a stick figure, but I came away from this museum with ideas of creating my own personal type of art! So many of the great European artists that everyone knows about have works in NYC. I think half of all of Picasso’s works are in NYC. Name a great artist and you’ll find at least one piece of work here. Here is an artwork from the famous American artist Jackson Pollock.

On a high from seeing all the great art, we visited one of the largest, if not the largest, camera and supply stores in the world, B&H. This is a place to visit even if you aren’t going to buy anything. 

There must be at least 100 to 200 workers in the store, of which at least 80-90% are Jewish. By the way, the store was founded by a Jewish family and it is a “family” business. We saw more obviously Jewish people working in the store than we did everywhere else combined. This little visit to the camera store set me back about $300 as Michelle got a wide-angle lens that was refurbished, a savings of about $200. We then ventured to the Apple Store famous for its 3-story spiral, glass staircase. The initial staircase was highly controversial because ladies walking up the staircases were totally unaware that all was visible to the people standing below! Now the step portion is frosted. 

Michelle got some new ear buds at the Apple Store. Just down the street is Chelsea Market, home of Food Network. I was really disappointed in this as I was expecting a real marketplace, and instead got a glorified indoor shopping center. Michelle did buy a giant crepe with Nutella and strawberries to munch on. We then went up on the Highline, a mile long walkway built on old raised railroad tracks. 

This was really nice, but it was so hot that we only walked about 200 yards and took some stairs down. At the bottom of the stairs we saw a vertical garage similar to the one I mentioned when we first arrived in Newark. Here is a picture of how the cars are lifted up. That young lady in the lower right hand corner looks familiar.

We then made our way down to the docks where we took an evening cruise around the lower half of Manhattan. This was fun and highly informative. We sailed right over the spot where the airline captain landed the jet plane on the Hudson River. You might remember that story from a few years back. The boat sailed from the pier right next to the USS Intrepid which is a museum now and houses the Concorde airplane and the Discovery Space Shuttle. Couldn’t see the shuttle as it was housed inside a giant inflatable building on the aircraft carrier. You can see the "bubble" on top of the ship to the left. 

The cruise when right by the statue of liberty where I took the following picture. Look closely and you can see that a sailing vessel and an airplane both were passing the Statue of Liberty at the same time.

It was dark as we landed, so off to the Empire State Building we went. Michelle wanted to go to the top of the building at night since she did Top of the Rock during the day. She took lots of night-time pictures from the top.

We eventually made it back to the hotel after midnight.