New York Day Two: The High Line

On Saturday (fourth of July) I took over a hundred photos during our walking tour of the High Line and Greenwich Village. Due to this and the amount of information that we learned on the tour that I want to share with you, Saturday's adventures will be split into two blog posts. This one will have photos from the High Line part of the day, and the next post will be about Greenwich Village and food part of the tour. 

Now that that is over and done with, on with the photos! A few weeks ago we did research on walking tours of Manhattan and we decided on the High Line and Greenwich Village Food Tour from Manhattan Walking Tours. This tour is two tour combination of the High Line tour and the Greenwich Village food tour, so the food comes at the end of walking the High Line! We had a fantastic four hours learning about the history of the High Line, Chelsea, the Meatpacking District, and Greenwich Village. There was also a lot of amazing food!

We met up with our tour guide Gary (the founder of MWT) at the elevator entrance to the High Line on 30th St before heading up the High Line.

I love all of the art along the High Line. It would be amazing to live in one of the apartment buildings next to the urban park, but I don't think that they are in price range!

Along with the artwork, the flowers were also beautiful. 

Along with his research, Gary has lived in New York for most of his life and knew these areas before they were the "cool" places to visit. The buildings that opposed the building of the High Line are now advocates of it because the value on the buildings have gone up due to the park. 

Gary is so passionate about his city. He and friends have protested in front of storefronts that have taken down or changed aspects of the historical buildings that the stores are now in. In the Meatpacking District, for example, Tory Burch took down the overhang over her store. An overhang that is seen throughout the district because it was used to cart the meat from the truck into the building. In the next photo you can see how the stores around Tory Burch have the overhang, while her store now looks out of place.

After getting off the High Line, we walked into Greenwich Village for the food part of our tour. We had a great time walking the High Line and would definitely recommend Gary and his tour group to tourists and New Yorkers. In our group we had people from out of town and native New Yorkers, and we all learned a lot. 

See you in the next post about Greenwich Village and Food!

Kara

Museum of Fine Arts

Yay! Another art museum! The first art museum of the summer was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I wrote about HERE. I have been the Museum of Fine Arts (MoFA from now on) a few times with my family and a group when I went to Boston University for the Summer Challenge.

The museum has a great Egyptian collection and currently has a quilting exhibit called Quilts and Color. Dad, who is a teacher, wanted to see this because he helps with the quilting project that his class does every year. I did not take any pictures of the quilts because, while beautiful, they aren’t really my thing.

We walked around the quilting exhibit then we headed for lunch at the Garden Cafeteria at the museum. I chose from the salad bar getting iceberg lettuce, chicken, feta cheese, cucumbers and Caesar dressing. And Emma got another barbeque sandwich!

During lunch we discussed what collections we were going to see. Emma picked the mummies and I picked the Impressionists. We ended up seeing Egyptian, Greek and Roman art as they were all in the same area. Emma was a bit freaked out to see all the nude sculptures!

This was a piece that we studied in AP Art History. Weird to see it in person!

From my time in AP Art History I gained an appreciation for most art movements, but Impressionism and Post-Impressionist are in doubt my favorites. Vincent van Gogh would then be my favorite artist (and Vincent and the Doctor definitely did not influence that in any way. Nope, not at all.).

Dance at Bougival by Pierre-Augustus Renoir. A favorite of mine!

Woman with a Parasol and Small Child on a Sunlit Hillside by Renoir. I just adore the movement in this painting. 

Then we somehow found our way to some of the modern art galleries. While I generally do not like modern art, some of these were interesting. 

These are painted shadows! It confused us for a second, "where are theses coming from?"

I especially liked the ones where the photographer took the photos like they were Renaissance portraits where the objects are made out of yarn. Did that make any sense?

See what I mean now? I also liked the huge, cloud-like hanging sculpture made out of Styrofoam cups.

I could spend days wandering through the galleries, doing audio-tours and sitting at the little café reading about art. But unfortunately I don’t have that much time. I hope that I can come back soon to go through some of the Medieval galleries.

Thanks for reading!