First, I booked the week off...actually, I only booked 3 days off, the other ones were due to me, stockpiled from recent hours of staying late and missing holidays while we were short. Nonetheless, I had 8 days at my disposal. Knowing that I did not want to miss the St. George's Walk and the Ascot's dinner, and genuinely needed several days of hard core relaxing and forced laziness (possibly even descending into slothfulness), I was able to earmark part of 3 days for a mini vacation. This was happy news for the cats, who would be trying out a new pet sitting service, Passion Paw Paws and disapprove of all absences from the house. Vacation is a scornful topic with the cats, and pulling out a suitcase will illicit a sit in -- on top of the suitcase -- for days on end. So I booked a short trip to New York City. I would have 59 hours off the rock, wheel up to wheels down on the way in and out. That doesn't sound like much time, but I once toured my brother Jerry through the best sites of Canmore, Banff, the Columbia Icefields, and all of Jasper in 48 hours. He will probably still twitch and insist that I am more mountain goat than human in order to get him through it...but I have a knack for squeezing a remarkable amount of stuff into small spaces of time...it's a gift.
So last Tuesday morning I called a taxi, gave each kitty a cuddle goodbye, and headed to Bermuda's LF Wade International Airport. Equipped with a new download on my Kindle called Flight Plan by Barbara Kingsolver (about climate change of course), a large coffee, and a croissant, I settled in near the gate anxious to start my vacation race. It briefly dawned on me that I have never been to New York City alone, and maybe the idea of going to NYC to take night photographs alone was a little silly for a farm girl from Saskatchewan. I banished the thought and decided I would wing it and keep my eyes open and be fine.
The flight to NYC is short, only 2.5 hours, and is usually a relatively reasonable fare as far as airfare goes. We boarded and departed on time, landing about 20 minutes early in NYC -- yes! That feeling of elation was quickly squashed when luggage for our flight failed to materialize for another 30 minutes. When it did, my suitcase also came out squashed. Sigh. But I booked it outside to the taxi stand, and alas, the last taxi was taken by the person in line ahead of me. So I began the wait for a taxi. It wasn't too long, so I thought we were back on track, but no, there was construction and the drive to Manhattan was in danger of being as long as the flight. As the precious minutes of my vacation ticked by, I tried to enjoy the slow turn of the scenery around me. Finally, we picked up speed and were within range of Manhattan. Somewhere in the middle of Manhattan, my cab pulled over and said he didn't want to fight traffic to get to my hotel, and was going for lunch, and waved a finger in no particular direction and said the hotel is a short walk while tossing my broken luggage on the shores of the foreign curb on some unfamiliar New York City Street. Hold on, I said, I don't know where we are or where the hotel even is. With an annoyed glance he pointed behind him again and said "Walk that way, it's down there somewhere." Fortunately the fare from airport to Manhattan is set at $55. I was not impressed with this service, so pulled out $60, which started him hollering right off the bat. "The toll is $7.50, you have to pay the toll fare." OK, so I pulled out $65 and got him raging "Lady that doesn't include a tip." I squashed my meek country inside girl and stood my ground "If you can't be bothered to take me to my hotel you get no tip. I don't even know where I am." Despite this curbside show, some desperate Manhattanites tried to climb into the cab, but he kicked them out because he was still intent on lunch...making me feel not so bad about the no tip, because clearly he wasn't desperate for a fare or money. In Bermuda we tip not only waiters and waitresses, but also grocery store baggers, gas jockeys, and of course cabbies. That is about the second time in my life I have intentionally not tipped someone, but after all of that it was warranted. So, I wandered down the street, thinking that at least tonight I would be able to hunker down in my gorgeous hotel room, maybe order up a glass of wine and have a nice hot bath. In the end, the hotel was only a block and a half away, and I did find it, checked in quickly, and opened the room door into the smallest hotel room I have ever seen. A shoebox, I thought, I have paid a small fortune for a shoebox. Well, I thought, best make the best of it, and set my luggage down and opened the curtains to check out the view....of the brick wall and black metal staircase. No worries, I thought, until I walked into the bathroom and saw that it was a teeny tiny room with a shower stall and no bath. Of course. I hurried downstairs to ask to have my room changed, but alas the hotel was fully booked and they would not or could not move me. 3 hours into my 59 hour vacation, there was nothing left to do but put on a smiley face and tackle the city for all I was worth, because at this rate I was never coming back.
