A few random photos of New York

Been away from New York for one day and am already pining for the hustle and bustle, crowds and buzz of NY. Boston is a slow sleepy town in comparison but will give it a go today.

Boston

Bought some wine in the mega healthy supermarket "Wholefoods " in Boston. I was asked for ID! I AM 55 YEARS OLD! Go figure. Apparently it's the local custom -now that's the Nanny state gone mad.

Boston

My brother is in Boston for a couple of months so we are having a family gathering and like Megan and Peter Singer I am blogging on a bus as they ahve WiFi - very civilized.

Another gallery day

Felt I had to catch up on a bit of culture after the mad shopping session on Black Friday ( am wearing the over the knee boots as we speak) so we finally got to The Guggenheim. Now that's my kind of gallery - small and focused on modern art. Great Kandinsky exhibition (I am bit partial to his stuff) and a very creative way of exhibiting Italian artist, Maurizio Cattelan's work - everything was hanging from the centre.
Raffaela was not impressed with the monochrome room - she thought they were renovating. I must admit it is hard to understand a white canvas is a great work of art.


The Guggenheim cafe does, however, serve a decent coffee.


Next, across Central Park to the Natural History Museum to see the live butterfly exhibition - beautiful.  We also saw LOTS of skeletons.


I absolutely HAD to visit the new bar in town, Spin - which is a ping pong bar -my kind of bar (from the 1978 Mt Isa female table tennis champion)

Brooklyn Bridge

Saturday was very warm so we decided to cross the Brooklyn Bridge along with thousands of other people. The walkers must stay on the right while the kamikaze bikes have absolutely no regard for the pedestrians.


Got lost in Brooklyn but eventually found Grimaldi's pizzeria but was rather dismayed at he queue. Finally we decided that it was only a freaking pizza and left the over an hour long wait in the queue and went around the corner to another pizzeria only to wait for 20 mins. The New Yorker before us in the line had come from Upper Manhattan to wait in this queue and assured us it was worth the wait. it was good but couldn't help thinking it's still only pizza.

standing in queues is thirsty work

Raffaela was taken by all the locks people had put on the Bridge

Going to the Movies

Black Friday evening saw us 'peopled out' so we stuck close to home and went to the movies in Harlem. We wanted to see Happy Feet 2 in 3D but as usual got the times wrong so went into see Tower Heist instead. Good Choice. 
it was set in midtown NY and at the time of Macy's parade and just where we were watching the parade.


On the way home the owner of the soul food restaurant was outside smoking and shouted hello to us - we are becoming locals. It was pretty cool.

Black Friday

Never in my whole life have I seen such shopping madness, then the anti-fur demonstrators came chanting around the corner and added more  noise to the chaos. It really was an indication that we have gone mad with consumerism. BTW we were there buying things as well!!
Going into Macy's was lke being herded into a pen.
Iit all got too much for me but Raffaela has become a seasoned New Yorker already and would grab my hand and forge through the crowd.