New York, NY

New York, NY New York City, NY

New York City, NY

Although this Road Scholar tour focuses on Brooklyn, the one part of New York I had never been to, we stayed at the New Yorker hotel, across the street from Penn Station. This is a convenient location for getting just about anywhere in the NYC area. Because of the weird flight schedules from the West Coast, I came a day early and spent my free time on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

My destination for today was the Neue Galerie, on 5th Ave. and 86th St. not far from the Met. I had heard about this fairly new gallery and had it on my list for several years, but suddenly it is the place to go because of the movie, The Woman in Gold. If you haven’t seen the movie, you should! Helen Mirren plays Maria Altmann, who grew up in Vienna until she had to flee from the Nazis in the 30s. Her favorite aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, was a friend of the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt. His gilded portrait of her gives the movie its name. The gorgeous painting was stolen by the Nazis during the war, and later displayed in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, until Altmann sued for its return. She later sold the painting to Ronald Lauder, the son of Estee Lauder, who started the Neue Galerie as a tribute to the artists he admired.

It was a wonderful experience seeing this painting that has been on such a long journey. I also enjoyed looking at the exhibit of modern Russian and German paintings, especially those by Kandinsky. No photography allowed in the galleries, of course, but you can see some of the paintings on the Neue Galerie website. They also have one of the best museum cafes in New York, so I had a great lunch.

After lunch I crossed 5th Avenue to Central Park and watched the New Yorkers at play–especially this father with his little girl, enjoying the giant bubbles. The weather was wonderful the entire time we were in New York.

From the park I strolled down to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met)–I have been to this museum several times but still haven’t seen anywhere near all of it. Today’s exhibits included Van Gogh’s irises–which I think are much nicer than the famous sunflowers!

In the evening we met our group leaders and fellow tourists and had dinner at the Tik Tok Diner in our hotel. The Tik Tok is open 24/7 and has great food–I highly recommend the onion rings! We were given vouchers for breakfast each morning of the tour, except for the last day when we ate breakfast at a neighborhood diner in Brooklyn Heights before walking over the bridge.

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