And that's when it all turned around. The concierge provided me with a coffee and a map to start my attack, and the general orientation that if I turned right and walked 6 blocks I would hit Grand Central Station, and from there I could catch a 6 train to the first item to check off my list, the Guggenheim Museum. I did not know a lot about the Guggenheim initially, but once you realize what the building looks like, you will probably recall seeing it in movies -- Bye Bye Birdie for the classics fans, Men In Back for the more modern, and my personal favorite, in Mr. Popper's Penguins when the penguins slide down the spiral ramps inside and create a ruckus.
 |
| Inside the Guggenheim...just add penguins and wait for the fun to start |
I got to Grand Central Station, bought myself a Metro Pass, and took the escalator to the 6 train...heading to the Bronx. The Bronx? Ooooh, I hope the museum is before that. It was. I hopped off the subway at Lexington Ave and 86th Street, and walked to 5th Avenue and there it was, nestled in across from Central Park.
 |
The Guggenheim |
The museum architecture was more iconic for me than most of the art inside of it -- I guess the most logical to way to look at it is that my analytical science brain looks at modern art, all its jumbles of scribbles or blatant words on canvas, and sees in great detail that they are jumbles of scribbles or blatant words on canvas. Some are in a pleasing array of colors or layout, but I can never fathom the people standing staring at these pieces trying to divine the deeper purpose. I dunno. Scribbly lines can be pretty, but they don't speak to me. And so I perused the Guggenheim collection in 45 minutes, and took more photos of the museum itself than it's displays. The one exception was this piece below. Title -- Impenetrable, by Mona Hatoum. I stopped and stared, it's hazy form reminding me of "The Matrix" or something, and then upon closer inspection seeing that it was barbed wire suspended from he ceiling by fishing line. The view is different from every angle, giving quasi geometrical illusions, a mixture of a very hard element in a soft and fluid form. OK, so I found something I liked on display. And all the scribble fans probably wondered what on earth I was staring at the pile of wire for. To each their own I guess.
 |
| Impentetrable at the Guggenheim |
 |
| The view changes as you move around it |
The skylight in the building was fascinating. When the Guggenheim was built in 1959, the architecture was initially reviled by some, but time has proven that its architect was quite a visionary. Although the building is smaller than I expected in real life, it is still very pretty more than half a century later. The real reason I wanted to see the Guggenheim, however, was to see if the story of its architect was told in the museum. It is not. The story on display at the Guggenheim is simply that of the Guggenheim's collection, so I will just pass on the interesting story I learned watching "Mysteries of the Museum" one day. The Guggenheim Architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, was at the center of a few scandals in his day. Going through a mid-life crisis in his late 30's in 1903, the married Wright began an affair with the wife of one of his clients. By 1909 they abandoned their spouses and lived in exile in Europe for a while, until the the lover was granted a divorce by her husband in 1911. They returned to America and he built an amazing property called Taliesin in Wisconsin. While Lloyd was at work in Chicago in 1914, a servant from Barbados locked the lover, her children, and some house guests inside Taliesin and lit fire to the house, standing at the doorway and hacking them to death with an ax if they chose to try to escape the fire. Poor Wright managed to lose this love, divorce twice more, and be widowed before the end of his life. He also rebuilt Taliesin and named it Taliesin II...which was destroyed by another fire in 1924. So who knows what inspired the topsy turvy Guggenheim, but I think the building came from the design of a tortured soul.
 |
| Skylight in the center of the Guggenheim |
 |
| The Skylight from another angle |
I exited the Guggenheim at 2:30, 4.5 hours into the journey, and cast my eyes to the level of the sun in the sky, and decided to push all the TV crime dramas and murder stories to the back of my mind and get as far into Central Park as I could while still getting out by daylight.
But that is a story for another day...to be continued...tomorrow of course.
No comments:
Post a Comment