Day Number Two

Today was full of walking and waiting, punctuated by some pretty fun stuff. Number of modes of transportation taken today = 5. Sightseeing bus (which abandoned us in Harlem), taxi, city bus, subway, and of course, walking.

We started off at St. Patrick's...we had all good intentions of going to mass, but...well, once again the morning got away from us. We did stop in, and this picture is for my friend S, who always teases me about praying to saints. S, I thought of you as I lit this candle, can you guess who the saint is?
We next slogged through the crazy bustle of Times Square, where every building MUST have a "light feature ad":


...and headed for somewhere a little quieter- The Cloisters. (The medieval art museum of the Met. Museum of Art). One the way we saw a few more New York sights...on Central Park West is the Dakota Building, famous for many reasons, but most significantly (in my mind, anyway), it's where John Lennon was killed, right near where that security guard is standing:

and Yoko still lives in the building- her apartment is the one with the shuttered windows. Poor Yoko, I wouldn't want to keep my windows shuttered all the time like that...but then I am one of the annoying people taking pictures outside her building, so...sorry Yoko.


Trying to get to the cloisters proved to be difficult - combination of bad information from our sightseeing bus guide, our own lack of knowledge about the subway, and our frustrating inability to find a cab in Harlem. We finally did, and for $13 (yikes) he drove us all the way uptown to the Cloisters. We got to hear his life story along the way. Good luck moving to Atlanta and becoming a nurse, cab-driver man!

Here's Gretchen enjoying one of the peaceful cloisters:

This corbel was our favorite:
so, we imitated it:
In one of the gardens there were medieval plants and flowers, and I spent a long time trying to get a perfect picture of a bee on the lavender. Each time I'm on vacation, I'm reminded every day that I'm not a great photographer...so this will have to do. (I do, however, get better and better at taking self-portrait-arm-stretched-out picture, out of necessity).

We made our slow, public-transit way home, had a quick sandwich dinner, and headed back out to Avenue Q. Actually, "headed" is less correct than "ran the last three blocks since it was 5 minutes before curtain time and we thought we could walk it in time". We got to our seats a sweaty mess, but hooray, we made it to the show. It was great - hilarious, irreverent, sweet...just great. It's sort of like a Sesame Street for grown ups, and since you can't take pictures, here's a picture of me with another famous muppet:


Tomorrow: Hmm, not sure. Might storm. Many possibilities....we'll see!