New York City in summer: the pulsing                                                                               rhythms of cultures in the streets; the                                                                                       hum of difference and the rush and                                                                                     rumble of life; the electricity of it all; the                                                                       holding of hands in the Central Park sun;                                                                                the quiet, scampering squirrel in the leaves.

So, our first time in New York City. Jenny and I are not great fans of cities. We have never been attracted to the ‘bright lights’ and the bustling excitement of cities, not even when we were young. Nonetheless we have lived in cities, because that is where the work is and the opportunities are, and one cannot stay for all of one’s life in a small country town (and remain outward looking and grow). But even when we have lived in cities we have most comfortably lived on their edges, adjacent to all their services, conveniences and entertainments; finding it great for accessing professional opportunities and the very occasional distraction, but not usually attracted to the centre of cities with their allurements and activity.

Having said all of the above, we really enjoyed our one week in New York City – the first time that either of us have been here. A number of years ago one of our daughters spent three weeks here just having completed high school, and LOVED this city, and we suspect would return in a heartbeat if she could. After a few days of being here, Steve was impressed enough to write his quick impressions in the short poem above. It certainly is a different sort of place to any that we have previously been. But it is, when all is said and done, just a city, although a very big city, and Jenny and I are not great fans of cities.

We were in New York City because the opportunity presented itself to us as part of this trip and we took it (it is essentially on the way from Vancouver to London, and so we decided to drop in). We stayed on Manhattan Island, and decided to break our week in New York City into two: staying initially in lower Manhattan in Battery Park City  – near Battery Park, with its location near the financial district and on the water where the East and Hudson rivers meet; and later Uptown, near Central Park and some of the world’s finest museums and galleries. No Broadway shows, late night jazz bars or any of that night life side of things for us. That is not what we travel for. As we say in our profile, we are retiring people (and yet, full of fun and life when you get to know us).

Having landed in the morning on the ‘red-eye’ from Vancouver, and having been ignored for long periods and treated with absolute disdain by immigration officials at JFK airport (not a single booth manned for international arrivals for well over half an hour, with long queues of frustrated guests hoping to enter the country), we were then treated to a thrilling taxi ride from the airport to our hotel, zipping in and out of traffic like a frenetic dance. We settled in and in the afternoon went for a walk along the Battery Park foreshore up as far as the Brookfield Place Ferry Terminal. We were struck by the beautiful gardens along this shoreline and the lovely community and village feel of the neighbourhood – people going on their walks and runs, mothers strolling with children in prams, and people simply sitting and reading. We even saw a squirrel rummaging in the leaf litter outside an apartment building metres back from the river. It was peaceful, in the midst of the bustle and noisy streets only 100 metres away from the water, and testimony to the efforts to renew this area following the terrible impact it suffered during the 9/11 terrorist attack.

One World Trade Centre

Peace at Battery Park

Sunset over New Jersey

Statue of Liberty from Battery Park

Leaving the water’s edge during this walk we visited the 9/11 Memorial, which is absolutely huge and stunning with its clean granite lines and its deep, sunken, water-falling pools outlining the perimeters of the two towers that were brought down in 2001, with the names of each of the almost 3,000 individuals who died during this act of terror inscribed into the granite edging. We noticed roses placed in small notches next to some of the names, and found out later that these are placed there by volunteers each day, next to the names of those whose birthdays it would have been on that day. Very sad and sobering, and a reminder of why security in the USA is now so tight whenever you enter any public building. The 9/11 Memorial was very crowded, and looking around you realise that many of the young people in attendance were not yet born, or would have no memory of the time, when this terrible event was perpetrated.

The 9/11 Memorial

Over the next two days, Steve’s relapse of the head cold he suffered in Canada prevented him from doing much sightseeing. Undaunted though, Jenny ventured out to explore Lower Manhattan on her own. What was intended to be a quick visit to the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust turned into more than two hours, due entirely to the quality of the exhibitions. Rather than concentrating on the horrors of the Holocaust, and in particular the death camps, this museum aims to educate the public about the growing hatred of Jews and other minorities, as well as the many abrupt changes to laws and freedoms prior to 1939 that created a political and social environment where the Holocaust was possible. The artefacts on display, and information provided, are so extensive and confronting that a brief tour of the Core Exhibition just wasn’t possible. Several more hours would have been needed to do justice to the whole museum.

