Another visit to the Met Museum and pottering in Soho

Yesterday I  walked through Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the morning.  It was a lovely fine sunny day, about 3 or 4 degrees, so quite mild after the last few weeks. I have been taking lots of photos of bare trees. I find them strangely attractive but have no idea why.

At the Museum there is currently an exhibition entitled "Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer" that I walked around. There were lots of people looking and lots of drawings and sketches that all looked much the same to me after a while. There were some drawings of buildings he designed.

The Met also has a large exhibition of David Hockney's work.  It seemed like they had a good representation of the various stages of his paintings in the various places he has lived . I liked some of the more abstract ones of his time in California, not so much the ones with people in them.  There were 2 paintings of the grand canyon which I was interested to see after being there 6 months ago.  More recently  he went back to live in Yorkshire for a while and there were some I liked that he painted there. All his paintings are bright and full of life. He is in his 80s now and  uses an iPad each morning to sketch what he sees out his window.

After a coffee and a mental switch off, I really enjoyed wandering around the section called  'Art of the Arab lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia.'  There was so much interesting, beautiful stuff, that I didnot know how to spend my time, so I just picked one thing in each room to closely look at, enjoy, and read about.

I pottered in a different part of Midtown in the afternoon and in the evening went to see The marriage of Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera. It was great fun.  Wonderful singing and excellent acting. The evening was slightly spoiled because my knee which does not do ' bent stationary' at all well decided to not respond to panadol, well only for 30 minutes.  Luckily the guy next to me was a shuffler and didnot seem to mind that I was trying to move my leg a lot.

This morning I slept in then went to a nearby cafe, one of the Le Pain Quotidien chain.  I had an interesting  conversation with a young woman who grew up in France, worked in Britain, elsewhere, then San Francisco Bay area and now NYC.

Then I went to the box office of the theatre where I have tickets for the book of Mormon next week. ( very poor englisH,  sorry)  After last night I had to change my seat, which I did to an aisle so I  could stick my leg straight) but it had to be a higher category. What a pity!

Then I caught a train further south and wandered around Soho. There is a knitting wool shop that was the excuse, but I enjoyed the edgier feel of the place. Lots of small shops with different stuff, but no prices. I donot think I have seen any prices at all in shop windows, not even the ordinary shops . There was a bigger variety of buildings and some old brick roads.

On my way back from the nearest subway stop on one of the 2 subway lines that I have the choice between, there are about 6 fancy hotels. Last time I was in new york I used to amuse myself by deciding where I would stay (if I was filthy rich)  based on the uniform of the doormen who always stand outside waiting to greet their clients. Some are too ornate, some too plain. Until now this trip  they have all been inside. Sometimes you can see them peering  out , waiting. The temperature must have risen enough - to about 5 degrees I think- for them all to be standing outside today.  Except they had rather boring rain coats on, not nice woolen overcoats that I have seen once before.

I have just come home from a delicious seafood meal. As background, before I came I was looking forward to having some oysters from the Oyster Bar under Grand Central as I have on previous visits. When I went a few days ago I passed on the oysters because the cheapest was over $2 each and quite a few were over $4 each.
Several days ago , a lady I talked to in a coffee shop recommended Crave, a few blocks away.  I had looked in the window at the menu, thouht the mains were a bit pricey, saw that they had lots of specials in happy hour 5.30 to 6.30 and thought it would be worth a try,  so I went to day. I was delighted to find that in happy hour oysters are $1 each.  It would have been sensible to try the ones that were the more expensive ones, but I could not work out how to phrase that politely, so I  just asked the waiter to choose 3 different ones X 2. Then I had some crab stuff on a corn tortilla and then possible the best calamari I have ever  had with Japanese flavours.  The glass of wine that came on special in happy hour was an ugni blanc / colombard  blend from France. Ugni sounded an odd french word that i had never heard before but I looked it up ( thank you Mr Google) to find it is the French name for the Italian trebbiano. I will return to Crave before I return to Australia.