If I had landed at Plymouth, I would have kept on going!

Ah, nothing like having the prettiest room in the house with the largest, most magnificent bed… and the soggiest soft mattress you have ever encountered in your entire life. The direct result of this was being awake off and on from about 0230 and definitely being awake enough to watch the dawn peep through the curtains. new-haven-dawn.jpgWe are off to Plymouth today, via a town called Mystic, which is renown for its beautiful seaport and being the place where the a replica of the Amistad slave ship resides. Unfortunately, being a moving target, the Amistad was not in residence at the Mystic Seaport Museum and Shipyard today – probably had the good sense to seek warmer climes – so we decided the $USD50 for us to go into the remainder of the museum was a bit on the steep side.mystic-seaport-anchor.jpgInstead, we had a look around the port area and the funkiest nautical themed gift shop ever. *curses American Airlines yet again for their luggage capacity rules!*mystic-seaport-shop-hat.jpgmystic-seaport-1.jpgmystic-seaport-boat.jpgmystic-seaport-2.jpg
After staying outdoors as long as we dared, we took a bit of a drive around Mystic to check out the houses (did I mention how much I love the property market up this way?), and to try and find the Mystic Pizza shop. 🙂 Yes, I know it’s an old movie and I am pretty sure I saw it at some point, but stuffed if I can remember anything but it!
mystic-real-estate-1.jpgmystic-seaport-3.jpgmystic-seaport-2.jpgimageTa da!
Then it was back on the road again and heading for Plymouth. We wanted to take the scenic route and stay by the coastline, but that was altogether too much for Sondra (our GPS) and she ended up taking us via the highways all the way there, which was quicker, but I dare say, not as pretty. Eventually we get to Plymouth Bay and discover that the town of Plymouth is pretty much NOT open for business yet… maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, but it seems like most of them are kinda holding out for better weather. Now the upsides of this is that we were able to find a park no problem (heaps of beach side parking here!), and no need to view this seemingly sacred but actually kinda ordinary rock surrounded by tonnes of screaming 8th Graders, but the downsides were – it’s still freezing, and hardly any of the shops or bars and restaurants in the area were open! So Plymouth felt rather… inhospitable on the whole.plymouth-bay.jpgplymouth-rock-cover.jpgplymouth-rock.jpgNaturally, there is also in the area some little National Park bookshops full of books on the history of Plymouth and the Pilgrims, and trinkets made by local artist and not so local artists (you’d be surprised how many ‘souvenirs’ you turn over and find out they are stamped ‘Made In China’). pilgrim-huts.jpgplymouth-tourist-ready-.jpg
Nearby is a commemorative memorial recognizing the contributions of the Women of the Mayflower voyage, donated by the DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) on the 300th anniversary of the historic landing in 1920.pilgrim-women-statue.jpgIf you have a look at the ‘not yet cleaned up for tourist season’ pond around this statue, you will see it’s partially frozen even though it faces due East and probably gets plenty of sun!! Nearby is a replica of the Mayflower itself, and I have to say, it is a LOT smaller than I was expecting. Having traversed a few seas by modern cruise ship, I’m not so sure I’d have the intestinal fortitude to get on a dinky little ship like this and cross the North Atlantic, no doubt the crossing was less than pleasant for many on board.mayflower-1.jpgmayflower-2.jpg
Yet again, we found ourselves driven indoors by the absolutely brutal weather on the coast. It wasn’t quite as bad as previously at East Haven, but the strong winds made it exceedingly enticing to seek refuge where ever possible. I haven’t done my research, but something tells me the pilgrims did NOT land on Plymouth Rock in winter, else they would have kept on sailing until they hit some more agreeable weather for certain! Luckily, we did find one establishment that was keeping its doors open in spite of the weather – The Office Bistro, where we were forced to order the Kentucky Bourbon boneless short ribs, and the local Scallops wrapped in bacon, all served with delicious fresh veggies. It’s a hard life, but someone has to do it.
kentucky-boneless-ribs.jpgscallops-in-bacon.jpg

Philadelphia Freedom

Philadelphia. Philadelphia. Philadelphia… word gets more ridiculous the more times you say it (says the girl from the country with places called Woolamaloo and Wangaratta). Started out this morning having a look out the window across the Delaware River to the New Jersey side and admired the snow that was still on the ground from last night’s delightful weather.
snowy-view-penns-landing-.jpg
Had a bagel smeared with Philadelphia Cream Cheese (made in Illinois, go figure) and a cuppa before deciding to head into the Old City to have a look around at the historic sites, of which there are many, in Philadelphia.

