USA 45 Days by Rail: Day 32

Another day waking up to the typical sounds of New York. After taking a shower and again showering a cat which really enjoyed the water I had breakfast. Right after I left and got down to the subway station. I took the A train once again to 59^th Street station where I transferred to the 1 train. This had by now almost become a routine. At Times Square, also as usual, I transferred to the R train that took me right to 23^rd Street station. I tried my luck again with the Flatirion Building and this time the light was much better than two days earlier. I took quite an amount of pictures from the building and the blocks around. A really interesting area with many great photo opportunities. After that I got back on the subway taking the R train to 14^th Street-Union Square. I had a brief look at Union Square but didn’t find anything interesting there. I was also looking for some place to have lunch but the surrounding didn’t really offer much. I got on the subway again and went on to 8^th Street-NYU taking the N train. In the neighborhood of NYU it was much easier to find a place to have lunch like my friend had told me who had studied there for one year. After lunch I took a short walk to Washington Square and had also a brief look at NYU. I got back on the subway on West 4^th Street station, this time going on the B train. I was a bit irritated because the following two stops were unknown to me. I had already that feeling that I might be going the wrong direction which was confirmed once the train started to cross Manhattan Bridge going to Brooklyn. Somehow I must had gotten it wrong because I actually wanted to go uptown. I disembarked at the first stop on DeKalb Avenue and got back on the Manhattan bound B train crossing the bridge one more time. In some way I didn’t mind because crossing the Manhattan Bridge by train is pretty awesome as it provides a great view on Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge. I continued on the B train until 47^th-50^th Street/Rockefeller Center. I had a quick look at some of the buildings of the Rockefeller Center and passed by Radio City Hall before making my way up to 53^rd Street where MoMA was located. Finally it was about time to go and visit all the great museums of New York which I so far hadn’t spent much time on. I got a ticket and started the exhibition on the third floor with Architecture and Design followed by Photography. The exhibitions were interesting but only a few art works really captured my attention. Also the fourth floor didn’t had much to offer but that was mainly because most of the exhibitions there were closed. The fifth floor however made it all up, showing world famous paintings of Monet, Picasso, van Gogh and Chagall as well as many others. Those paintings really captured me and I spent some considerable time with them. The only drawback was that the exhibition got pretty busy as more and more visitors were pushing in. Many of them just came to take pictures of the paintings or selfies together with the paintings without even looking at the paintings for a single second. I don’t expect that those people understand the art but this kind of behavior is in my opinion disrespectful towards the artist and extremely disturbing for those who really want to see and understand the works. In my opinion the museum shouldn’t allow people to take pictures of the art. I didn’t take any pictures of the paintings at all. The sixth floor featured a kind of interesting exhibition on Yoko Ono. Before heading out to the sculpture garden I still stopped by the second floor which had some contemporary galleries. There were some interesting works on prints and illustrations. Before leaving the MoMA I still spent some time in the sculpture garden which had some very interesting art works on display. I exited the museum on 54^th Street and walked down to the corner of 7^th Avenue. There I sat down for a while just observing the traffic and what was going on in the street. It was interesting to just sit there and watch. I then headed back to the Rockefeller Center and the subway station catching the D train to 59^th Street station. At 59^th I could directly transfer to the A train from the same platform which was very convenient. I got back to 207^th Street in Inwood. Before returning to the apartment I did some grocery shopping.