Springtime at the New York Botanical Garden

In the midst of some truly awful New England springtime weather systems and some truly wonderful travel opportunities to exotic tropical locations, J and I managed to find an entire day that was a.) a Saturday b.) warm and sunny and c.) one in which we were both free and in town. And while J had visions of curling up on the couch and doing nothing all afternoon, I was all nope! Look at this glorious day! It's a day made for doing things! And we're gonna do those things! And then I pressed pause on the music I had swelling underneath my proclamation and we headed straight for the New York Botanical Garden.

I'm a sucker for a good garden walk, and this one did not disappoint (but with over 250 acres and home to the largest botanical library in the Americas, I was not expecting someone's backyard garden). I lost myself in a sea of azaleas and tulips, and while walking one of the many trails, we were able to have a few moments where we didn't see any other people or hear anything but birdcalls above us - a rarity for New York City.

If you find yourself at the garden, I highly recommend taking the tram tour. It's a (roughly) half-hour narrated, hop-on-hop-off tour that's not just a good way to get from one corner of the park to the other, but is also surprisingly interesting and informative. I for one know so little about plants and trees and anything else that grows naturally from the ground (oo look a pink flower! a tree with leaves!) that I was able to learn a good amount of flower and tree types and the history of the surrounding Bronx area on the tour.

We lasted a good three hours before our allergies got the best of us, but we felt the benefits of being amongst nature and out in the fresh air long after we returned home.

If you go:
*Getting to the New York Botanical Garden is a hike - if you're inclined to take public transportation, it's a 20-minute walk from the nearest subway or a ride on the Metro-North. If you can, take a car - although with tolls and a $15 parking fee, you could easily find yourself spending over twenty dollars before you even get inside the garden.
* An All-Garden Pass (which includes entrance to the Conservatory and the Tram Tour) is $25 for adults on the weekends ($20 on weekdays), but if you just want to walk the grounds and not see any special exhibits a $13 Grounds Only ticket is available. The Garden has two Ground Only Free Days - Wednesdays (all day) and Saturdays from 9a - 10a.
*So is it worth it? Possibly - we used a corporate discount and got our entire entrance fee waived, so our expenses were simply tolls and parking. I might be singing a different song if we had spent $50 to walk around the gardens when I knew that a similar (although not as good) "nature walk" could be had for free in the much more accessible Central Park. Find a coupon or discount code if you can, or take advantage of the Gardens-Only options if you're looking to save some pennies.
*Hours, directions, and a whole lot more info can be found here.

(new year's res) Ride the Staten Island Ferry

You guys. When I added "ride the Staten Island Ferry" to my list of new year's resolutions for 2016, I a.) assumed it'd take me nearly all year to get my butt down to Battery Park to then actually get on the ferry and b.) figured I'd have to make it a solo journey or heavily bribe an unemployed friend to join me. So imagine my pleasantly quizzical surprise when I found myself on the Staten Island ferry on a blustery April day with friends who were more than eager to take the trip.

I was playing tour guide to three friends from college - two of them had never been to New York but didn't really care what we did or where we went as long as it didn't involve a lot of walking (a recent car accident had rendered one friend fairly immobile), and the third had been here a million times already and was over all the "usual" tourist stuff. And after a disappointing stroll down Canal St., we quickly realized that this city is made for walking and there are really not a ton of options that are affordable and provide seated views of something interesting. Oh, and did I mention that it was pouring rain?

I was about to throw in the towel and tell them to just hang out in a restaurant until they needed to catch their bus later that evening (I was not on my tour guide game) when Brian had a stroke of brilliance. "How about the Staten Island ferry?" he said. "Is that doable from here? I've always wanted to set foot on the 5th borough." And I was like, "YES THAT IS NOT JUST DOABLE IT'S THE BEST IDEA EVER!" because it was a quick train ride away from Chinatown, provided seated and covered views of New York, was free, and secretly knocked off another item on both mine and Brian's personal bucket lists. So without too much further ado or complication, we soon found ourselves on our way to that red-headed step child of New York.

We didn't have time to get out and explore the island (Brian and I put that on our "next time in NY" list) but even without a subsequent romp around town, it was still an utterly fantastic ride. Yes, I realize that if I were using the ferry as my daily commute I probably wouldn't be singing this song, let alone devoting an entire post to the trip. But as someone who once took the Ikea boat just to get meatballs with a view, the Staten Island Ferry is a delightful ride with exceptional views of Lady Liberty and lower Manhattan.  Also, standing on the back of the boat and singing "Let the River Run" as we sailed back to Manhattan is now easily in my top 10 favorite New York moments. Because #werkitgirl

Museum of Feelings

Because I'm a sucker for both long lines and over-hyped art installations, I spent my day off at the pop-up Museum of Feelings. Ok, I guess I didn't exactly spend my entire day - more like just under four hours, including the time it took me to get all the way down to Battery Park and back, and the majority of those hours were spent in transit and in line. I was emotionally prepared to wait for quite some time before getting in because a.) the "museum" is free to the public for the entirety of it's brief existence and b.) New Yorkers love lines, (see: Rain Room). Surprisingly however, I made it to the front of the line in a mere 45 minutes. You may think I'm being sarcastic here but I'm not - when I arrived 18 minutes after the museum opened, the line had already snaked back on itself, so I was legitimately impressed when I got inside in under an hour. This probably speaks volumes about what living in this city does to one's levels of expectation, but that's a post for another day.

The pop-up itself was short on feelings and high on "experience" amidst a virtually non-existent "museum." I personally expect to learn something while visiting a museum, and I can honestly say I gained no knowledge of feelings, emotions, human interaction, or the nature of human existence. That being said, it was a free event, and you get what you pay for. Each room of the museum roughly corresponded with an emotion and the rooms were designed to evoke and arouse those specific feelings in each visitor - or something. Honestly though, it was all just a bunch of (literal) scented smoke and mirrors that was kind of cool for about five minutes but then turned annoying when, at the end of the tour, I realized the whole thing was sponsored by Glade and that I was being given the opportunity to purchase the unique scents I'd just inhaled in both candle and plug-in forms.

But again, it was free and I didn't have much else going on (#gottagetahobby), and I did manage to get a couple of cool pictures. So really, I can't complain ;)

If you go: The Museum of Feelings is located at 230 Vessey St. in New York City, and opens daily at 11am through December 15, 2015. Go if you're in the area, but don't schedule your day around it!

Visiting the (new) Whitney Museum

I've said it 500 times before, but I love me a good art museum. And when the Whitney Museum opened to the public in its new downtown location (after its midtown home closed in 2014), I knew that I simply had to be there - except that I was in the middle of a crazy rehearsal process and could barely get to the grocery, let alone spend an afternoon at a museum. But somehow the show happened and we stopped rehearsing and at the first sight of an afternoon off + the museum being open + gorgeous summer weather (a more complicated equation than you'd think) I headed downtown.

Let's get one thing straight - I am not a professional art critic, historian, or reviewer. I am simply someone who took a few art history classes in college and enjoys spending free time amongst works of modern art. That being said, I have some thoughts on the new Whitney Museum.

First of all, the Renzo Piano-designed building is gorgeous. But of course it is gorgeous - there's no way a newly constructed, starchitect-created building would be anything but visually stunning and skyline-changing. And some aspects of the building are truly great - there's what looks like a delightful little restaurant in the lobby, and almost all the floors have outdoor terraces with to-die-for views of the Meatpacking District/Hudson River/Statue of Liberty/Jersey. But it's as though everyone thought so long and hard about the building itself (and it's subsequent money-making aspects, i.e, a restaurant AND a cafe AND a heavily-branded bookstore) that they forgot about the art.

Not that there isn't art all over the place. There absolutely is, and it's all interesting and reflective and very important to the history of American art. But the problem, as I see it, is that the art gets lost in the building. Each floor has little nooks and enclaves that suggest different galleries, but I found there to be no obvious flow to any of the floors. I had to double back many times thinking that I had missed a section, only to get trapped by a giant group of people going around a corner. As is the case with most museums, various works of art were grouped according to a theme or subject matter indicated by a short blurb printed on a nearby wall, but it was nearly impossible to figure out where one collection ended and another began.