First stop was the Visitors Centre to grab a map and try and work out how to maximise the touristy stuff and minimise the being outdoors stuff, seeing it was blue skies and sunny, but still below zero.
liberty-bell-center.jpg
We went from there to check out the Liberty Bell Centre, and even though we were freezing cold, we were in high spirits – until we encountered the security staff there. On the way it, it was ‘No you don’t have to take off your coats, we just need to inspect your bags and see under your coats’… only my cross body bag was on under my coat, and I went to show it to the guy who then insisted I take my coat off in the freezing cold. I looked at him imploringly and said ‘Really?’ and the wanker, looking directly over my head and not addressing me at all said ‘Bags off people, coats can stay on’. So I stop dead and hold up the queue while I disrobe enough to take off my satchel. The least he could do, the VERY least he could do, was look at me while asking me to freeze my tits off to take my jacket and bag off… but apparently that is asking too much. Then Mr K cops an equally powertripping moron of a security officer who he goes to open his bag for, and she tells him ‘Don’t touch the bag’ and goes about opening his bag (all the zips) herself.

I tell you what, first impressions are being formed less and less by Visitors Centre staff, ticket selling staff and actual tour guides (in this case National Park Rangers), and more and more enduring first impressions of American tourism destinations – in this case historically important national monuments – are being formed by SECURITY STAFF. And this pair took our chilly but collective bonhomous countenance, and trampled it underfoot quick smart. We went from convivial and ‘Oh, isn’t the America fuck yeah, so quaint and amusing this morning?’; to being pissed off at our diffident treatment and ‘Fucking hell, we’ve had it up to the eyeballs with the Sepo Bullshit!’, in about 90 seconds flat. Dude, I don’t care if you hate your job, I don’t care if your country can’t be bothered paying you a decent living wage, I don’t care if you are cold standing around doing bullshit security checks on excited tourists all day and are dissatisfied with your life choices – you take a job like this, you are working with the public and with that comes a certain responsibility to treat with them some modicum of civility… such as looking at a person when addressing them!
Grrr. So much for the Liberty Bell. Given I was now thoroughly ticked off, and given there’s no point in arguing with security people because that never goes no where good – I wasn’t much in the mood for reading the information displays, so y’all will have to settle for the Wiki version of what the bell is all about:

“The Liberty Bell is an iconic symbol of American independence, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Formerly placed in the steeple of the Pennsylvania State House (now renamed Independence Hall), the bell was commissioned from the London firm of Lester and Pack (today the Whitechapel Bell Foundry) in 1752, and was cast with the lettering (part of Leviticus 25:10) “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” It originally cracked when first rung after arrival in Philadelphia, and was twice recast by local workmen John Pass and John Stow, whose last names appear on the bell. In its early years, the Liberty Bell was used to summon lawmakers to legislative sessions and to alert citizens to public meetings and proclamations.”

liberty-bell-crack.jpgliberty-bell-back.jpg
So this broken arse bell ends up being really famous and important to the Americans, for allegedly having been rung on Independence Day – July 4, 1776 – even though there’s no way that could have happened due to there being no public proclamations announcing the Independence thing, available until the 8th of July (printing presses were somewhat slower at the time). So the import placed on the bell feels like a bit of a furfy. Oh well, moving right along.

We hightailed it away from the Busted Bell and the arsehole security, and onto the Independence Hall (previously known as the Pennsylvania Sate House), famous for containing the exact assembly hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4th, 1776, AND the Constitution was signed there too on Sept 17th, 1787… both of the documents we saw at the National Archives back in Washington! This painting was commissioned from an artist named Glanzman in 1986 to commemorate the Bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence and features all the dead white dudes who were instrumental in bringing it about, all painted based on representations of them in contemporary portraits.

