Dasht Isht Gooten! Gooten!

Ever been here?

To this vantage point, I mean.

It’s the top of the Rockefeller building in midtown. Being a tour guide in your own city is a good way to actually see your own city. What happened in this case was that my neighbor, who runs this place, “Top of the Rock”, gave me two tickets after I mentioned I had a guest visiting the US for the first time. We skipped lines and everything. Neato.

We headed in around 9:30a so there weren’t many people and the weather seemed to know we were coming.

From there it was over to see these kinds of things:

which I loved.

But The Croft was not into at all.

“Vat isht de point of all of de lines? I don’t untershdandt it. Seems like someone had too much free time.”

From there it continued. We looked at an exhibit on language. An artist had created a giant mural that looked like engineering plans with numbers and some charts and paragraphs. When you looked closely you could see that the words were just wavy lines, not real language, but perhaps some kind of evocation of language or the idea of printed words. I thought it looked neat. I wouldn’t pretend to understand its message or significance, but I thought it looked interesting and I liked it. The Croft absolutely hated it, to the point of almost being upset by it.

“Zee? Do you zee? Vat isht de point of dat?”

Alrighty then. Onwards! (Onwards? Please onwards?)

At the Pollock installation she threw her hands up in disgust and walked in another direction.

Oookaaaay. How about this?

“Vat isht disht jomble of messes? From disht kindergaaten?”

I didn’t harp on it. The German doesn’t like modern art. She doesn’t understand its function, and she’s easily terrified by darker things, which is a little amusing given how serious she is.

We saw an incredible exhibit on the Quay Brothers– all the dark and eeriness– and…

She couldn’t handle it.

Next.

We ate there in the Moma Cafe, which she loved. Once sitting out on the terrace overlooking the little Moma park, she kind of spang back to life and we had an intense conversation about cooking. And how badly she wants to open a pastry shop in Rio.

For the honest record, that makes four women I know who dream of opening a cafe or pastry shop or the like. Which one will be the one who makes their dream real? They all waste most of their time and it makes you want to wake them up, forcibly.  Maybe one can snap out of it.

We strolled around that area and up to the park and then over to the train to head all the way up to Fort Tryon Park– a beautiful, interesting place on the northern most tip of Manhattan.

It has rolling sidewalks through beautiful lawns, flower gardens and paths that overlook the Hudson from way up, and it’s home to an affiliate of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a medieval museum called The Cloisters.

The German loved it completely.

Whew.

We headed up and in and played around with photography and chanted fake Buddhist hymns and forgot about the Brothers Quay and abstract expressionism and instead just joked around got yelled at by security for chanting. It was great.

We stayed until closing and then strolled out, pretty tired out from another long day, day 5, a good day, a mixed day, a walkabout day.

More to come. Posts this weekend.