Day 35 - New York City

This morning we walked along to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and spent a couple of hours walking around it. The most notable collection was one that opened a few days ago by Ken Price. His sculptures were quite interesting to look at. Most of them were abstract shapes made out of fired clay. They all had holes in them which I think represented a black hole into oblivion but I can't remember exactly what I read. It would be worth doing a google image search but his sculptures are definitely worth seeing in person.

We then headed to Greenwich Village where we had lunch and then went on a walking tour around the area. It was interesting to hear the artistic history in the area. Many different artists lived or stayed in the area at some point in time including Marlon Brando, Mark Twain and Matthew Broderick. It is also where Off-Broadway got its start. It was originally started separate from Broadway. Broadway would often stick with same directors so off-broadway was started to give new writers

etc. a chance. These days shows will start on Off-broadway and if successful they will move to Broadway. It was a pretty interesting tour with a lot of historic information and discussion on the architecture.

By the end of the tour there wasn't much time to do anything else and not too much to do in the area so we had a drink on the waterfront and then grabbed some tea in Hells Kitchen. I then headed off to see Annie featuring Jane Lynch from Glee.

Jane Lynch played Miss Hannigan who runs the orphanage. It was good to see her sing and dance live but her character was pretty similar to her character in Glee so it was a shame to not see her a different kind of role. I think I have seen the movie before but many years ago so I knew the general story but not in detail. It is a wonderful story and the way they put it on made it very enjoyable show. The sets were pretty cool and songs were great, in particular 'Hard Knock Life' and 'Tomorrow' which I'm sure everyone knows. They say you should never work with kids or animals but this show had both kids and animals. Although the dog wasn't actually on stage much. The kids stole the show, a quick googling tells me that they range in age from 7 to about 12. They were impressive with both their singing and acting. Annie was great throughout the show but she

was almost up-staged by one of the other orphans the smallest one who is only 8 had the role that had all the cute/funny one-liners and actions so of course she became a favorite for everyone. It was a great show and I really enjoyed it.

Check in again tomorrow for my last full day in the big apple!