The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Our 4th Day in New York City- 2010/2011 World Tour

NYC is relatively quiet for one of the most populated places on planet earth. While I was here I found out that it is illegal to honk unless there is an emergency. Without horns honking it calms the city right down. If you compare it to Cairo or Delhi for example where it is a free-for-all with car horns and it adds so much extra unnecessary chaos. NYC does seem fairly calm and civilized and 99% of the people are very helpful and will help you out without even being asked. If you are struggling with the map or arguing about directions with your husband, people will come up and offer to help you. This happened many times to us so we found the New Yorkers to be quite nice, which was the opposite of what we were expecting. I found Manhattan extremely easy to get around and easy to figure out. Darren is more abstract in his thinking and was turned around the whole time and never knew where he was, which was quite unusual for him.
We walked down to the discount ticket booth on 47th only to find that Mary Poppins was only available for a night show at 8 pm on our last night in NYC. We decided to splurge and buy tickets and spent a bit more than we did for Billy Elliott. We had to go directly to 42nd where the theatre is located to buy tickets, there were none available at the discount place.



We then decided that we should go and see the Empire State Building. Our son even had heard about this site and he knew that there was a gorilla involved somehow. He must have learned this from his cartoons so we had to explain to him about the movie King Kong and said that we would look into renting one of the versions for him to watch about the doomed love story. The Empire State Building is on 5th Avenue and expect long lineups. I would suggest going earlier rather than later to avoid really long lineups. We got in the first line up and this was for security but we thought it was for tickets to go up to the 85th floor. We then made it through that lineup to the ticket lineup and then through to the elevator lineup. Tickets cost 21 bucks per adult and 15 bucks for a child. The whole line-up experience added another 2 hours to our day but Dax wanted to go up. Personally, once we got up there I enjoyed it more than the views from the Eiffel Tower in Paris which I have now been up to 3 times to see the views of Paris. It was getting cloudy again so we got up just in time. I forgot to tell you that you take the first set of elevators up to the 80th floor and then you have to get into another lineup to get to the Observatory level which is at the 85th. You can also buy another ticket to get you to the 102 floor which involves another different elevator. The 85th is really good enough and when it is cloudy the 102 floors would just destroy your view entirely I would think. I recommend going up on the now tallest building in NYC, you can view it inside or outside or both.

We got down fairly quickly after the short line up to go down on the elevator and left the area and made our way up to the closest subway. With Dax he was too tired to walk another 30 blocks up to the MET which is situated technically in Central Park on Museum Row. I would suggest leaving at least 3-4 hours to see the Metropolitan Museum of Art because it is not just 2-dimensional art pieces to see. There is an absolutely huge Egyptian exhibit of priceless wonders. We had already been to see Egypt’s National Museum in Cairo so we blitzed this area but other people would need a great deal of time because there is much to see. It was kind of sad to me that NYC displayed Egypt’s wonders much better than Egypt did. As I mentioned blogs ago the National Museum in Cairo is a national disgrace. It is dirty, disgusting and not well displayed and the managers should be fired and flogged for mismanagement. Anyways don’t get me started on that treasure chest. The MET is wonderful and delicious to feast on. There is everything from priceless porcelain pieces to Indian artifacts to wealthy people’s antique living rooms. It is a cornucopia of costly pieces collected from all over the world. We only had 2 hours in there and that was not enough and Daxtin was not even bored so that tells you that there is much to see. If you pay attention you can find Picasso's, Van Gough’s and Matisse's art as well. It was only 20 dollars to get in for an adult and children are free. I would strongly suggest that you do not leave NYC before seeing the MET.