I don't travel much for the Bank
these days, but every once in a
while I have to go to NY or Chicago.
When I was scheduled to go to NY
for a meeting on the Friday
afternoon before Canadian
Thanksgiving; it seemed a perfect
reason to stick around the city for a
couple of days. Andrew wanted to
come along, and since he didn't
have to go to school that day (a PD
day), it worked out perfectly. Colin
and Heidi opted to stay at home.
On the first day, Andrew and I
visited the American Museum of
Natural History. I didn't even know
it existed but Heidi though that it
would be worthwhile. She was
right. The Museum is on the West
side of Central Park and occupies a
complete city block (22 acres). You
could easily spend an entire day
visiting the 40+ galleries, but we
only had time to take a brief guided
tour. We saw the dinosaurs
(naturally) and a huge gallery
devoted to sea life, including a
phenomenal life size model of a
blue whale suspended from the
gallery ceiling. We walked through
the Rose Center for Earth and
Space, in which a huge 6 storey
sphere houses a planetarium and a
theater. The whole thing was most
impressive, I thought.
In the evening we thought about
going to the top of the Empire State
building, but gave it a pass as the
visibility was non-existent. Instead
we wandered back to Times
Square, and picked up some
discounted tickets to see Fiddler on
the Roof. It was standard
Broadway musical fare, but OK
nonetheless.
The next day we made a pilgrimage
to the Apple Store in SoHo. It is
pretty much the same as the
Chicago store that I have visited
before. On a Saturday morning
there was a (really) basic seminar
on OS X, and the so called
geniuses were quite busy fielding
questions.
We wandered through SoHo and
TriBeCa to Ground Zero, which has
certainly been cleaned up and
sanitized since I was there last, in
October 2001. By this time it had
started to rain, and it didn't let up
for the rest of the day.
We kept heading south, through
Battery Park to the ferry terminal
where we bought tickets to visit the
Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I
was starting to get pretty wet,
though Andrew claimed to be in
better shape.
At Liberty Island, we took the audio
tour and, because we missed some
small statues, ended up going
around the sea wall twice. By this
time the wind and the rain were
getting much worse, and I was
soaked. Liberty Island was kind of
interesting, but wasn't really worth
the visit. You get a good view of
the statue from the ferry, which
really is about all you need.
We took the ferry to Ellis Island and
toured the immigration museum
that has been established in some
of the buildings that were built to
process something like 10 million
immigrants from the late 1800s to
the mid-20th century. It is an
interesting place, mostly for the
architecture, but also to imagine the
trepidation and excitement that
must have pervaded the place in
the past.
After catching the ferry back to
Manhattan, and wandering through
the financial district, I was
absolutely soaked. We caught a
cab back to the hotel, which turned
out to be not so easy; late in the
afternoon all taxis were returning to
Brooklyn and didn't want to take us
to mid-town. We spent most of the
evening drying out, and had dinner
at the hotel.
On Sunday, our last day, we spent
the morning at the MoMA, which
has been recently refurbished, but
didn't look any different to me (I
was there 10 years ago, when I had
a few hours to kill after a business
meeting). Andrew seems to enjoy
the absurdity of some of the pieces
on display (a video wall showing
countless hours from the life of an
artist working in his studio, a 12 foot
wooden plank leaning against the
wall called "Bench", a bundle of
electric light bulbs illuminating the
corner of a gallery). He seemed
less impressed with the more
famous works (the Picasso's, the
Miro's, the Klee's ,the Matisse and
the Monet's etc.etc.).
We flew home from Newark (still a
second rate airport from what I can
see), but kudos to US Airways who
responded to a delay in the first leg
of our return flight (Newark to
Pittsburgh) by rebooking us on a
direct flight to Toronto. We arrived
home an hour ahead of schedule.