say it with pie

“Oh, hello! How strange it is to run into you here in Central Park!”

The thing I liked best about New York was how totally mundane things like walking through the park feel magical. Of course, when the park is Central Park, and it’s enormous, and everything is starting to bloom, and it’s a Friday afternoon, and it’s 26 degrees, and half the people in the city are out lying on the grass, the magical feeling is not that surprising.

Or maybe it just felt magical to be sitting down or walking at a leisurely pace after hours of plodding through the Met. I loved visiting my little cubiculum, but I found the Met to be overwhelming, and not in a good way. Their painting collection is not nearly the calibre of those in the big European encyclopaedic museums—which is fine, because there are only so many masterpieces and that shit is expensive and this is America, man—but it seems like they try to cover up the fact by filling the galleries to the brim with art. There is just too much on display! I think I just found the selection of paintings kind of boring and Salon-y, and their arrangement was completely blah. It’s time for a makeover.

Anyhoo, we had lunch at a cafe around the corner called Nectar (82nd and Madison Ave) which I have no complaints about. The food was quite good, the prices were fair, the atmosphere was cute, and the service was rude in that charming New York kind of way.

But I digress. The park! Pictures below the cut…

It was so sunny, everyone in town came out to bask:

We plopped down behind home plate to watch a youth baseball game.

Here I am walking in front of the King Jagiello monument. It’s super dramatic and hilarious.

Aaand this is me on top of Belvedere Castle, which is only barely a castle. I’m saying, “Look at all the turtles in the turtle pond!”

That’s a Great Lawn if I do say so.

This is my “Oh, isn’t everything fabulous in New York City?” pose: