Last days in New York

Today was our free day in New York and our last day here. I started getting texts from home for things that needed to be done when I got back so real life was creeping in but for one more day I thought I would enjoy.

I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This is my 3rd time being there and I love it. 

But,

I am alone here....not everyone loves it. 

Thats OK I just went at my own pace and have taken pictures of some of the things I thought were the most odd or interesting.

In the ancient Greek section I thought these perfume bottles were odd....who would want to pull their perfume out of a severed foot...makes you wonder what the perfume smelled like???

This was a giant safety pin to help keep all those robes together. This thing was big enough it would've covered my whole shoulder...interesting. 

I've seen ancient greek pottery but I don't remember seeing "eye" bowls before.

Proof that not every subject of Greek statues were beautiful, young men and women...this was one of an old lady who wasn't so attractive.

I loved this Roman room that was brought to the museum just as it was originally. The painting on the wall was fascinating. 

Lets move to more parts of the world where they would make crazy masks

and these poles which were about 12 feet tall and carved for celebrations where the people who died in the tribe were remembered.  They kind of looked like people coming out of people, on top of people and signified their posterity. 

These earrings came from South America. There was no back to them, the big rod would just poke through your ear and then hit your neck to keep it in place. You can't tell but these were very large and looked uncomfortable!

My favorite were the entire rooms that were arranged as they would have been in their original country and time. Instead of individual pieces you can see more how they fit in with how people lived at the time.

Sorry it's sideways. 

This rosary had 1/2 a man's face and 1/2 a skull on one end and then goes through his whole life and has a 1/2 of his face and skull on the other end. I guess so he can remember how close death is at all times???

The armor section was interesting too but none of it looked very comfortable. 

They even had a whole Egyptian temple right inside the museum. 

It even had it's own grafitti....we all now know Leonardo came and visited in 1826 and contributed to the grafitti...

When I came out to head back to the hotel. I hit rush hour traffic. Try crossing the street without getting hit by one of these guys! I found out even if you have a light in your favor to walk across the street it's no guarantee that a car is not going to run right through your path. 

After a dinner of thank yous gifts and goodbyes and awards....

We headed to our show to see Spider-Man.

We picked Spider-Man since we figured they probably would never bring it to LA so if we wanted to see it we should do it there. 

The show was impressive on special effects and action...not as impressive on plot or singing but overall we liked it. We kept thinking the kids would've loved it. 

We had front row seats!!! Way to go New York Life for scoring us good seats. 

We were so close we were getting spittle on us from the actors.

All in all it was a great trip and I was happy to be able to meet more good people from New York Life as well. 

I laughed when I got home and wore my Canal street scarf for the first time to work. I wore it over a  white shirt and when I went to the bathroom 1/2 through the day I looked in the mirror and was shocked thinking "I didn't wear a blue bra" (It looked like I had a blue bra showing through my shirt)....I realized it was the dye from my scarf rubbing off...everything was blue by the end of the day...my clothes, my neck and my hands!

And then we bought this souvenir book when Jeff and I went to the 911 memorial. (Sorry again for the sideways pictures) We liked that it had a picture on the back of what all the towers were going to look like when they were completed. 

Then when I got home and started reading through it I was shocked. It's full of errors, words that I don't even know what they are supposed to be and grainy pictures. It was printed in China, obviously without a proofreader...

They even misspelled Pennsylvania! 

Towards the end they told the stories of a couple of guys and their account of what happened that day the towers went down...then they showed pictures of them selling this book on the street! So basically they made the book and were trying to sell them, then they thank all the news reporters at the end because they got most of the pictures from the TV! (no wonder they were so grainy!)

Reminded me of the time we bought a puzzle of the US states and capitals from a street vendor in Tijuana. We got home and looked at it and there was so many wrong spellings, wrong states listed and even wrong cities listed as the capitals all you could do was throw it away! Ha ha.

New York day 1 and 2

A couple of weeks ago Jeff and I went to New York for a week for his company. 

Jeff was voted to serve on the Agent Advisory Committee which includes a trip to the home office to work for a week with the executives of the company addressing concerns and suggestions from other agents in the field. I was happy for him to do it...not entirely because we got a trip to New York because of it ;)

There is Jeff in the middle....standing on a stool no doubt :)

We stayed at the Carlton hotel right in mid-town which was about 2 blocks from the home office, if even that. Very convenient for the agents and not too bad for us too. There were a few things that we were close enough to walk to. 

Jeff and I took a flight out on Friday and got into the city at midnight prowling around for an open pizza joint since we didn't get any dinner on the plane. We finally found one!