Independence Hall is a beautiful Georgian Building (I found this vaguely amusing, given they were working hard to get away from British rule and George III, and here they were adopting the predominant architectural fashions of the period most associated with good old George) with a lovely clock tower, a court room, an assembly room, a ballroom upstairs, an office/meeting room also upstairs and the militia storage facility. independence-hall-overall.jpg independence-hall-1-.jpg
With visitors interested in coming to see where the Declaration of Independence starting barely a couple of years after the incident occurred, the place turned to tourist attraction rather quickly and is very much today, as it was then – down to the unfortunately choice in interior paint colours.
Assembly Room, where the documents were actually signed, in the centre is George Washington’s actual office chair:independence-hall-signing-room-2.jpg The courtroom: independence-hall-assembly-hall.jpg
Desk set, including inkwell, used to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution documents:independence-desk-set.jpg Upstairs ballroom: independence-hall-ballroom.jpg Governor’s office and meeting room (that device on the end of the table is a telescope, believed to have once belonged to Mason and Dixon): dining-room-independence-hall-.jpg The militia storage room: independence-hall-militia-room-2.jpgindependence-hall-militia-room-.jpg Loved the militia room with it’s near row of rifles and paraphernalia.

After we finished our tour of Independence Hall, we wandered around the Old City for a while, there were several gorgeous buildings in the area, many of which have exhibits in them or (like this one), the State Library Building, as was, is awaiting an exhibit on Thomas Jefferson (as a weird co-incidence we noted that an exhibition of Jefferson’s personal writings and journals had just closed up at the Library of Congress in Washington, and wondered if it was coming here…?) independence-hall-library-hall.jpg

Then we made a weird decision to try and dinky little diner for lunch called Mrs K’s Koffee… to try a Philly cheesesteak sandwhich. Now, mostly you can get these all over the place from Louisiana to New York, so why did we wait to order on in Philadelphia?? You might think it would be the most obvious – when in Philadelphia, etc! But actually it was a West Wing hangover. Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits), goes a campaigning in Philadelphia and you guessed it – gets told to order the Philly Cheesesteak to make the locals happy, and promptly gets it all over his suit… which is the only reason Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches exist in my weird little mind. It turned out to be a somewhat dubious decision, as it was served with ‘cheese fries’ (even bigger mistake: ‘American cheese, ok?’, ‘Errr… sure.’). And this is what came out for lunch: philly-cheese-steak.jpg cheese-fries.jpg Thank goodness we didn’t order a sandwich EACH, and had sensibly decided to share. Bea, if you are reading this… I have a feeling this is what Cheese Wiz is like, only hot – don’t go there, just don’t. :S

After lunch we popped over to the Benjamin Franklin Museum, which was a very cool little museum focusing on the life and achievements of Benjamin Franklin, from his lack of formal education, to his time working as a printer, to his travels as an ambassador to the French court seeking support in the wars against the English, to his later years as a statesman, author and all round decent guy. It also focused on his keen inventors mind and his involvement in the United States Post Office – he was the first Postmaster General and from what we were told this was the first United States Post Office.
first-post-office.jpg We checked out the bookshops and giftshops around the area and by then (I think it must have been nearly 4pm) we had to call it quits to get out of the cold. One alarming (and absolutely weird) thing I did see today in a gift shop was the USA Boomerang… comes in red, white and blue… and comes in ‘Right Handed’ and ‘South Paw’ versions!

The Waldorf Astoria tour

The Waldorf Astoria claims to be a ‘living Art Deco museum’, and from the luxurious lobby it certainly appears to be so, and one with plenty of history, so when I saw in the compendium in our room that they host small group tours for guests, I thought it would be an excellent way to learn more about the history of the building, the artworks and its famous guests over the years.

It seems the original Waldorf hotel was built by William Waldorf Astor in 1893, out of a severe dislike for his aunt, Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor. You see he deliberately built the unlucky 13-story high Waldorf Hotel right next door to her 5th Avenue home; apparently just to annoy her. By all accounts she was a terribly unpleasant New York socialite who maintained a circle of only 400 people ‘worth knowing’, and if you were not in this circle she would refuse to acknowledge your existence even if you went right up to her and said ‘Good day’. In addition to her dreadfully snobby habits, she was also a terrible bigot and harboured a long abiding hatred towards the Jewish community. Oh well. Against expectations, the Waldorf, being the tallest hotel in the world at that time, did roaring trade and became very popular under the guidance of a general manager named Lucius Bloomer.

