New York - Day 3

FINALLY - PICTURES!

This place is called Shorty's 32. We went there for a drink after dinner last night and I loved the decor with all the eclectic old fashioned fabric lampshades hanging from the ceiling. I asked the bar tender if I could come back when they opened the next day to take some pictures and he said sure. So I did.

Random Things On The Walls And In The Windows Here

This is a poster in the window of a clothing store. It says "This is the woman: She is knowing we are looking". I really need to get a polarizing lens so I can shoot glass without reflections.

There is this one building near the corner of Bowery and Prince(?) that was just covered in graffiti.

Believe it or not, this is a painting further along on that same building. It looks a lot more like a real person in this photograph than it does standing there looking at it - creepy!

This building is also on Bowery. Couldn't see any indication of what this building is for, but that rainbow on the 2nd story says "Hell Yes!".

Some of the streets still have the cobblestones. They haven't been covered over with asphalt. However they're rectangular bricks, not round cobble stones (what I think are cobble stones) so I'm not really sure what that's actually called. This was my morning walk today. These are the things I thought I was taking pictures of yesterday. I think I got everything I wanted today.

UPTOWN

I love this detail with the dragons! This was on Central Park West on my way to the Natural History Museum this afternoon. Got my AAA NY Guide book, a map and a Metro Card (7 day subway pass) so I am good to go!!!

A couple of blocks later I come across this. I get a really strong impression that they don't want anyone sitting on these rails.

Museum Of Natural History

I spend a good chunk of my afternoon here until they closed the place and kicked me out. This is a room called Hall of Biodiversity and on these walls is a sample of every kind of living thing you can think of - it is truly amazing!
Just off of this room is the Hall of Ocean Life. I realized today that although I have been to a few aquariums, I have never been to a museum exhibit about the ocean and life in it (that I can remember). It was actually a bit creepy to be looking at all these dry, static scenes. They should have been moving, swimming, swaying with the currents. It was a very surreal experience for me.

Then there was the butterfly exhibit. It is one of those limited time shows, which just happened to be playing there. The interior of the space where the butterflies are is kept at 80 degrees with VERY high humidity (which I'm guessing is considered a GOOD summer day in NY).

There were butterflies of all shapes and sizes flying around free within this space. There's a name for a butterfly space - like aviary for birds but it's not that word. Can't remember what the word is.

Anyway...

Did you know that butterflies are usually very colorful on the top (dorsal side) but on the bottom side of their wings they're usually very muted colors - grey and browns. I didn't know that, but you can see the bottom sides of the butterflies eating the fruit and see that they are very drab. It's a form of camouflage. I wish I had a longer zoom lens and could have gotten a closer picture of the blue one. It was fairly large and very beautiful.

These kids were trying so hard to get a butterfly to land on them. They stood there with their hands held out like that for quite a long time.

And I went through a lot of other galleries today - they have a very large collection of meteorites. I'm just fascinated at how those things came from outer space and are SOOOO old!

They also have a wonderful gem and mineral collection. I saw the Star of India - the largest know blue star sapphire in the world. It's very beautiful!

We went to a play in SoHo tonight called "The Irish Problem" about a therapy group for men with a particular problem - you'll have to google that, I can't explain it here in case kids are reading this, but the play was really funny!

I'm going to go take some meds for my aching feet then go to bed and see what tomorrow brings - I never know from one day to the next what is going to happen here.