New York: Part One

One of the things I like to tell people about Western Massachusetts which is both strictly true and kind of misleading is that we’re “only three hours from New York”, which makes it sound like an exciting day trip we could do any weekend.

It’s strictly true because, sure, if you were to leave at a carefully selected low-traffic time (after midnight works pretty well, as Mike has found on work “day” trips) and drive straight from our house to New York City, keeping to road-safe speeds (which are not the same thing as the speed limit; my experience is that on the interstates you generally have to stick to about 10mph above the posted limit to not attract crazy driving) you’d arrive at the outskirts of New York in three hours. Maybe even a little less.

In terms of actually visiting, it’s rather more complicated, because you’re best off avoiding taking a car into Manhattan. On our flying visit last year, we took the bus; this time, we drove to New Haven and caught the train from there, which takes a little longer but is significantly less stressful. And, given New York parking rates, a little cheaper than trying to park your car in New York. (There is the caveat that you’re leaving it in New Haven, a city not precisely known for its peaceful, crime-free streets, but our car is just old enough that there’s probably always going to be something else more worth stealing in the same parking lot.)

I was determined to make this weekend the weekend in which we did ALL THE TOURIST THINGS in New York (or at least all the winter-appropriate tourist things). By late Sunday afternoon we’d reached the point where we collapsed in our hotel room and only moved to open the door for the pizza delivery guy, so I feel we achieved ALL THE TOURIST THINGS, and there will, hence, be several posts. The one thing we didn’t manage was visiting DUB Pies, because it turned out to be just one thing too many to squish into our schedule, but: next time.

The two big museums we hit were the American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I crossed off the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim for this trip because a) time and b) modern art. (I know what I like, art-wise, and it mostly involves things done before 1800, 1900 at a stretch. I don’t have anything against all the rest of it, I just wasn’t going to spend limited excursion time on it.)

The AMNH was amazing, but in a very specific way: Mike and I have both reached the point, age- and learning-wise, where science museums have ceased to be a big learning experience. The AMNH is clearly organised and built to teach people about science and natural history (the inclusion of displays on Native American populations is, um, well, the rest of the museum is basically things (largely rock-adjacent things), extinct things, animals, and dead animals, so that’s….I get the anthropology association, I do, but when that’s the only anthropology bit it’s…not a great look.) And I think it does a great job. We went to the planetarium show, and it was frankly incredible; it laid out stellar evolution in a really comprehensible and visually spectacular way. I would have killed to see it as a kid, I’m not even exaggerating very much.

But all of the actual science bit was stuff we already knew. I geeked out bigtime in the Earth History exhibit because they had bits of deep-sea hydrothermal chimneys from which my lab has cultured organisms, they had wind-sculpted rock from the Antarctic Dry Valleys which is where my Honours thesis organisms came from, they had pillow lava like I saw on last summer’s telepresence cruise, etc. It was stuff that’s important to my life as a scientist, but I knew what it was before I got there.

We spent most of our time in the museum taking pictures and going “ooooh, look at that” rather than reading informative placards, because it was a better use of time. I think my favourite bit – apart from the hydrothermal chimneys – was the African dioramas; they were so detailed and lifelike. Better than zoos, in a lot of ways – you’re guaranteed to see the animals!

And, of course, the dinosaur (and other prehistoric animal) exhibits. Because dinosaur skeletons will never be not awesome. Never.

The only other thing about the AMNH: the place is a maze, and it’s a maze that keeps bewilderingly leading you in and out of the ticketed areas. We must have shown our tickets half-a-dozen times without ever leaving the museum building. I’m usually OK if you give me a map, but it was really head-turningly complex.

By the time we got to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was Sunday afternoon and we were both tired but soldiering gamely on (from bench to bench, I will admit.) As soon as we’d got our tickets (not actually tickets, but neat little badges) I announced I wanted to see the temple in the Egyptian section. When we got there, Mike was confused.

“They have a room with an actual Egyptian temple,” he said.

“Yes,” I replied, “you did hear me when I said I wanted to see the temple, right?”

“I thought it was a replica!”

The Met was full of beautiful and fascinating things, from Ancient Egypt to the nineteenth century, but I found it lacked context. Almost everything had bare descriptive labels and collection numbers; no explanation of where it was from, why it was important, why it was here. I suppose that’s what the audio tours or the guided tours are for, but I would have liked to see some more explanation in text. Then again, there were so many things that there was scarcely room for it, but you could have taken half of them away and still had spectacular exhibits. It was maddeningly, impossibly large; we only took on the challenge of two or three areas, and even that was more than enough. I think it would take a week or three to do the whole place properly.

I don’t think we’ll be going back to the museums any time soon, unless we go with friends or family or there’s some particular exhibit we decide we want to see; but I’m glad we saw them once.