Continuing on the history theme, Jenny also visited the Fraunces Tavern Museum. This small museum is housed on the upper floors of the Fraunces Tavern, which was originally built in 1719, and partially extends to four other historic buildings on the same block. The history of the building itself is quite interesting, but its main claim to fame is that it was the site of some very key events in American history, especially during the period of the American Revolution. For example it was here, in The Long Room, that General George Washington farewelled his officers at the end of the war. Parts of the museum have been recreated as the tavern was in Washington’s time, while other displays honour the Sons of the Revolution, and there’s a very good collection of Revolutionary War paintings by John Ward Dunsmore. The Fraunces Tavern has been a museum for over 110 years! For anyone interested in American History, a visit here is certainly worthwhile.

The Museum of Jewish Heritage

The Fraunces Tavern Museum

Inside the Fraunces Tavern Museum

Having exhausted the possibilities of the Fraunces Tavern Museum, an extended walk to explore some of the other highlights of the area seemed like a good idea. At the top of a long escalator, The Elevated Acre affords views of Brooklyn Bridge and the East River. Being a Saturday, the area was mostly deserted apart from a small wedding taking place, but it’s easy to imagine that during the working week it provides a much-needed green space for respite from the insanity of Wall Street and the financial district.

Heading north-east through the financial district, the strangely beautiful structure called The Oculus came into view.  The Oculus was built after the 9/11 tragedy, and while primarily a train station, it also houses a Westfield shopping mall and large public spaces. Most people entering the Oculus, though, seemed to be stopping briefly to appreciate the stunning architecture before heading on their way. Passing through the 9/11 Memorial again (this time even more crowded than the first time we were there), it was time to head back to the river to enjoy again the lovely gardens and shady trees before returning to our hotel.

National Museum of the American Indian

Brooklyn Bridge

Fearless Girl, staring down the Charging Bull on Wall Street

The Oculus

After three days staying in lower Manhattan and with another four days left of our New York City stay, we relocated to a hotel Uptown on the Upper East Side. OMG, this is the posh part of town! Our hotel was only 100 metres off Central Park, and when you walk out of the front door to be greeted by name by the doorman, the names of the streets you walk down are those from the Monopoly boards and Women’s Weekly magazines of our childhoods: Fifth Avenue, running alongside the park, when we turn to our right; Madison Avenue with its up market fashion and jewellery stores when we turn left; Park Avenue one street further over. Along all of these are located those fancy apartment buildings, each with its own doorman / concierge, and each with its classy canopy stretching out from the front of the building and across the footpath to the road. The latent wealth here, in many ways understated and barely on display, is mind-blowing. The juxtaposition of all of this with homeless people rummaging through bins to make a dollar reminds one of the huge inequity we have in the world, one of the great pressing issues of modern times.

We were staying in this neighbourhood because of its proximity to Central Park and to some of the great museums and art galleries of the world, and it is in these museums where we spent the majority of our remaining time in New York City. The first thing we did when we moved into our new hotel was to go for an afternoon walk in Central Park, and then again for another walk there after dinner. Central Park is huge, much bigger then the entire Central Business District of Sydney, and on this Sunday afternoon and evening it was crowded with people relaxing, playing, exercising, and enjoying their quiet and personal moments. What an asset for this great city is Central Park! We really enjoyed, in particular, our after dinner stroll, discovering pathways, bridges, ponds and lakes within the Park, and sharing these with the locals and other visitors. It was so relaxing that Jenny even forgot to take photos! One thing that is hard to get used to is the number of New Yorkers who walk around ‘talking to themselves’ – talking into their cell phones actually, but loudly and animatedly and wirelessly, and all without a phone in sight! Weird until you get used to it. For some reason, it hasn’t yet caught on in Australia in a big way, not to our knowledge at least.

Views of Central Park

Over the next few days we had fun visiting three of these iconic cultural sites: The Met, MoMA, and The Guggenheim. Architecturally and temporally, these are quite contrasting places, though each is marked by large and beautiful open internal spaces which enable their curators to mount exhibitions of stunning impact. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), was established in its current grand, neo-classical styled building on 5^thAvenue in 1880, and is set across four huge levels, and down the length of four city blocks. Its collection is huge, covering works from antiquity through to contemporary art. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is more recent, having been established in 1929 as an educational institution and having now become one of the world’s foremost museums dedicated to modern art. It is a more modern building than The Met and has clean lines and cavernous atriums and exhibition spaces. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (The Guggenheim) was first established as a Foundation in the early 1930s to house Guggenheim’s “eccentric collection” (this phrase lifted from the Guggenheim’s web site), but was consolidated into a new, and now iconic Frank Lloyd Wright designed ‘spiral’ building in 1959. The collection is still housed in this marvellous and imaginative building.

