Day 3 - Can we cram it all in? (4/3/08)

On Thursday we did two bus tour loops (uptown & downtown) and two museums. It doesn't sound like much, but you could spend a few days at just one of the museums.
We left about 9am that morning. We rode the uptown bus loop which took us to:
The Worldwide Plaza, Columbus Circle, Lincoln Center, Dakota Apartments/Stawberry Fields, The American Museum of Natural History (where we got off).
The American Museum of Natural History was great (except for all the evolution displays - I love learning about how we came from apes). There was so much to see in this musuem. We went to the planetarium and saw a show there. There are four huge floors- with everything from space, rocks & minerals, nature, plants, land forms, ocean life, all kinds of animal life, and human cultures all over the world. It is a great place to learn. I wish we had more time to spend there. I think we spent a little over three hours there, and we were looking at everything rather quickly.
Then we got on the bus loop and continued the uptown loop. We had a great tour guide. We went to: the Upper West side - Harlem, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Apollo Theater, and then down Museum lane.
We got off at the Metropolitan Musem of Art! Wow that was another Museum you could spend days in. Art from all over the world and all throughout time. It was great to see actual paintings from some of my favorite artist. The art slideshow I made below - barely shows a fraction of what we saw. Again we spent about 2 -3 hours here, but you could easily spends days here. One of the cool things we saw here was artists working/painting and coping famous works of art. Their paintings were fantastic, very close to the real thing (I wouldn't be able to tell them apart).
After we finished with this museum we got back on the tour bus and saw central park and the children's zoo and then got off and caught the downtown loop on its last loop for the day at 6pm. The bus driver let us off at a stop and told us this would be the second stop of the downtown loop. We got off and waited until a few minutes before six. The guys on the street that sold tickets for the loop, told us we were better off to go the stop #1 which was a few blocks up. I was worried we wouldn't be able to get to the stop #1 in time before they pulled out at 6pm. Well, for some reason, we let them convince us that it was better to go to the first stop. So we ran up there (dodging back and forth in the midst of a million people on the sidewalks getting off of work). As we approached the stop the bus pulled out, we ran out in the street waving our tickets, hoping he would stop for us. He did. We barely made this loop. The tour guide for the downtown loop was very boring. He didn't tell us any interesting facts or stories like the other tour guides did. He just said, "here such and such building on your left, etc. etc". But we were able to see the following: Macy's, Madison Square Garden, The Empire State Building, the Flatiron Building, Union Square, Greenwich Village, Soho, Chinatown, Little Italy, City Hall, Brooklyn Bridge, the World Trade Center Site, Battery Park, South Seaport, the Lower East side, East Village, United Nations Building, Rockefeller Center, and Central Park again. We didn't get off on any stops, and even though the tour guide was boring, we still enjoyed the tour. The tour was about one and a half to two hours.
When it was over, we got off at Time Square and met Ryan for dinner. He took us down Restaurant Row. There are tons of restaurants to choose from. We finally decided to do something different, and settled on Brazilian food. Don and I had some special - he had steak and I had chicken in a mushroom sauce. Ryan had beans and meat - which was probably more authentic Brazilian food - but we enjoyed the steak and chicken even though it didn't taste too much different. We had fun visiting with him. Then we got back to their place probably about 11ish. Another fun and busy day!

Art Slideshow from the Metropolitan Museum of Art