Spring Break in New York - Part 3

(You can read "Part 1" and "Part 2" below. By now you probably feel like you've spent a week in New York, too!)

This was my favorite day of our trip! Early in our marriage we visited NYC several times during Christmastime to visit Dan's folks, but our time was always limited and it was too cold to really enjoy sightseeing. I had a checklist of things I wanted to do if we vacationed there when the weather was nice, and on this day many of my wishes were fulfilled.

Confession: I have wanted to visit the American Museum of Natural History ever since I saw "Night at the Museum" in 2006. After driving back to NYC from Philadelphia that morning, this was our first stop. My inner child was ecstatic!

You can easily spend an entire day in this place! We read the floorplan, decided which exhibits we wanted to see, and spent a fast-paced 3 hours touring the museum. A cool model of the planets, although they removed Pluto since it has been demoted to a dwarf planet. Boo.

Wow, the "New York Bagel-Pizza-Deli Sandwich Diet" is really working for me!

That funny statue from "Night at the Museum"! "You bring me gum gum." Haha!

The animal exhibits were truly incredible. I could've spent much more time in this area, but we had to keep moving. Dan's being charged by a herd of elephants, no big deal.
The dinosaur exhibit was very impressive, too, although of course it's hard to know how accurate it all is.

I needed a snack after we left the museum, so we bought a soft pretzel with mustard off a truck in Central Park. It seemed like the New York thing to do. Strolling through Central Park with Dan was another longtime dream of mine. It's just as pretty & romantic as it looks in the movies, and the weather was perfect. Here's a shot of the Bethesda Fountain in the center of the park (named after the biblical pool where the first person who stepped in after the water was troubled would be healed of their affliction). It was nice to get away from the never-ending concrete of the city for a while. Yep, this is exactly how I pictured it in my mind. Perfection. :)

Every Friday night from 4-8 pm, the Museum of Modern Art opens its doors for free. We took advantage of it, along with 10,000 of our closest friends. It was really crowded!

I remembered Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory" from my Art History class in college.

It's really big and kind of cool, but I just don't get it.

I get this one, though. :)

The highlight was seeing Van Gogh's "Starry Night." It's one of Dan's favorites!

We couldn't decide what we wanted for dinner, but Dan remembered that there's a food court downstairs in Grand Central Terminal. It's got surprisingly gourmet restaurant options, and we dined on tri-tip, garlic mashed potatoes, and roasted vegetables. Food=A+ Ambiance=D-

We walked to Rockefeller Center next, and I was curious to see what it looked like when it wasn't Christmastime. There was no giant Christmas tree, but otherwise it looked exactly the same. They even had the ice skating rink open!

We bought tickets to go to the Top of the Rock (at the Rockefeller Center building) to see the city at night. From what we read, the view is just as nice there as it is at the top of the Empire State Building. But of course if you're on the Empire State Building, you don't get to see it in the skyline, so we opted for the Top of the Rock instead.
There are 3 viewing levels at the Top of the Rock. The 2 lower levels are surrounded by glass to shelter you from the wind. But your pictures turn out like this after spending way too much time trying to figure out how to get the flash from reflecting in center of your picture. And then suddenly you realize that if you go to the very top level, there is no glass! Brilliant!!

And you get this breathtaking view. It looks like NYC covers the entire world!

Looking down on Manhattan at night magically transforms it from an overwhelmingly large, crowded, busy, noisy city into one of the most beautiful and serene places in the world. It's amazing what a single elevator ride can do! :)

And thus concludes my favorite day.