NYC Day 3

I hope everyone has been enjoying our trip so far. After two fairly intense days (to put it lightly), Wednesday was to be our indoors day since it was suppose to be rainy most of the day. Luckily most of the rain stayed away, but it was nice to do some site seeing inside. At first we thought about taking the subway up to our first stop of the day, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (more commonly referred to as The Met). Then we realized we were not sissy's and walked instead. In hind sight it was probably not the smartest decision considering it was 27 blocks away (i.e. almost 1.5 miles). But did we learn our lesson? Of course not because we walked back too, but instead went through Central Park so when you are seeing new things you forget you are walking so far.

The couple of hours or so that we spent in the Met were very eye opening. It started off with artifacts from the Roman Era, such as Roman warrior's chest plates. Then was a special section entitled "Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution" which had pieces from the 1500 and 1600s. After that we strolled through some African and Indian art, then on to "Arms & Armour". Everything was breathtaking and we kept asking ourselves how they found this stuff. I can not put into words how amazing it all was. Nor can I express how big this museum is. We knew from the beginning not to try and cover the whole building. So when we grabbed a map we tried to come up with a plan based on the areas we found most interesting. Even though it felt like we covered a lot of ground after checking out the website it became clear we barely made a dent. All in all it was a perfect museum experience.

Next up was another stroll through Central Park. This time we stopped to check out the Belvedere Castle inside the Park. This castle was built around 1865-1870, so it is safe to say it was there before New York City was really New York City. They actually have an official weather station inside the tower of the castle. As you can see from the pics it was not a clear day so it made it tough to get some good views of the city. Since we were not on any specific time line today we decided to keep walking through the park and see where it took us. When we came out on the other side we saw another museum with some famous American explorers adorning the outside. It look oddly familiar and as we got closer I realized it was the back drop for the movie, "A Night at the Museum" with Ben Stiller. The museum is the American Museum of Natural History. We walked in to find some bathrooms and see if it was free by chance, but struck out on both accounts.

By this time we were getting hungry so we walked a long way before finding a tasty McDonald's. Then we made our way back over a block to 5th Ave. to check out the FAO Schwarz. This was a must stop due to the huge floor piano made famous by the 1988 Tom Hanks movie, "Big". Ashley and I showed off our piano skills then got off so a little kid could put us to shame. The only other thing to really draw our attention was the life size lego of Batman which I had to imitate. Just outside the FAO store was an underground Apple store. As you can see from the picture the structure above ground is all clear glass so you can actually see down into the store. You can either walk down stairs or take an elevator with clear walls. Being the tourists we were, we did both. The final stop of the day on 5th Ave. was the Trump Tower. Everyone needed a little boost and it is impossible to walk five feet without running into a Starbucks. This one was inside the Trump Tower so why not go in, take a break, and wait for Donald Trump to come down and greet us. He must have been in a meeting though, so we just drank our coffee/tea and went on our merry way.

Sadly this was our last full day in New York. So it was time to get the souvenir shopping out of the way. There were only three things we wanted...an I heart NY coffee mug, an I heart NY t-shirt, and an I shamrock NY t-shirt. Yes, you read that right. It was the week before St. Patrick's Day so we would have been silly to pass that up. We managed to find a shop selling the I heart NY t-shirts for 5 for $10 and talked another shop down a few dollars a shirt for the I shamrock NY ones. After that our stomach's told us it was time to eat again. Our final evening meal took us to the window counter of Fluffy's Cafe. Then it was back to the hotel to rest up before our final morning in the city.