Emily's theme was the Museum of Modern Art. She really wanted to see the original Starry Night painting by Vincent van Gogh because she is very sophisticated.
A local tour bus company offers day trips to NYC, so we hopped on the bus at 8:30 and were deposited in Times Square at quarter of eleven. I sat beside Emily on the bus and as we got rolling on the New Jersey Turnpike, Emily pulled out a bag, a mirror, and began applying her makeup, most notably, mascara and eyeliner.
I'm here to tell you that I apply my eye makeup standing in my bathroom mirror in my stationary house, and I still get it all over my face on a not infrequent basis. Emily applied it while sitting on a coach bus whizzing down the NJ Turnpike at 70 miles an hour and it was flawless.
Maybe I need to re-think my makeup strategy. Perhaps Matt could drive me around in his old pick-up each morning so I can put on my eyeliner.
When we got to the city we wandered down 6th Ave for a bit past all the fancy business headquarters and to see if we could snag Emily an eligible and financially secure bachelor. No luck in that department, but we did get our pictures next to these nutcrackers.
I'm no art aficionado, but I will say that the painting was absolutely beautiful in person. The colors were so vibrant and if there hadn't been a security guard standing there and the consequence of a felony, I would've brought it home and hung it in my living room.
From there we wandered through a few more galleries and then my mom said what I had been thinking, which was "I'm not sure I understand why some of this is considered art."
The next gallery featured this particular larger than life piece of art that to my untrained eye looked like a bunch of crayon and pencil doodles.
People were ooh-ing and ahh-ing, and my mom whispered to us, "I threw away hundreds of pieces of paper that looked just like this when you kids were little."
Sounds like my siblings and I were prodigies whose calling was overlooked.
We walked through the sculpture garden on our way out of the museum, and this was the first sculpture we saw.
My mom gasped, and said "Oh no! That one fell over."
I lost it. And then we left.
We went to see some other art in the form of diamonds at Tiffany's. Tiffany's is right next to Trump Tower, so we had to go through a police checkpoint to get there.
It was worth it though because Emily got a necklace, and my mom was told there are no prices on any item in Tiffany's because your heart needs to fall in love with it first, no matter the price. My mom's heart fell in love with a pair of sunglasses that the saleswoman then informed her cost FOUR HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE AMERICAN DOLLARS, and that love affair ended quickly.
After that, we walked by the windows at Bergdorf Goodman's...
...down 5th Avenue...
...and through St. Patrick's Cathedral. Mom and Em had been there before but I hadn't, so they sat in a pew while I walked around and to the small chapels behind the altar. It was so beautiful I almost cried.
We snuck out a side door and made the terrible mistake of walking past Saks Fifth Avenue. Listen, I am no NYC expert, but I've been several times, and I have never experienced it like this. We literally could not walk. It was shoulder to shoulder people, and we just got pushed along with the crowd. It was impossible to turn back around, so we went with it, but it was a little scary and probably took 20 minutes to move one block. Because the city was prepared for New Year's Eve, there were metal fences along the sidewalk, so you couldn't even cross the street. As soon as found a break in the barrier, we crossed the street to Rockafeller Plaza to check out the tree, but since it was so crowded we viewed it from the periphery and kept moving.
This was out front of Saks. You can see the heads of ALL THE PEOPLE.
We were home by 9 and exhausted but happy from such a fun day!
Yesterday I just hung around, and today my siblings and I exchanged gifts because my brother was in town. Annabelle opened her gifts too, and may we all be as excited about presents as she was.
We did a sibling pollyanna this year for a change, and my brother had me. He got me a scarf, a new set of colored pencils, and a giant coloring book of wilderness scenes.
I'm going to go start on it right now.
Maybe next year, we will be visiting one of my own pieces in the MOMA.
