The Met, lunch with Shannon, "The Play That Goes Wrong"

 Monday, August 19, 2024

Early to bed, early to rise!  I have time to add yesterday's photos before launching into this new day. Yay! 

The building on the left is Grand Central Terminal.

Cool siding!

We set off around eight to collect the car and drive to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  There is a special exhibit called Sleeping Beauties, Reawakening Fashion that got rave reviews on NPR.  We park the car in another branch of the iPark that we just left and are only a block from the Met.  We arrive nice and early and get in line so that we can be among the first to enter.  You can flash a QR code to join the virtual queue for Sleeping Beauties and we only have an eleven minute wait!!

Where are those darn tickets!!

The dresses are so amazing!  They come from different time periods and are all designer dresses.  Some you could easily imagine wearing to the White House.  Others are so outrageous that you can't even imagine how you would put it on!  The exhibit is divided into categories based on the theme of each dress.  There is a bird section, a rose section, a poppy section, an insect section...and so forth! There are even ceiling displays featuring close-ups of some of the fashions or videos of the flowers.  But the most unusual feature of the exhibit is one's ability to SMELL some of the dresses!  No, you can't touch them or stick your nose into them.  Somehow they have collected the aromas and they are fed through plastic tubes to the exhibit area so that you can put your nose close to the end of the tube and waft it toward you, like in chemistry class! Quite amazing!  There are also hats that you can smell, and evening aprons!  We spent about two hours ooo-ing and ahh-ing!  (There are about two hundred photos if you are a fashionista and want to see them!)

Most are in individual cases;  but these are in a gallery.

Don't ask!!

I know it's silly to take photos of the art when there are professional ones available;
but I was just so happy to see the real thing!

Who's a little overwhelmed?

We're supposed to meet Shannon and Cade at 12:30, so we spend about half an hour with the impressionists and head out.  The kids live across Central Park, so they can just walk across the park to meet us.  We're standing up pretty high to improve our visibility and the kids spot us right away! Hugs and kisses and we go in search of a restaurant.  When we come to Serafina's Shannon says that's her mom's favorite, so it's a done deal!  We go up to the third floor where the dining room is open and airy and there is greenery hanging from the ceiling.  We can get vegetables!!  (Very vegetable deprived!). I have a spinach salad with goat cheese and pine nuts and a honey dressing!  It's a treat for my taste buds.  Ginger has barratta with red and yellow beets and it looks great, too!  The kids split a VIP pizza.

Mural in the stairwell

Cade has to get back to the gym where he has some personal-trainer clients, so after we have all caught up on what everyone is doing, and finished our plates, the kids walk us back to the museum and get back to their lives.  We still have our tickets so we can go back inside and check out the museum store.

I've been fretting for a couple of days because our tickets for tonight's play, "The Play that Went Wrong", haven't shown up in my email.  Finally the message comes but I can't open the tickets!  I try it again in the museum with the really good wifi and it still doesn't work.  Hmm

We go back to the parking garage and retrieve the car.  The trip here was quite an adventure.  At one point the five-lane street had only one lane of moving traffic.  One lane had pop-up restaurants left over from Covid and three lanes had delivery trucks double and triple parked. Shannon told us later that there is a new law and the restaurants will be coming down soon.  When the light changes you frequently can't move because the cross-street traffic.

It's easy to get the car back and the GPS has us crossing Central Park and driving straight up to 42nd Street!  So much easier!!  We park back in our old iPark, walk half a block, and we're home!  We had thought about doing something before the play tonight, but ambition fails when it meets a comfy bed! They good news is that I've finally been able to open our tickets and take a screen shot so I won't need internet when we get there.  I'm so relieved!

When we go downstairs to head for the theater we find that it's raining!  But an industrious guy is selling umbrellas right out front!  The big ones are ten dollars and the small ones are five.  Two small ones and its a small price to pay not to sit in a cool theater with wet clothes and hair! Once again the walk is easy and we're really learning our way around.  The play is in something called the New World Stages - Stage 4.  Turns out it an entire complex with five different theaters, a bar, and a large outdoor seating area.  It's on two levels and our theater is on the upper one.  Along the walkway are charicatures by an artist named Fallin and he's really good.  You know immediately who the famous people are.  We each get a drink, Coke and bloody-mary mix, and now we have a third souvenir cup.  This one has "cheers" in a lot of different languages and that lovely tight-fitting lid.

When we find our seats it's obvious that everyone will be able to see well.  The rows are steeply tiered and the seats are pretty comfortable.  There appear to be two stage hands trying to fix somethings and it isn't going well.  When the mantle piece falls off, the girl in the Cats t-shirt comes out into the audience and drafts a guy to help her fix it! We don't know it, but the play has begun!  What a stitch!! Everything that can go wrong, does go wrong, and we laughed so hard that my cheeks hurt!

After the show we decide to just grab a burger for our empty tummies.  I've read that Shake Shack burgers are the very best;  but we don't havve Shake Shacks at home.  However! There is one really close to our hotel and pretty close to the theater!  We find it with no trouble and each order a shake burger, their lowest calorie burger (500) and one order of fries.  It's hard to find a seat;  but we do after Ginger asks a couple if they really need those other two chairs. 

When the order arrives we are short one burger and Ginger goes back to inquire.  It's just a few minutes before the second one appears and they are very good.  The French fries are even better!  We demolish our food and walk just a couple of blocks to our wonderful Pod Hotel.  Up the elevator to the lobby, up the elevator to the fifth floor, down the hall and we're home!  Feels so good to just crash!  We have to check out tomorrow.  Sigh.  But at least we don't have to rush or get up early!  I'm really beat so I'll add the photos to this in the morning.