United States of Tara/Canada/French Canada Tour 09 - Part 4

Wakey wakeies... Despite only having a couple of hours of sleep on the flight - I think I only managed to sleep for 6 hours in our first night in New York. I woke up stewpid early time of about 5:30am as someone was going medieval on their car horn outside the hotel. Yay noise pollution and jetlag...

We sort of moped around the hotel for a bit before getting out on the streets (which we didn't really want to due to the disgusting cold windy wet weather). Ant's pissweak umbrella which he had bought the night before at the Canberra Centre wasn't up to the task.

We made our way back to Times Square as we wanted to check out the TIXS office (you know - that half price theatre box office where all the cheap skates go like us two). We perused the menu but there wasn't anything on their list we really wanted to go see. The only thing both of us wanted to go see was Wicked. We had already seen Chicago (in London with David Hasselhoff as the lawyer - yes!) and I had seen Avenue Q in Sydney on the Sleaze Weekend and we weren't really keen on things like "Shrek the musical"... so we gave the TIXS office a miss.

It was still blowing a gale and we were getting a little hungry (it was around 10ish). We bypassed the Stardust Diner (with singing waitress... not strippers as the name sort of suggests) and went to Ellens Diner with "world famous cheesecake".... (as world famous as the "St Kilda Road" we thinks). The prices were steep... stewpidly steep - with bacon and eggs costing $20 USD. We did a "world famous Nick and Ant walkout" and went to a nearby diner which was cheaper (around $10USD) and had the added bonus of us sitting near a waitress station where the waitresses would scream in a thick latino accent "ORDER IN FOR TWO LUMBERJACKS WITH EXTRA CRISPY BACON HOLD THE NUTRITION". After sitting there for 15 minutes - we had a photographic memory for their menu and all combinations and permutations. Breakfast was OK if a little bit on the stewpid US style portions size. Maybe I could appear on "Dance Your Ass Off"?

We went to the nearby subway stop (right outside the diner) and picked up a couple of 7 day unlimited metrocards for $27USD each.... which is pretty good value considering each train ticket costs $2.50 and these trips can add up pretty quickly. Another bonus with the NY subway system is that it is open 24 hours a day 7 days a week (except for the occasional dodgy maintenance closures on the weekend). This makes going out and getting trashed fairly cheap. Ant was having nightmares catching the trains though - as he watched both versions of "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" (the 70s and the dodgy Travolta remake) - so he had nightmareish versions of John Travolta with a bad crew-cut and facial hair boarding a train or something.

We headed to the Upper East Side to get some Gossip Girl vibes. The Upper East Side is where all of the super rich live - everyone has bellboy door attendants, limos and stuff... Maybe we should have done our homework about where the filming locations of Gossip Girl are because we didn't really "spot" any - apart from the front steps of the MET which is a bit obvious. Speaking of the MET - the two of us thought it would be a good idea to do indoor things (given the shithouse weather).

The MET is sort of like a Disneyland of archaeological art (Egyptian, Pre-Colombian, Middle Eastern, African) and classical and modern art. There are even bits of Egypt which have been shipped over (wholesale) and planted into the museum. The entry was sort of steepish ($20USD recommended "donation") but it is definitely worth it. We had spent about 5 hours wandering around - the highlights were probably the Impressionist-era stuff (Van Gogh, Monet, ABH - another bloody haystack) and the modern stuff as well. I also really liked the African stuff because I hadn't really seen any of it before - it was a bit out-of-this-world-esque and a bit Resident Evil 5-esque. We had been to the MET before on our last trip to NY - but it was a great way to kill a day.

You could tell that the GFC was having an effect on the museum. Several galleries (which looked like there was nothing wrong with them) were closed and we were kicked out of the Islamic Art museum (by a loud and somewhat incomprehensible guard who could be a friend of "Ellen/Martina/KD") when it wasn't even close to closing-time. Because their collection is so huge and all of it appears to be on display - running the museum must be fairly costly (in terms of guards, etc) - so because revenue is down - so too are the number of open displays. The Onion (the States version of the Chaser magazine) had a funny satirical fake news story on the MET allowing people to touch and lick the works of art in order to boost numbers and money...

Until next time... XOXO