Highlights? We first went to The Met– which is just a five minute walk along 5^thAvenue from the hotel where we stayed. This was fantastic! It was absolutely crowded throughout the time we spent there. Because we had previously been to the British Museum and wonderful museums in Athens and Crete we did not intend to spend much time in the antiquities section of The Met. We thought we had seen enough in those other places, but how wrong we were! The sections on Ancient Greek and Roman art at The Met were so comprehensive, and the quality of the exhibits so extraordinary, that we spent a considerable time there.

Finally, though, we reached the galleries on the second floor of The Met which housed an amazing array of Impressionist paintings, which are the works we most seem to enjoy. Indeed, The Impressionists seemed to become a consistent theme across each of these three museums, as each had quite wonderful collections from the impressionist painters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We have been lucky enough to previously see great impressionist works in the Musée D’Orsay in Paris and in the National Gallery in London, but New York City, and The Met in particular, can hold its head high. We saw wonderful paintings from the full range of impressionists including many works from Renoir, Matisse, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Degas, Monet, Manet, Lautrec and Kandinsky. The light, movement and technique in some of these works remain stunning and is why we suspect these works are so popular with visitors. All galleries exhibiting impressionist works, across these three art museums, were crowded when we attended.

the Met, front entrance

Manhattan skyline from The Met

Sculpture Garden, MoMA

Undoubtedly our favourite works were two of Van Gogh’s paintings: The Starry Night (MoMA) and Wheat Field with Cypresses (The Met). Spellbinding! Photographs don’t do them justice, can’t convey the richness of the brush strokes and the extraordinary depth of colour, but Jenny took photos anyway. It was worth travelling all this way to see just those two.

In the flesh: ‘The Starry Night’, and ‘Wheat Field with Cypresses’

Other highlights? The collection of Picassos that were housed across these three museums; an amazing exhibition of contemporary costumes, housed in The Met, which were inspired by and co-located with much older religious artistic works and supplemented by amazing music and lighting; the wonderful sunken Sculpture Garden and the comprehensive Adrian Piper exhibition at MoMA; and the enormous and fascinating retrospective exhibition on the work of Swiss sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti within The Guggenheim, which dominated the entire five levels of the extraordinary spiralled and winding interior of this marvellous building.

Giacometti: Head of Diego

Picasso: Mandolin and Guitar

The Amazing Guggenheim

Amongst all of these museum visits we also found the time to take a few Yellow Cabs and marvel at the way New York City traffic seems to hold on, just by a single thread, to its collective sanity (achieved, we observed, by the practice of a strange combination of tolerance and aggression). We visited Times Square– the world’s foremost smallish (and waste of) space surrounded by tall buildings onto which have been clamped giant glitzy and marvellously fluorescent billboards! We spent some time in Bryant Park, just around the corner from Times Square – a much quieter and more cerebral space, with people sitting and just talking together, reflecting, reading and playing chess. This was one of our daughter’s favourite places to spend time when she was here. And opposite it, the New York Public Library (as featured in the climate change disaster movie The Day After Tomorrow), with its classic design, its beautiful and whisper-quiet reading rooms, and its impressive displays of wall upon wall of reference books.

Times Square 2

Times Square 1

New York City Public Library

Internal, NYC Public Library

Wonderful Bryant Park

Having left that library we barely got back to our hotel alive! As we left it began to rain and thunder, and we just managed to flag down a cab before the heavens opened, and two inches of rain fell in the next hour causing flooding that made that evening’s national news, so much of the east coast was inundated by it.

After all of this, it was time to leave New York City, bound for JFK airport in the company of a very talkative Yellow Cab driver of Moroccan descent, born in NYC. We learned all about his uncle and sister, and his mother, wife and son; about what a good wife is (it turns out Jenny has the key attribute of a good wife, much to her relief and mine – a wife is mainly good if she doesn’t spend too much money, apparently); about the spitefulness of some NYC parking inspectors; about why not to be late to airports, and about how to plan for retirement (he hates living in NYC, which he likes to refer to as New York Shitty, and he and his wife have bought a little house in the upstate New York countryside to retire to many years hence). He was a nice fellow, and this was such an entertaining, whimsical and in some respects inevitable conclusion to our time in the inexorable rush that is New York City. A great place to visit for a while, we have concluded, but, like the taxi driver, we wouldn’t want to live here.

Next stop: London, where we have very few formal things planned at this point and intend to rest up awhile and have a low-key break during our 12 days there – this being our fourth visit to London. We may or may not write a post from London, but we most certainly will write one on our last destination before flying home, Ireland. See you then!