After we crashed at Sarah's place, the next morning we knew we were in New York from the busted fire hydrant we encountered on the way to the subway. It didn't get fixed for 3 days.
That afternoon, after seeing Nile's favorite Barnard people (and places), we had brunch with a bunch of Nile's friends from Barnard.
Pictured are Katy, Dianna (the bride to be). Dianna (again), Sarah, Sarah, Nile, Renna, and Katy.
After having a lot to eat, we all took a walk around Morning Side Heights. We weren't sure what was happening at the West End but we took this for Nile's mom (who in her Barnard days, used to hangout there). Matt liked the Cake Hotline sign and the muffins are Nile's favorate muffins that have cheese in them.
That afternoon we went to MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art. We hadn't been to the new location since it moved back to Manhatten. Inside, a typically modern exhibit with a peep window giving you an obstructed view of some of this artist's favorite works by other artists. OOF in Microsoft Speak means "Out of Office" (i.e. on vacation), so Matt thought this was a particularly relevant work.
Nile liked this piece of cake. Mmm... Kenneth gave Matt this shirt which says, "This is not a pipe" (in French) and has a picture of a Super Mario Brothers Pipe on it. The shirt is a take on a famous painting by René Magritte which has a regular pipe instead of the SMB version. Magritte also painted this eye painting. Unfortunately, the pipe is not at this museum.
The next day we went to the American Museum of Natural History. They had a Darwin show still going on. On the way into the exhibit, there was a TV featuring some professors talking about what they research. Spencer Berret, whom Nile knows from her work at the University of Toronto, was on the screen. Nile screamed out, "That's Spencer!" Everyone looked at us, so Matt explained, "We know him..."
The AMNH has some of the best dinosaur fossils on display anywhere. They revamped the display a few years ago when archiologists discovered that dinosaurs don't actually drag their tails. Matt loves space stuff, so here he is posing next to a replica of one of the Mars rovers.
The next day we took it easy and hung out in the park for a while. They rent sailboats that you can control remotely. It looked like fun, but we didn't do it. We think it's probably more relaxing to watch. There was one really beautiful boat there that didn't have any control. The man who owned it would just set up the rudder and the sail and let it sail out.
On Monday we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met is closed on Monday, but Thea works there and showed us around. We saw great art while the museum was relatively empty, and a lot of fun behind the scenes stuff. Here they are rehanging the Van Gough exhibit.
Later that day we went downtown to find what was purportedly the best cupcakes in Manhatten. They were pretty good. Sarah came back from her wedding in Maine, and we visited some public gardens maintained by people living in the area. This one was particularly good. Nile and Sarah are sitting in a two storey shed in the garden.
And the next day we flew home.
