4th December New York

Last night on the night tour the guide pointed out a few good places to eat. one of these was Pick-a-Bagel so i decided to go there for breakfast and try my first American Bagel. I chose the breakfast bagel with bacon and eggs and it also came with a coffee. It was really good, their bagels are so much lighter than ours. I then headed off to join the Uptown hop on hop off bus. This was one area I had not managed to get to at all yet and I had a few stops planned on this route. Along the way, the guide pointed out different celebrity homes, including where Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones live. I also saw where John Lennon lived and was shot and where Yoko Ono still lives. The tour guide also explained his opinion of the different inhabitants of Uptown New York. He said he has lived on both the Upper East Side as well as the Upper West Side, but he said he prefered to live on the west. He also felt that those that lived on the Upper East Side were far more snobbier and even knew people from there who wouldn't ever dare to dine on the westside. We went past the Cathedral of St John the Divine...nicknamed 'St John the Unfinished'...located in Manhattan's Morningside Heights. It claims to be the largest cathedral and Anglican church and fourth largest Christian church in the world. Then we drove through Harlem and saw the Apollo theatre, one of the oldest and most famous music halls in the US. It billed itself as the place "where stars are born and legends are made" and is famous for launching the careers of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, The Jackson 5, Diana Ross and the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Mariah Carey. I had been looking forward to seeing the Guggenheim museum in New York, to match my Bilbao and Venice experience, so I got off the bus at the Guggenheim Museum. The Solomon R. Guggenheim museum is renowned for its continuously expanding impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. They had a Picasso 'Black and White' exhibit on, the first exhibit to explore the remarkable use of black and white throughout Picasso's career. I have to say I gained a greater appreciation for the work of Picasso after seeing this exhibition, maybe it had to do with the audio guide commentary, some of which was given by his daughter who spoke very fondly of her father and the motive behind some of the pieces. Just down the road from the Guggenheim is The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met)...and it is HUGE! It was way too big for me to really look around as my time was limited because I had a 4pm booking to do 'Top of the Rock', so I really raced through here. The Met is the largest museum in the United States with among the most significant art collections, its permanent collecton contains more than two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. And yes, I got to see more Van Gogh and Monet! I then headed to the Rockefeller Center to the 'Top of the Rock Observation deck on the 67th floor. The upper decks are 260m above the street and you get an unobstructed 360 degree view of New York City. You don't get an unobstructed view of the Chrysler building but you get a great view of the Empire State Building and Central Park. I then went to Tiffany & Co. to buy myself a little something! After that it was time to head to the Palace theatre to see Anthony Warlow in 'Annie'. It is Anthony Warlow's Broadway debut...hard to believe it took this long...and the show was great. I didn't particularly like the Sydney production but the New York production was great and I really enjoyed it!