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New York 2017 - Day 4

In the morning, we took the subway up to The Cloistersm which is a museum dedicated to medieval architecture and sculpture. The collection was largely assembled by an American sculpture who brought various discarded artifacts home from World War I. It was later purchased by the Rockefeller family, who moved the artifacts to the current location and added to the collection. It's a pretty remarkable thing to see, especially in the way they incorporate these 500 year-old doorways and columns into the structure of the museum itself. Sarah was a little put-off by some of the descriptions of the artifacts -- where the historic significance is properly described but the religious significance is lacking. I wasn't bothered as much, but as I'm considered the world's hindmost religious scholar, Sarah should probably be considered as having the more informed opinion.

We took the subway halfway back and got off near the middle of Central Park. Sarah found a sandwich place called Andy's Deli, which was pretty damn delicious. Next, we meant to walk lengthwise across the park to get to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, but we ended up on some weird, narrow, unscenic underpass, but it got us to where we wanted to go. I won't say too much about our experience at The Met -- it was a terrible one, but that's only half The Met's fault. The problem is that it's ABSOLUTELY RAMMED with TOO MUCH STUFF. Like your average dude, I get museum-ed out after being in one for too long, but I reached that state less than three minutes after we arrived. We started in the Egyptian wing, and there seemed to be literally 10,000 artifacts in the collection. Quickly overwhelmed by it, we went to the European Painting section, which was a better but still exhausting, then I think we went to the American Wing where there was stuff, stuff, ohmygod so much stuff. Eventually we escaped to the rooftop lounge, but even that was rammed with people like us just gasping for air. Anyways. Worth seeing, but you have to go in with a very specific agenda. Pick like four things to see and then get the hell out.

On our second attempt, we successfully entered Central Park and we walked the length of it on our way home. We cooled our heels at the hotel for a little bit and got changed, then went out to dinner at a Pizza Bar called B Side. Very busy, but we got a seat at the bar and the food was A+. Then it was off to see Wicked. Really good show! Third best of the lot, for sure, but I'm still very happy to have seen it. The leads were all great - the actress playing Elphaba had been doing the roll for half a lifetime, Glinda was really good (though it's crystal clear how much Kristen Chenoweth's performance shaped everyone who came after her), and (big news for you O-Town fans) the male romantic lead was played by the former lead singer of O-Town (he was actually totally solid). As a male Broadway lead, he was probably also impossibly ripped, but we were really too far away to tell for sure.
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