Well, Caroline’s son, John Jacob Astor IV (most famous for having perished in 1914 in the Titanic disaster when making the transAtlantic crossing with his scandalous pregnant teenage wife, Madeline) was having none of this insulting his mother stuff, so he encouraged her to move to the Upper East side where he built her a beautiful new home – complete with ballroom that would accommodate precisely 400 people and no more.  After that, he decided to build a second hotel on the site where his mother’s house was, right next door to the William Waldorf Astor’s, Waldorf Hotel – and of course he made it four stories higher than cousin William’s hotel. John Jacob Astor IV contacted the general manager of the Waldorf, Lucius Bloomer and asked him if he would manage the two hotels together (seems a bit incongruous with the rest of this oneupmanship story, but who knows how they did business then?), which he agreed to do and had suggested that the two hotels be joined together by an interior rouge marble walkway, which later became known as ‘Peacock Alley’ given the propensity of New York’s socialites for strutting back and forth between the hotels to see, and be seen.
original-waldorf-astoria.jpgIncidentally, Peacock Alley was also the place where survivors of the Titanic were brought to be reunited with their families after the disaster. Eventually, these two hotels were torn down to make way for the Empire State Building which was built in their place, and Lucius Bloomer went to Florida to retire.

New York however, was not happy at losing it’s now famous Waldorf=Astoria (a name that Lucius Bloomer registered himself, after having convinced Astor to not call his hotel ‘The Schermerhorn’ after his mother, due to the likelihood that Americans would constantly mispronounce it – btw, Caroline’s home on the Upper West side was eventually torn down to make way for a Jewish temple! Talk about serendipity! – and eventually, a scheme was put in place to build the current Waldorf=Astoria (the ‘=’ sign was apparently supposed to be visually reminiscent of Peacock Alley) and contracts were signed literally one day before the Black Friday stock market crash in 1929, which heralded the beginning of the Great Depression. It turns out The Depression did not overly much hinder the building of this grand hotel which opened in 193.  In fact, the sudden drop in the price of labour actually helped get things off the ground. Lucius Bloomer was encouraged out of retirement and out of Florida to ensure that all things would be done, ‘just so’. And by all accounts, the new hotel flourished to be the new epicentre of all things high society and full of influential visitors, as its predecessor was.

Our little tour started off at the famous clock in the Gentlemen’s Lobby – so named as this is where the men would settle their bills and deal with the concierge staff, ladies were not prohibited from the Gentlemen’s Lobby, they were however properly bred ladies were strongly discouraged from dealing with anything so gauche as ‘the money’. The Gentlemen’s Lobby is designed with black marble and dark timbers and has a sombre smoking room look about it for this reason. waldorf-clock.jpg The clock was a gift from Queen Victoria to the Chicago World’s Fair, which like many other World Fairs and expositions was broke by the bottom line and resorted to selling things off – including gifts from foreign heads of state. waldorf-clock.jpg While the clock was already very grand, apparently John Jacob Astor had decided to add a three-foot black marble plinth to the clock to give it even more grandeur, and a likeness of the Statue of Liberty to the top. Queen Victoria is said to have been seriously displeased at the addition of a FRENCH statue to their English clock and apparently demanded it back. Astor however, claiming he was really quite fond of it, and having paid good money for it, refused to acquiesce to her demands. Our tour guide for the morning, Karen, is a local Historian who was full of interesting tidbits of information about the hotel and 19th century New York society.
karen-tour-guide.jpg

