A Frog Singing at Carnegie Hall

The title of this entry references a favorite Michael Ondaatje poem entitled "Sweet Like a Crow." I realized that we had never seen Carnegie Hall so on our walk over to Central Park we checked it out. Work is being done on it.

Before I tell you more about our day, I want to tell you that I am creating suspense here by saving my best photo of the day for the last. Don't peek; instead muddle your way through the rest of this no matter how dull it is. Your reward will be my utterly-incredible-best-New-York-photo-of-all-time.

Near Carnegie Hall was a building which impressed me much more than Carnegie Hall. Here it is:

Here is a closeup of some of the detailing. Why do modern buildings not have fantastic dragons/dinosaurs carved on them?

We walked in Central Park through the zoo area. Once again I saw dog walkers.

I ran ahead of these two so that I could ask them if I could take their photo. They were fine with that. I couldn't help but wonder if their backpacks contained full doggie bags. There must be tremendous clean-up from so many dogs.

I love the little dachshund who was carrying a ball. He looked so hopeful, as if to say, "Look, people, we're dogs, we have a ball, we're in a park; let us play." The dog walkers said he will carry it for the entire walk.

The park is so lovely. We walked up to the Frick Museum where I found this pregnant-looking bird on the top of the fence. I loved this mansion museum as it contains so many paintings I am familiar with from Art 110 taken so many years ago.

The grounds of the Frick were lovely too.

From there, we walked over to Lexington to catch the subway. On the way, we passed this place covered in wisteria. Wisteria grows in New York! I didn't know that!

We then went to the Museum of New York City. It wasn't at all what I expected as it is housed in a magnificent old building, but contains changing, modern exhibits. One was all video of people's feet and legs as they stepped onto buses. It sounds weird, but it was fascinating.

Another exhibit there was about Cecil Beaton who photographed a lot of iconic stars of New York. He also did some costume design and the exhibit contained some of his sketches for costumes and then the costumes themselves. Here's an example:

Oops, my pictures are out of order as here Bob is back at the Frick.

Tanya, we finally ate at one of the places you, Regis, and Kelly recommended. We ate at the Afghan Kebob House and enjoyed it. I had the kebob combo and Bob had some kind of chicken stew that wasn't too spicy until he added the condiments. The lamb kebob was definitely my favorite.

There was a thrift shop on 9th that I popped into and most of the goods were designer names. I loved that this small shop had an entire rack of little black dresses. You can't get more New York than that.

We walked by Amy's Bread and once again the window display was fun. Cupcakes growing on plants!

I resisted Amy's cupcakes which were huge, and, Glenda, I also resisted temptation at Donna Bell's (her biscotti didn't look as good as yours) but I fell to temptation at a little shop across from our hotel. Here are the cupcakes from there and I did share them with Bob so you can see I had cupcake, but not too much cupcake.

We went to a matinee performance of "Nice Work If You Can Get It" and I am sorry to say that Matthew Broderick was the weak link in this musical. The rest of the stars shone and there was one choreographed number which Colleen really needs her boys to do. The male dancers lined up prone on the floor and Matthew Broderick lay atop them at right angles. Then they started rolling over and over and his body rolled across the top of them so that they looked like a conveyor belt.

Tonight we went to "Porgy and Bess" which is a folk opera. We had three people from Amsterdam sitting on one side of us and an EF student tour from Labrador on the other side of us so there was no shortage of conversation before the show and during intermission. The show was good but neither Bob nor I are too familiar with opera.

You might be ready to see my best-for-last photo, but I have one bit of commentary to make first and it has nothing to do with the photo at all. I just want to say that there are not 100s but rather 1000s of women walking around Manhattan in leggings when they are just not suited to leggings! If I decide to wear leggings, please correct me! Good grief! I should be doing a video essay of all these rather large rear ends and then maybe the Museum of New York City will feature my work.

Okay, you have been really patient reading all this so you deserve to see my favorite photo. Ta dah!!