New York – Day 5

Our objective to cover what we believed were the key highlights of New York had been nearly completed at the beginning of Day 5. We unfortunately had to give up on the Statue of Liberty (currently closed to visitors), Ellis Island (also closed), Battery Park & Staten Island ferry.

Guggenheim museum opened in 1959 and was designed by a famous US architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The museum is today one of the must see in New York and attracts over million visitors every year. In order to beat the crowds we woke up early, pre-booked tickets in our hotel and rushed in shortly after 10am. Luckily enough the place was only semi-crowded by then. There was effectively no queue and in no time we were up on the top floor enjoying the views of the amazing rotunda shape of the building.

The museum exhibits both modern and contemporary art. On the contemporary front, a collection of influential Japanese artists called Gutai: Splendid background was to be seen alongside the rotating walkway from the top to the bottom of the building. In my mind heavily obscured by pragmatism and emphasis on skills on display, I only found a few art pieces enjoyable. A block of square canvas painted red with a piece of rope sticking out of it was great stuff, but all I could see was someone with too much time on their hands, whilst I’m sure others see revolutionary work with rope, paper and red paint. My favourites were clearly the exhibition of Kandinsky’s work from 1911 – 1913 and Thannhauser collection that included French impressionists, post-impressionists, Picasso, etc.

It’s challenging to even consider that one could visit New York without actually trying a proper bagel! It took us a little while, but we did find exactly such place called “Pick a bagel”. The place does everything bagel, so they offer possibly a dozen different types of the pastry and one can combine a multitude of ingredients to enhance the taste of the sandwich. Given the natural shape of a bagel, logically most of the ingredients actually fall through, but it does taste good!

Our attempt at shopping in the afternoon brought no tangible results. We longed to see Macy’s, but decided the place was a mess and quickly left. For instance expensive women wear suddenly leads to men’s basketball attire whilst sports is then located on an entirely different floor. Not convinced.

Tuesday evening was our Broadway night. Our choice was a play called Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. The play is highly rated, is fun and features Sigourney Weaver, so we were up to see a celebrity around here. We weren’t disappointed although at times it felt that the jokes were a bit over the top.

An evening burger on our last night in the Five Napkin burger place close to our hotel was a great finish of a nice day in New York.