Next, we went on through to the Ladies’ Lobby, where the womenfolk would be able to congregate while awaiting their menfolk to deal with the bills. The decor in this large space is much airier and lighter – it is surrounded by fresco paintings depicting scenes of recreations available in New York, and has an enormous mosaic on the floor, made out of 150,000 pieces of marble that came from six different countries. The mosaic took nine years to complete and was done entirely *after* the hotel opened – the work being completed at night from 1am to 9am while the patrons slept and it was covered by an enormous rug during the day.
waldorf-astoria-3.jpg waldorf-astoria-4.jpg waldorf-astoria-ladies-lobby.jpg
During the 1960s, some bright spark had the great idea to modernize the hotel; all the walls were painted white, the frescoes were boarded over and the plywood covering them was painted white, even the ceiling mouldings were covered and painted white and the mosaic on the floor was covered with thick wall to wall carpet. It was not until a small flooding incident in one of the ballrooms in the mid-80s, which saw a hasty removal of the carpet, that the beautiful mosaic was rediscovered as everyone had forgotten it was there! It was at this point that decisions were made to return the hotel to its original 1930s Art Deco splendour… the original colours were sourced, the mosaic shown the light of day and the frescos were rediscovered as well.

Coming off the Ladies’ Lobby are two rooms, often used for weddings and small functions (by small I mean holding 100-150 persons). We went into the Vanderbuilt Room to have a look at the sort of room you could host your private function in, if you had the money – apparently there are several prominent high schools that hold their annual proms here, and birthday parties and engagement parties, as well as business conferences, are also quite common. All the chandeliers in the hotel are made from Austrian crystal, with the exception of the one Waterford crystal chandelier that hangs in the Grand Ballroom apparently.
vanderbuilt-room.jpg vanderbuilt-room-2.jpg l2aD3RwHU2cuzHZ7.jpg

We moved through a series of entrance lobbies on our way to the Starlight Ballroom, this one with a lovely black and white Art Deco marble floor and a feathered chandelier that used to hang in the Starlight Ballroom, but was replaced by more Austrian crystal ones. It seems the proprietors have had a very good habit of never throwing things out, but rather putting things into storage and much has been re-purposed over the years.
waldorf-astoria-6.jpg
waldorf-astoria-art-deco-floor.jpg waldorf-astoria-feather-light.jpg
Next, we went to the Starlight Ballroom which is on the 18th floor, and was named such because, in 1931, it was built with a retractable roof so that patrons could literally dine and dance under the stars. It also has a terrace off the entire length of it that was used for hotel guests to have breakfasts but is now only used during functions. The ceiling no longer retracts to see the stars, as this large flat section of the roof turned out to be the only space large enough to accommodate the hotel’s air conditioning system when it was installed and a solid roof was built and the air con went in.
starlight-ballroom-.jpg
starlight-room.jpg starlight-ballroom-ceiling.jpg starlight-carpet.jpg
starlight-ballroom-carpet.jpg
After wandering around the Starlight Ballroom, we went for a look in the Waldorf Towers. The Towers is a section of the hotel which contains only suites and which are available for permanent residency. Some of the residents have included Frank Sinatra, Martin Scorcese, Marilyn Monroe, and Paris Hilton who grew up here as a child and many other famous people. Every president since Hoover has stayed at the Waldorf (including JFK, who apparently stayed here with his family; he kept his affairs at the Carlisle, of course). We managed to have a sneak peak of the Herbert Hoover Suite which happened to be vacant at the moment.
hoover-suite-door.jpg hoover-suite-1.jpg hoover-suite-4.jpg hoover-suite-5.jpg hoover-suite-3.jpg hoover-suite-7.jpg hoover-suite-dining.jpg hoover-suite-bedroom.jpg Every little detail was immaculate and could be yours for as little as $USD899 a night.hoover-suite-window.jpg
hoover-suite-bathroom.jpgAll the furniture for the suites, all the antiques, the mantelpieces and many of the light fixtures etc. were all bought in Europe in post-war homes that needed refurbishing. The architects and designers (whose names I have forgotten just now) spent months trolling through homes that had been bombed and snapping up paintings, furniture, ceiling frescos and whatever they could get their hands on to outfit the Towers.

