The Met

We started out with brunch and a walk through Central Park. Destination: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Located on the east side of Central Park at about the half way mark, near the Great Lawn and Turtle Pond (yes, there is real turtles in there).

Set aside some time for this one, she’s a bigg'n! An absolutely stunning building and one of the world's largest museum/galleries with more than two million works of art.

The Roof Garden up top has great views of the of the city and Central Park and a massive bamboo sculpture at present, think Swiss Family Robinson style tree house a la Asia, you can climb up for an even better view!

We took one of the free guided Museum Highlights tours which was a great way to see several of the collections and featured pieces as well as get a bit of background info. Took me right back to my high school art history classes. Keep up though, the guides dart around quickly. We nearly had a lost Mum incident!

I saw Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Warhol, Pollock and the list goes on. One very impressive place...

Doing as the tourists do

Mum has arrived for her visit. Fresh as a daisy and ready for action. I think she travels better than I do!

As all well organised travellers do, she had sussed out some little tours to get her bearings in the big city. On Sunday we set out on, not one, but three, open-air-double-decker bus tours. Complete with a guide up front, sprouting off info about the relevant things we passed by.

While I imagine the locals look up at us and think “would you people in that big eyesore of a bus please leave my city” (ok maybe not that politely, they are New Yorkers!), I really must admit, it is a fab way to get a snapshot of the city in a short amount of time. I saw a few little neighbourhoods that I’d like to go back and explore more, it’s great for that. Interesting too, that the cool folk of Bleeker St in the West Village have managed to get the bus tour guides to turn their microphones off while passing through so as not to disturb. Tres cool.

8th Ave and 34th St, Midtown

Bleeker St, Greenwich Village

Broadway, Soho

On Manhattan Bridge looking left to Brooklyn Bridge and the Financial District

My favourite, The Chrysler Building

We did a Downtown, Brooklyn and City Lights night tour. On the latter, in Brooklyn, after looking back at the twinkling Manhattan skyline by night, the bus driver got lost and had to keep getting out of the bus to ask randoms for directions. Hilarious! He was going through narrow back streets where tree branches were hanging too low for the bus and we all had to duck down and dodge them or risk being left hanging in a tree in Brooklyn for the night.

Needless to say, Mum and I lived to tell the tale.

Dodging branches in Brooklyn