Art and SC in New York

November 28th, 2009

Saturday in New York proved to be Art Day. We started off up the street at Serafina on the corner of 55th and Broadway for breakfast. The outside looks like a rundown cafe but the inside looked like a sparky Hollywood movie set.


I ordered a $6 bowl of cereal expecting Cornflakes and room temperature milk only to have a beautifully decorated bowl of deliciousness arrive. My mom's eggs were the first eggs I've ever truly enjoyed - thin and salty.


From there, we made our way into Central Park - the scenic route to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.


For those of you who have been to travel-addict.com and read my stories from aboard, you know that I HATE museums. The Met might be the first museum to finally woo me. I loved how each exhibit recreated the time period it was displaying. The Egyptian section had giant tombs, the Medieval exhibit had knights on horseback, and the French/American history section had full-blown recreations of rooms from the period.


The best part was the Petrie Cafe and Wine Bar in the Met where we had lunch. My mom and I split the open-faced flank steak foccacia sandwich with tomato, carmelized onions and blue cheese with a side salad with goat cheese. The side salad was boring but the steak sandwich was probably the best meal I've had here besides that lox bagel that I keep thinking about.


We passed through the Modern Art exhibit on our way out of the museum where I saw some naked Picasso women, a set of New York paintings where the artist painted herself in as a character, and lastly a giant dead shark. Yes, a dead shark suspended in a huge water tank. Trust me, I tried to get a picture - no luck - security is really tight.

After the museum we decided to wander through the Upper East Side down to 60th Street and 3rd Ave where the ice cream parlor, Serendipity 3, is located. We switched from Park to Lexington to 3rd as we went south. Park is pretty boring although some of the old buildings are cool.


When we arrived at Serendipity there was a three hour wait which put us dangerously close to the start of the Lion King show we had tickets to at 8pm so we decided to come back tomorrow. We took the long way back to the hotel stopping at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for pictures and Lou's Cafe on 53rd and AoA for dinner.

Lou's Cafe was pretty bland. Granted I had kind of a stomach from so much walking (we'd put in about 5 miles at this point) so the pasta I had didn't sit very well. My mom's chicken caesar wasn't any better. Feeling a little dissatisfied, we stopped at the hotel to change and then made haste to the Minskoff Theater just in time for the Lion King Broadway show.

The Lion King was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. There were giraffes and elephants and dancers in the aisle ways. We had perfect seats too right in the center orchestra about 13 rows from the stage. The woman who plays Rafiki is from South Africa and she would speak in African dialectics which made it that much more realistic. It was a little cheesy but hey it's based on a Disney Story. The contraptions they made were really crazy too. The scene where Mufasa is trampled by buffalo was done really well in terms of creating the feeling of a gorge you couldn't escape from. They also incorporated the moving of scenery into many of the dances so you never had to wait for a curtain. It was very much like dreaming.

After the show, we wandered around Time Square and bought candy from M&M World. I tried to find USC colors but they were out of red and yellow so I had to settle for mustard and maroon (ick ASU colors).


And off we went to Galway Hooker on 5th and 36th St, the New York USC bar. There we convinced an alumni and her mom to let us sit at their table because the place was packed. I ran into about four people I knew there that I hadn't seen in ages which was really cool. It was also great to cheer along with a hundred other people whenever we scored. Too bad the game wasn't good...but at least the burger was!


We made it home around 2am and promptly passed out. New York is almost too crazy, even for me!

Check back tomorrow for the New York finale.