And then there were the staircases. As I said before, nearly all the floors had access to an outdoor terrace, and some of those terraces also had staircases leading to subsequent floors - but only some of them. So If you are trying to see the entirety of a floor and then spend time on the terrace and then head directly to the floor below you, sometimes you will be able to accomplish this, but sometimes you'll have to double back through the gallery to find the indoor staircase that then leads to another floor. These indoor staircases, though, are cramped and industrial, and made me wonder if I was supposed to be using them at all. I guess the idea is for everybody to take one of the two giant elevators, but the crowd of people in front of the elevator bank was most off-putting. That, and shouldn't we be taking the stairs for our health anyway?

And lest I forget to mention the noise level. High vaulted ceilings and hardwood floors are gorgeous to look at - but there's a reason that assembly and concert halls also employ those two architectural features. It. was. so. loud. in. there. From the sonorous teachings of a tour guide to the squawking of small children to hearing-deficient old ladies discussing their lunch plans to the constant click of an iPhone camera, I half wondered if the ambient sounds were an ill-advised immersive installation piece. Dear Museums: alongside the popular #empty days, how about you also provide some #silent hours? If I were so inclined to re-visit the Whitney, I'd give some serious consideration to paying a premium for a child and phone-free morning.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm disappointed in the museum. It was frustratingly crowded for a Monday afternoon (I hate to see what it's like on a free Friday evening), but I think that is largely due to the design. Tiny and confusing galleries created a sense of claustrophobia, and most patrons had looks of mild confusion and angst - the very opposite of what I'd want my museum-goers to feel. The opportunities to stand back and contemplate a piece were few and far between. In fact, the largest collections of chairs and benches were, ironically, not in front of art works at all, but placed in front of giant picture windows that looked out over the Hudson. Great views, sure, but I don't go to an art museum to look at a river.

I get that many museums have to make do with the building they're given - whether they're housed in an old mansion, converted castle, warehouse, etc., there are some instances in which you have to simply deal with an oddly placed support beam or random staircase - but the Whitney was created from scratch. It could have been anything, and they chose to focus on everything but the art.

That being said, I'm probably being way too harsh on a successful new art museum. I'm all for the creation and support of new venues for arts and culture in any city. I also realize that my thoughts are completely unfounded and based on one three-hour visit, so my data points are in no way comprehensive. But, at $22 a visit for adults, it's probably going to be a minute before I make another journey to that museum in the Meatpacking.

Pattern play

It's no secret that I love the Met Museum. I'm not really sure how it started, but art museums are one of my happy places. I find peace and serenity in being surrounded by giant works of art, regardless of how crowded a particular gallery is (and sometimes they can be really crowded...I'm looking at you, MoMA), I'm fascinated by a work's creation in regards to its historical and sociological context, and I love finding personal meaning in even the most abstract and esoteric pieces.

While most of the art museums in New York cost much too much for me to visit with any regularity, the Metropolitan Museum of Art blessedly operates on a pay-what-you-wish system - which means that I am able to pay as much as I wish (or as much as I can afford) every time I want to go. And while most visitors to New York only get one chance to see the museum and are forced to take in all two million works of art in a few short hours, I get the luxury of going often and at my own pace.

The last time I was at the museum I was struck by the simple yet detailed patterns on the pottery that lined the Greek and Roman wing (and a few in Oceania) - and since I was leading my own tour, I decided to take a nearsighted approach to the afternoon and focus primarily on the seemingly modern-day, almost zentangle-like designs that I had never noticed before. I quickly found repeating patterns everywhere - once I noticed one, I couldn't help but notice them all.

There's so much to see in any museum, but in a place as giant at the Met the sheer amount of things to take in is often completely overwhelming. It was actually really refreshing to give myself permission on this visit to simply ignore almost everything around me and only pay attention to the teeniest, tiniest details. Have you ever taken such an unorthodox approach to visiting a museum?

New York's High Line Park

A beautiful fall afternoon, a day off, and a walk through New York City's High Line Park. I've written before about my fangirl obsession love of this slice of the city, and while it can be a bit of a crowded tourist mess on weekends, a weekday jaunt is all I need to get me out of whatever urban slump I seem to be in at the moment. The sky was blue, the grass was green, the trees were all sorts of glorious colors, and there was an entire newly built section of the park I had yet to trod.

All photos were taken with my Cannon EOS Rebel T3i and edited with the A Beautiful Mess actions Ava and Mara.