OK, so we had to take Sarah to the Met last Sunday for school and we couldn’t have picked a worse day to be in Manhattan (we didn’t have much choice, it was picked for us), not only was it hot but it was more crowded than usual because of the Puerto Rican Day Parade. We didn’t even know about the parade until we noticed the Puerto Rican flags in the subway. I’m so thankful we decided to take the train in instead of the car because we probably would have had a heck of a time getting to the Met.
Getting to the Met from Penn Station was pretty difficult, fortunately my husband knows what he’s doing and can get us around Manhattan when we feel like spending tons of money to walk around a crowded island to enjoy some type of attraction (usually the Met). We had to take two subway trains and walk three blocks to get there. It was actually easier getting there than getting back because the parade ended while we were still in the museum and by the time we got to the 86th Street station, there was some kind of altercation and they wouldn’t let us in, so we had to walk to the 77th Street station. Of course this is after a day of walking around the museum in flip-flops (my daughters not me, I was wearing sandals), so there was complaining about feet hurting for a number of blocks and of being hot for the rest.
Taking the train into Manhattan had been fun but taking it home was grueling since I had to stand half way home and we didn’t get to eat dinner until 9:00 (after paying $50 for lunch and $15 for drinks, there is no way I was going to spend any more money on overpriced food).
Speaking of food, the Met has a pretty good selection of food. It’s all overpriced but it’s actually pretty tasty and healthy. I had the salad bar which included some very nice smoked Turkey, pasta, roasted zucchini and a balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing. We went to the basement cafeteria, which was hard to find. You can’t just go the basement in any part of the museum and get there because evidently the basement isn’t connected, we went the wrong way and had to go back upstairs and then downstairs a second time losing valuable time. Sarah only had an hour for lunch and we had wasted time going to the balcony cafe (I asked my husband to choose which generally is a mistake 🙂 which only had two sandwich choices. The basement cafe had a wider selection of choices including sushi.
Here are some shots (click to view — they’re pretty big so I hide them) of my favorites in the museum. I was pretty bummed that they closed the American wing for renovations but they had moved some of the pieces so I was able to see the American landscapes which are gorgeous and the Tiffany glass which is my favorite.

One of the things I love about the Met is its architecture:


I also love the armor exhibit:

The medieval art exhibit:


The Egyptian exhibit:



I like visiting the rooftop to get shots of the city (you can tell how hot it was on Sunday by the haziness in the picture):

And the rooftop art:


When Sarah was little we took her to the Met and showed her the works of the great artists of Europe, Monet, Van Gogh, Degas, etc. She asked me if there were any famous women artists and I named a few. Shortly after her question we saw this painting:

I told her I thought the artist looked like her and I bought a postcard of the painting for her. She was pretty thrilled.
Being able to go to the Met is one of the few benefits of living in NJ but man is it expensive! But if you want your children to have an appreciation for art, it’s worth the cost.