Thursday in NYC

Thursday - whew! Are you tired yet? Writing about this week is almost more exhausting than living it!

Here we are at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (or The Met, as the locals call it.)

This is another amazing place full of ART and lots of it. At some point, we decided as a group to split up and meet back in an hour because we all wanted to see different things and at different paces. That was fun because when we re-grouped, someone would say, "Well, did you see the Egyptian temple?" and the response would be, "No, did you see the Frank Lloyd Wright house?" or the musical instruments room or the Roman statues or the armor room or the shark (yeah, never figured out that one...)?

In addition there were all the artists you've heard of but never seen their paintings up close. AB has had some art history and was educating us as we discovered new things - who says art isn't useful in school?

But as with all museums, your feet get tired and your brain starts to swim...so then it's time for lunch! And in this case, a visit to String, a yarn shop off Park Avenue that mom had to visit; I got some beautiful cashmere!

From Park Avenue we walked to Central Park and discovered lots of things we never knew were in the park. This place is huge too!

Here we are on one of the bridges. The weather was beautiful and about 65 degrees.

Here is AB resting her feet.

Who knew there was a castle in the park?

Here is EB atop it.

Strawberry Fields - a memorial to John Lennon. Still not sure who puts the flowers there every day...?

Once we made it back to the hotel, we still needed to do something for dinner. We also wanted to check out the cool Apple Store on Fifth Ave. We were also looking for a bookstore since AB had finished her books and was clamoring for another (we found a store that had three floors and some very interesting 'art' books - EB, put that one down! I think it had 'erotic' in the title.)

So turning to my trusty phone, I located a place called "The Jekyll and Hyde Club" - didn't read the reviews but it said it was a 'theme' restaurant. This place was very interesting and probably wonderful 10-15 years ago. It had people dressed up outside encouraging people in; I think they were supposed to look scary...but we were scarier; we were hungry!

So, like the tourists we were, we played along and went inside. You entered through a dark hallway and it was a little like the entry to Disney's Haunted Mansion (only not as well done.) They warn you that you may never return and those with heart issues better not come in! (Right then and there, we should have turned around...)

Anyway, we get inside and there's no one in there, maybe only 5 tables had people at them. The walls were covered with talking heads and it looked like a ride from Disney (only with less lighting.) As we struggled to read our menus, these roaming 'actors' kept coming by our table, asking us where we were from and cracking really bad jokes. At first it was entertaining, but with so few people to visit, they were at our table A LOT.

At one point, this guy picks up our camera off the table and makes GB take pictures of all of us with him. He was fine but our waiter took our order, brought our food and disappeared! I finally had to wave him down to get our check as we were done with not only our meal but the surroundings. We were also thrilled to see that in addition to New York food prices, they had tacked on $3/person for 'entertainment'! Now that's SCARY!

We told AB that this is what unemployed actors have to do and she better stick to her studies!