We slept in a bit the next day and then went out to the city to see a bit before our New York Life dinner that evening. 

I asked Jeff what he wanted to do knowing it would be his only chance to sight see. He said he wanted to see the 911 memorial. We tried the Subway but couldn't make our transfer because the train we were supposed to take was down for the weekend so we came out of the terminal and just walked around. I didn't remember this building last time...you can't tell very well but it's curvy all the way up. 

Before we knew it we ran into this church, St. Pauls, which was the one who housed a lot of the rescue workers during the cleanup of the Twin Towers attacks. This church is the oldest building in New York in continuous use and they said their most recent ministry literally fell into their laps. 

When the twin towers fell many used this church as a refuge and they fed and housed thousands of workers in the course the clean up efforts. 

There were donated uniforms and a pile of patches, and an altar covered with the fliers of family members looking for missing loved ones after the towers fell. 

There was also the pew of George Washington just under this painting. Even his pew was used as a bed...they figured he would've wanted it that way. 

This painting was said to be the oldest known painting of our countries seal. They think it was influenced by Ben Franklin because he wanted our national bird to be the Wild Turkey and indeed the bird in this painting looks like a wild Turkey. 

Even though this church was close in proximity to the fallen twin towers, not so much as a headstone was out of place!

We also went into the 911 memorial museum which showed a diorama of what the new complex will look like. There will be 7 buildings and so far only 1 is complete right now.

On the footprint of where the Twin Towers used to stand are 2 fountains that drop down and display all the names of the people that were killed during the attacks of the trade center, including the passengers of the 4 planes that went down. 

Here is a picture of tower number 1 that will eventually be the tallest building in the US. They said that the mirrored section is about 1/2 way up what will eventually be it's completed height. 

On the way as we were wandering we came across the Irish Hunger memorial. It was an interesting park and felt like a mini-Ireland there to remind us of the famine starting with the potato blight in 1845. 

It had a great view of the harbor. 

On the way to try and find a direct route back to where we wanted to go we came into this building. 

I looked at what appeared to be an impressive sized chandelier...

and realized it was all made up of recycled plastic trash!

Jeff and I shared a Philly Cheese steak and sat and ate it at what I found out later was the sight of the Occupy Wall street movement. (Glad they were already done with their occupying)

Then on to Times Square.

Little crowded but it always it. We bought shirts for the kids in Aeropastel and M&Ms at the giant M&M store...much cheaper to  just buy a bag of them, and then went back to get ready for dinner that night. 

At the dinner we reconnected with old friends and met some new ones. Here is Jill that we see at district events! She was friendly and helpful the whole trip.

The next morning dawned bright and early and while the husbands went to start their work we us wives headed down to Rockefeller

 Plaza to get a tour of NBC studios. 

The paintings inside the building are a little creepy if you ask me. 

We couldn't take any pictures on the tour but we got to learn more about NBC studios and see the sets of Dr. OZ, Jimmy Falon and Saturday Night Live. It was pretty interesting and it brought back memories of when we did the TV show there :)

Here is our group shot of going on "Top of the Rock" or the top of Rockefeller center. 

It was raining pretty good when we got up there. 

I ended up buying an umbrella and just tried to enjoy the rain. 

We didn't stay on the roof long....you can see the gold dome of New York Life glowing in the background even through the rain. 

Out of the rain and eating lunch. 

I have to say the food was great at every meal all week and I enjoyed getting to know each person that I got to sit next to while we ate. 

On the way home I walked with a couple of the wives and checked out St. Patrick's cathedral. It's being renovated so it wasn't a good time to get a picture of the outside. 

The inside was pretty impressive. 

Right around the corner nestled in between all the skyscrapers was another church on a much smaller scale that we checked out. 

As we walked Tasha, Heather and I would stop in stores if we thought something looked interesting and took our time getting back to the hotel. 

I came back soaked and had about an hour to get ready for that night's dinner. We went on a harbor dinner cruise. Great idea just not quite as enjoyable because it was pouring rain. Luckily we could choose to be inside the whole time. 

Here are the two ladies that helped make the week's fun stuff possible for us. 

Jeff and Vern, one of the guys on his team. 

Our view of the Brooklyn Bridge....

and New York Life again. 

Jeannie and Chris Battersby

Deb and Vern Brakke

Saranne and Michael Broderick

Us

Our finale was boating by the Statue of Liberty. Jeff poked his head out to try and get a decent picture.  Even she doesn't look too excited about the rain.