After this we went back downstairs to the Grand Ballroom, which is designed to look like an Italian opera house… and here is where we found the only chandelier in the hotel which Karen assured us is Waterford crystal darlings, not that Austrian nonsense.
grand-ballroom-3.jpg grand-ballroom-2.jpg grand-ballroom-1.jpg grand-ballroom-waterford.jpg grand-ballroom-waterford.jpg grand-ballroom-5.jpg
grand-ballroom-carpet.jpg

The Grand Ballroom has several antechambers coming off it that accommodate guests for pre-ball aperitifs, rooms to go to have supper, and cloak check rooms. All luxuriously appointed and all available for hire for special occasions. We didn’t get any indication of how much these rooms might cost to hire, and I rather gather that if you had to ask… you probably couldn’t afford it.
grand-ballroom-side-room.jpg
side-room-.jpg This room was modelled on the Hall of Mirrors from Versailles and to be honest quite reminded me of it before the guide mentioned the influence… mind you, slightly fewer 9′ tall golden candlesticks though. 🙂
hall-of-mirrors.jpg

This room was particularly impressive and is called the Baseldon Manor Room, largely because nearly everything in it was purchased from a post-war ‘injured’ property – from the light fittings to the beautiful ceiling frescos that depict Dante’s Inferno. It really is very European and epitomises the ‘living museum’ ideals of the hotel precisely.
baseldon-manor-room-1-.jpg baseldon-manor-room-roof.jpg baseldon-manor-room-carpet.jpg

This is the cloakroom for guests to use when they come to functions at the Grand Ballroom… many famous and well-to-do guests have walked through these halls over the years, from presidents to film and rock stars.
grand-ballroom-cloakroom-1.jpg grand-ballroom-cloakroom.-.jpgHere is Mr K looking very much at home on the back staircases (I say ‘staircases’, because there are several), of the Waldorf leading down to Oscar’s Restaurant where we went to have lunch after our very informative and beautiful tour.
stair-cases.jpgLunch started off with a Waldorf salad (of course!), followed by grilled Atlantic salmon and a red velvet cake for dessert.
waldorf-salad-at-waldorf-.jpgI know the tour is predominantly aimed at guests who want to know more about the hotel and see a bit more of it than just the various lobbies, but it can probably be booked by people not staying at the hotel, and I would thoroughly recommend it for anyone who is interested in Art Deco style of art and architecture or people with an interest in the heyday of New York society.

Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

My museum snobbery started somewhere in the early 90s, after a visit to the Queensland Art Gallery and seeing a particularly enormous and delightful canvas, depicting a bright yellow Monaro with big fat tyres and black racing stripes, fancifully entitled: “Bitch Magnet”. If smartphones had been invented then I would have taken an obligatory picture of the abomination, but seeing that they weren’t and the internet was yet to be used for anything at all back then, I am failing in my duty to have a representation of it here for your edification. Unfortunately the QAG has always seemed a little lacking to someone with an interest in ancient and medieval history, and as these things go, if you’re interested in seeing culturally significant works more than 200 years old, then the QAC is not for you. We have a bit of a dearth of that sort of thing in Queensland, which is why so many of us plan trips interstate whenever there is an exhibition travelling to one of the souther galleries that isn’t coming our way. I know many people who have coincided ‘work’ trips or family obligation trips with travelling exhibits of the Old Masters or the Renaissance Paintings exhibit in Canberra at the National Gallery. And when we do get something fabulous, like the Afghan Treasure… we are all over that like fat kids on cupcakes, starving little culture vultures that Brisbanites are.

Unfortunately (nah, I can’t back that up) my museum snobbery was only solidified by travelling to some of the most renown galleries throughout Europe in my early 20s in London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, Florence, Venice, Istanbul, Vienna etc. where I had the opportunity to see many important and famous works of art. Then I went and made things even worse by doing a degree in Visual Arts. And another one in literature and history. Oh well, so be it. But I have digressed before I even began!

Today, I made a pilgrimage to the Metropolitan Museum of Art – somewhere that has been on my ‘to do’ list my entire life, and it does not disappoint. Around every corner is another stunning gallery filled with famous and familiar names, another unbelievable artefact to examine and contemplate, another unexpected delight. Whether you are into Byzantine mosaic, Asian isomorphic representations, Egyptology, Limoge enamelware, 14th century tapestry, medieval armour, American painting, early modern decorative arts, Renaissance sacredotal painting… it doesn’t matter, they have a bit of everything. I think I spent the entire day stumbling around picking my jaw up off the floor as I wandered past all these names from my text books – Vermeer, Millet, Rubens, Rembrandt, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Gaughin, Van Gogh, Van Eyck, Rodin, Bruegel, Holbein, Surat, Tiepolo, Lotto, and Unknown (OMG, that Unknown artist dude is crazy talented!). I was just in seventh heaven.
rodin-the-thinker.jpg
We started off in the impressionist gallery as Mr K has a fondness for Van Gogh that I knew nothing about and ran into all the big names from the period just sitting there on the walls, looking all innocuous and marvellous and alarmingly expensive.





