Travelogue: Vacation Days 5 6

I had forgotten how weird NYC makes me feel. It's liberating to be among so many people, with such great people watching. It makes me feel like I can do anything, and no one will care, or notice, which is sort of nice. But at the same time it's very isolating. That's something about living here that I don't miss, the fact that you sometimes just feel like a statistic and not a person. But hell, grad school is isolating too, and this spring break is turning out to be exactly what I needed to break the February-March funk that I always seem to find myself in.

That introspectiveness out of the way, I am in my pajamas, watching TV, and just consumed some red velvet cake for breakfast. Hello spring break! I do have to get through some reading today (of course), but it could be a lot worse. I spent most of yesterday at the Met, which was as usual a fun time. They redid their maps! (gripping stuff, I know.) There was a cool guest exhibit on guitars, AND, best of all, I went through their American Art visual storage and completely dorked out texting some friends in my Gilded Age class. The American Wing has been under construction since I've lived here, and it will be for the rest of this year. It was surreal to see a row of John Singer Sargent's full-length, gorgeously rendered, atmospheric portraits while they are behind a wall of glass, with people hammering and drilling around them. But I SAW them! I realized how wonderful Eakins is in person and how Homer rocks in everything he did. Even better was that one of my friends was simultaneously at the Art Institute in Chicago, so we kept texting each other pictures and things like "I <3 Homer". That's why art kids are cool, my friends.

After the Met, I wandered around Union Square and then got off in downtown Brooklyn to get a bubble tea and wandered around a bit more. My cousin and I got home at the same time and she ordered our favorite Thai food from our amazing Thai place--ginger noodles with tofu and vegetables, vegetarian spring rolls, and calimari. My cousin, who is always a rockstar, stopped by Lord's Bakery on her way home and got a slice of chocolate buttercream for herself and a slice of red velvet for me. Which I finished up for breakfast. Thanks Melis!

So today will probably be low key--I was going to hit another museum, but I've got plenty of time, and admittedly I'm a little art history-ed out. Tonight I'm going to dinner with Melis and my Wall St William Smith friend to Lincoln Center to see Lucia di Lammermoor. I actually don't know that much about the plot (I know she goes mad, but that's all I've got). I'm excited because we are in one of those boxes on like the sixth balcony, so hopefully we can see, and because I have been on a Joan Sutherland kick ever since her death in October, and this was her role. This duet is stupendous. And while I'm not expecting Sutherland-level greatness, I am excited to spend time with those two lovely ladies and get some opera-on.

PS if you are curious about more Brooklyn musings, after I graduated from college I moved here for a year, slept on my cousin's couch, had two odd jobs, interned at a museum, and participated in some shenanigans. Check it all out here.