Day 4 - Sat 18 Oct 2008

As is now becoming the trend, I woke up and went to breakfast at Broadway Bagel; choosing bacon, egg and cheese on plain bagel with a cup of tea.

Then, a subway to 42 Street (Times Square), to find the seemingly elusive D'Italia through which Hugo had booked his flight back home to Brazil; however after turning up at two supposedly registered addresses for the company, no luck at all; walking past Patrick's Cathedral and the Rockefeller Centre in doing so. The second place was almost opposite the Museum of Modern Art ("MOMA"), which was our first major place to visit for the day.

The lower floors of MOMA didn't, in my view, have much of interest in them at all; how a string formed in the shape of a rhombus with one of the long sides attached to the floor and the other the wall, with the implied shape at a 45 degree angle to the floor could be viewed as "art" (whether modern or not!) is beyond me; it's the sort of thing that a child could've bettered in five minutes given a long piece of string and a stick of glue!

However, coming to the upper floors also came the "proper" art with Vincent Van Gogh's The Olive Trees 1889, Paul Cezanne's Chateau Noir 1904, Salvador Dali's Illumined Pleasures 1929, Giorgio de Chirico's Great Metaphysical Interior 1917 and Claude Monet's gigantic Reflections of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond 1920 being highlights that most caught my attention, the latter exhibit taking up the entire length of the long wall of one of the galleries.

One of the stranger exhibits was Alghiero E Boetti's Tapestry of the Thousand Longest Rivers of the World 1982, which is quite huge and depicts everything it suggests.

I believe that this museum was "better" than the Guggenheim, though my view of the Guggenheim is possibly-unfairly tainted because of the artist being showcased there at that point in time.

You could easily have spent an entire day at MOMA but with a prolonged journey back to the hostel due to repair works at several midtown subway stations meaning a walk further south before an express train travelling northwards.

After a couple of hours rest at the hostel, Hugo and I went for food at a Thai restaurant, where Phad Thai and white rice were consumed with relish.

Something recommended in the Lonely Planet guides was a visit to Arlene's Grocery, a live music joint in lower Manhattan, so that's where we went on the subway and after a quick pit stop on the way to sample a Brooklyn lager. That night Arlene's were hosting a M.E.A.N.Y. music festival between a few rock acts.

Dizzy Jenkins were the band on stage when we turned up; with the basic band of a lead singer, guitar, bass guitar and drums; I thought they performed a decent set (given it was my first live rock music I'd seen since a trip to Germany many years ago), but to be fair to them the atmosphere in the audience was completely flat and subdued, which as far as I could tell was no fault of the band.

Also, $10 to see just the one band seemed a lot for what was presented; at $5 though it would probably have been good value!

A walk across town and subway back to the hostel completed the day at 2am. The weather appears to be closing in a little now and tomorrow a fleece will be required that's for sure.