Wednesday was a much more homogeneous day than Monday and Tuesday. We only made two major stops - to the Museum of Natural History and Central Park. It was a much later start than we had originally wanted despite waking up earlier than we had on the first two days. We woke up at around 8:30 but still strained to make it into the city before noon. The subway trip seemed really long Wednesday for some reason. I think I'm already feeling the rhythm of the city in some ways. The gentle rocking and swaying of the subway on the tracks is enough to lull one to sleep even at 11AM after four shots of espresso. The subway stops directly at the Museum so that was a plus. Truth be told, much of my childhood was spent on an unhealthy obsession with dinosaurs and the major draw of the Natural History museum for me was the collection of prehistoric fossils (not just dinosaurs, but Cenozoic era creatures that are also long extinct). Unfortunately, this being New York, there is always something going on and peons like myself are not necessarily privy to the privileges we often believe to be rights. The entirety of the prehistoric fossil collection is on the fourth floor, which of course was closed because Ugly Betty was filming here. Fucking Ugly Betty. If it were a show I liked perhaps I'd have been more forgiving but this was irksome to no end. Damn you, Ugly Betty, you will not deprive me of seeing what I have dreamt of seeing since the time of my intellectual Eden!!!! OK....you will. But if I don't get to go back before we leave on Sunday, it will be mightily upsetting. One upside to this: the way the museum is set up, there is a "suggested donation" but it is not a fixed price, so event though they want you to give $20 to enter, you don't have to, but you get a real guilt trip if you don't give the suggested price. The guy at the front desk felt so bad that we couldn't see the fourth floor that he basically told us to pay a buck or two to enter. So we did.
We saw almost all of the museum but dwelled especially on the Hayden Planetarium along with the cosmology/astronomy section and the human evolution section, which contains an incredible array of early hominid fossils. The Hayden planetarium was especially interesting for its "scales of the universe" exhibit, which depicts the different scales of objects in the universe, beginning with the entire observable universe (represented by the planetarium itself) and descending in scale exponentially as you circumnavigate the sphere (here is a fair approximation of the scales). As you enter the exhibit, the planetarium represents the "observable universe" while a tiny football-shaped structure in front of you represents a cluster of galaxies within which our own cluster of galaxies is found. This scale is 1026 meters and it descends through 25th power, 24th, and so on. Each time, the Hayden planetarium "becomes" the size of the previous object, so in the next scale, the Hayden planetarium becomes the cluster of the cluster or galaxies, and in the next scale it is the local group, and in the next it is the galaxy, and on and on until we get to actual scale (in this scale planetarium represents itself and the smaller object is a human brain). Then it will continue till we get to cells, and atoms, and subatomic particles, and quarks, etc. It was pretty spectacular. I have to say that honestly, I am more impressed with how small things get at the quantum level than how large they are at the galactic...
Central Park was nice, though I can certainly tell that it is much nicer in the spring, summer, or fall. Kirsten tells me that when the vegetation is thicker, the noises of the city sort of melt away and it feels a bit like a nature preserve, or something like what the island must have been like before the settlement began 400 years ago. This is the blink of an eye. How many great world cities were already population powers by then? But now this island is the center of the human universe, bustling with all our little human material needs, cash flow and credit emanating from here. How the people in suits do so resemble ants following the pheromone trail to the food source.
The food has been so good. We've eaten pizza or falafel/gyros (or both) almost every day and I couldn't be happier. We've gotten street-side vendors, step-in cafes, and sit-down restaurants, and they're pretty much all delicious. I went to New Orleans about five years ago, and after about two days there discovered that the food was the number one reason to go there: the boiled crawfish, po-boys, and endless varieties of jambalaya, red beans and rice, and gumbo was enough to keep you there a week. New York has more to do than food, but I think the multi-culturalism and cosmopolitanism of the city lends itself to such a wide plethora of foods, than one would be a fool not to take advantage. As I said, we've taken on plenty of pizza, in several neighborhoods, all great paper-thin slices of pepperoni, various veggie pizzas, and some fantastic specialties (I especially like the "white" pizzas, which have an alfredo base and several cheese toppings). The gyros have been the best on the street where they tend to put the most shaved lamb on them. I've hit almost every continent food-wise in just a few days.
We saw almost all of the museum but dwelled especially on the Hayden Planetarium along with the cosmology/astronomy section and the human evolution section, which contains an incredible array of early hominid fossils. The Hayden planetarium was especially interesting for its "scales of the universe" exhibit, which depicts the different scales of objects in the universe, beginning with the entire observable universe (represented by the planetarium itself) and descending in scale exponentially as you circumnavigate the sphere (here is a fair approximation of the scales). As you enter the exhibit, the planetarium represents the "observable universe" while a tiny football-shaped structure in front of you represents a cluster of galaxies within which our own cluster of galaxies is found. This scale is 1026 meters and it descends through 25th power, 24th, and so on. Each time, the Hayden planetarium "becomes" the size of the previous object, so in the next scale, the Hayden planetarium becomes the cluster of the cluster or galaxies, and in the next scale it is the local group, and in the next it is the galaxy, and on and on until we get to actual scale (in this scale planetarium represents itself and the smaller object is a human brain). Then it will continue till we get to cells, and atoms, and subatomic particles, and quarks, etc. It was pretty spectacular. I have to say that honestly, I am more impressed with how small things get at the quantum level than how large they are at the galactic...
Central Park was nice, though I can certainly tell that it is much nicer in the spring, summer, or fall. Kirsten tells me that when the vegetation is thicker, the noises of the city sort of melt away and it feels a bit like a nature preserve, or something like what the island must have been like before the settlement began 400 years ago. This is the blink of an eye. How many great world cities were already population powers by then? But now this island is the center of the human universe, bustling with all our little human material needs, cash flow and credit emanating from here. How the people in suits do so resemble ants following the pheromone trail to the food source.
The food has been so good. We've eaten pizza or falafel/gyros (or both) almost every day and I couldn't be happier. We've gotten street-side vendors, step-in cafes, and sit-down restaurants, and they're pretty much all delicious. I went to New Orleans about five years ago, and after about two days there discovered that the food was the number one reason to go there: the boiled crawfish, po-boys, and endless varieties of jambalaya, red beans and rice, and gumbo was enough to keep you there a week. New York has more to do than food, but I think the multi-culturalism and cosmopolitanism of the city lends itself to such a wide plethora of foods, than one would be a fool not to take advantage. As I said, we've taken on plenty of pizza, in several neighborhoods, all great paper-thin slices of pepperoni, various veggie pizzas, and some fantastic specialties (I especially like the "white" pizzas, which have an alfredo base and several cheese toppings). The gyros have been the best on the street where they tend to put the most shaved lamb on them. I've hit almost every continent food-wise in just a few days.
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