Saturday night I was pretty proud of myself for managing to stay awake until 10pm, and I was looking forward to a good full night sleep… It did work out, to a point, but at 5,30 am the following day I was wide awake anyway.
Considering the museums would not open until 11am and that my hotel (which btw turned out to be very comfortable and reasonably priced) is just a couple of blocks away from Central Park, I eventually had the radical idea of making the best of the situation and go for a run in this epic location. While I typically prefer to run in the evening and I did not push myself particularly hard, it turned out to be quite an enjoyable experience, and a good preparation for a respectable serving of blueberry pancakes for breakfast.
Odd sightings of the day
Apparently the NYPD is expanding its vehicle fleet with a “European touch”.
While this is definitely cute and modern, I wonder what this does to the NYPD image we have grown accustomed to thanks to many movies and TV shows.
To be very honest, I’d love to see a movie with a massive car chasing scene (Blues Brothers style) featuring a bunch of these 🙂
Getting on with the day
On the agenda for this first full day I had a couple of smaller museums: the Frick Collection and the Neue Gallerie.
The Frick collection is a former mansion of an old American industrialist with a passion for European old masters. The house is actually quite interesting, as many of the rooms have been decorated in a style you would most typically associate with an 18th century French palace. From my perspective, the highlight of the visit was the large number of paintings by Turner, including an interesting exhibitions of a series of views of ports from various parts of Europe.
But for a massive fan of the Viennese Secession the Neue Gallerie was most definitely the highlight of my day. Their collection of paintings and drawings by Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele is impressive and well worth a visit on their own, but the famous portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer makes the experience incredible. While the intricate golden decorations are certainly mesmerizing, what I personally find amazing of this painting is Klimt rendered the colour and texture of the model’s skin: it looks almost like porcelain, with imperceptible shifts in tone and shades that can only be truly enjoyed in person (even high-res pictures of this painting fail to reflect accurately this amazing detail). The visit was also made if possible even more enjoyable by a very complete exhibition of the works of Alexei Jawlensky, a Russian-born Expressionist and one of the leading figures of the Blue Rider movement together with Kandinsky.
After spending the big part of the day feeding the eyes and the mind, I then thought it would be a good idea to also feed my belly and headed down to the East Village to sample some amazing South American food at the Arepa Factory. I must say it was very hard resisting the temptation of ordering a second one 🙂 .
Party Party (??)
At that point, I figured I’d head back to base to rest a bit before finding something fun to do in the evening… What a rookie mistake: the quick little nap at 6pm ended up lasting until 4am, the true revenge of the jetlag I was so quick to deem defeated (not to mention that the longer-than-expected break put me off my blogging schedule, as I was planning of writing this post then… Guess I’ll need to figure out a way to catch up soon 🙂 ).