There are two entire rooms filled with Degas paintings of his ballet dancers, his bathing nudes and his sculptures. Any one of these pieces would be a major draw card or centre piece for any gallery in the world, and here they have too many to count! It’s unbelievable and wonderful and perhaps even a little overwhelming, it becomes hard to comprehend exactly what you are looking at, when the normally unique and exclusive, is so almost so plentiful as to be appear nearly commonplace… slight weirdness there.

Predictably I spent quite a bit of time wandering around the Medieval European galleries and took so many photos with my proper camera that I will have to sort when I get back, but a small sample of items I snapped with the iPhone mostly include owls, heraldry, memento mori and some pelican paraphernalia.

Heraldic horse pendants.
Ivory casket, 11th century carved with warriors and dancers.
Another 11th century artefact of an obscure little bed described as the ‘Baby Jesus’ bed’ however no other details were available. Very curious thing.
A later period carved ivory rosary and detail.

Brooch of gold and precious stones, late 16th century.
Brass bowl depicting a pelican in her piety, 14th century.

Then there were the hunting tapestries. I walked into a room and saw these on my left and nearly fell over. I’ve seen it so many times in so many books… just stunning.


Obscure detail of a painted altarpiece – I liked his hat. 🙂 Have a snap of the whole work and the info on it (but that is trapped on CF card until I get home).

I spent quite a bit of time wandering through the arms and armour display and took incalculable photos of the armour, details of each, photos of rapiers, firearms, crossbows and lord knows what else. These are just some happy snaps of some 16th century armour.



I thought this was really interesting, it is apparently a Medieval recreation of Roman armour and would have been used for reenactment or dramatic purposes. Very cool.

I took many, many photos of the firearms and crossbows which I will have to post to the Lochac firearms guild FB page when I get home.
This is a 15th century Italian pietre dure table made for the Farnese family, and a detailed shot of the inlaid stone work.

An or nue piece that was stunning in real life, but this picture isn’t as finely focused as I am hoping my other images of it are.
And a French Limoge enamelled casket from the 13th century.Seriously, these were just a few of the amazing things I saw today and managed to grab happy snaps on my phone of them.

Some more paintings – Salome with John the Baptist’s head (will edit in artist later), a Tiepolo and a Van Eyck altarpiece.



I loved this depiction of the Saints in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, by an unknown spanish painter of the 15th century. It shows all the saints lined up in neat rows and the Trinity in the top centre of the piece and dead centre is HELL… dum, dum, da! Complete with evil hellfish/beast/leviathan thing. Love it!


Then I wandered around the corner and found a beautiful, and very famous, Cranach. And a couple of Vermeers, one of which is an Allegory for Catholicism I think. Then a lovely Venus and Cupid done by Rubens, and a couple of Rembrandts, one of which is a self portrait… just so many amazing and famous works everywhere you turned.



vermeer-1.jpg

rembrandt2.jpg
rembrandt-1.jpg
This was pretty incredible, there is a section downstairs under the European Painting gallery that houses entire rooms laid out with Louis XIV furniture and is quite reminiscent of the sort of thing you see in Versaille or the Shonnbrun or other great castles in Europe.

And after that it was time to hit the gift shop and hightail out of there, for today at least. My sticker was tattered and well used, as were my feet. Everyone else seemed to deposit theirs on a board on their way out each day… so much for the cool little fold over tin tokens that were iconic of the MET for many years.


And the best bit about the MET is, I am here all week and I haven’t even touched the Egyptian, Asian, Classical, American Painters or oh, so many different galleries to get through yet! I think this might well be the only reason I needed to come to New York.