Day 7: MOMA and Central Park (7/18/2010)

We got up late as usual. First thing we had to do was take care of some errands. Michael needed to leave in the early afternoon to drive back to Boston, and we wanted to take advantage of his car. Davin and I decided that to get to our cruise ship across town we would rent a car from the Newark Intl. Airport. We made an online reservation to pick up a car at 1pm. After dropping us off, Michael set off to scrounge up some breakfast. We planned to meet back at the hotel once we finished the car rental business.

We got the car no problems. It cost us $62 to rent it for one day. We dropped off our car at the hotel. Then we took Michael’s car and used his GPS to find us a Walmart. We went there to buy a duffle bag, and possibly look for a jacket for Davin, though we all thought that was a lost cause. We were right, but Davin was happy to find a pair of bright yellow basketball shorts instead! We found some small duffle bags and picked up two of them, just in case. I also picked up a metal water bottle, since I forgot to bring one with me. And we got some zip lock bags, a recommendation from Claudia, to use for storing our leftovers from the cruise ship. She also recommended bringing bottled water, which was a good recommendation, but we were too frugal to do so. We will just drink from the tap.

We went back to the hotel and dropped off our new acquisitions. Michael made sure he had all his things, and then we all set off for New York. It was about 3:00pm at this point. The plan was for him to drop us off at MOMA, Museum of Moderm Art, and then continue on home. We didn’t hit traffic until we came to the Lincoln tunnel. There the cars came to a standstill as they slowly trickled one by one through the toll booths. All-in-all though, the experience of driving into the city wasn’t a bad one. We arrived at the museum around 4:45pm. That gave us 45 minutes to see what we wanted. And art museum is probably the only type of museum where 45 minutes is more than enough time for us to see what we want.


We specifically went to MOMA to see “The Persistence of Memory” by Salvador Dali. It is my brother’s favorite painting and Dali is one of my favorite painters. Pretty much the only painter I like actually. We found the painting and to our surprise it’s a little tiny thing, something like 18"x12". We thought that was pretty neat, because we were expecting something a lot bigger. After all, posters and other copies of the painting are enlarged in size. So if we hadn’t gone to see the painting in person we would still be under the impression that the painting is larger than it really is. We perused the rest of the paintings until the museum closed. The only other painting we saw worth mentioning is the famous one of swirly stars by some other really famous painter that I can’t recall now. I’ll have to check my camera.

Our next stop was a stroll through central park. We were really impressed by its size and the number of people walking, sleeping, and playing in every bit of open space. There were a lot more big trees than I had imagined. It basically looked nothing like the representation of it in GTA4. In GTA4 it was mostly grass, but I think they decided to represent it that way because a forested park would slow computers down too much, and would also be harder to drive through like a maniac. We entered the park from the southern most point, and tried to walk all the way to the large lake reservoir in the middle. (The equivalent of walking 20 blocks.) Needless to say, we didn’t make it. We had enough of walking by about the 10 block midway point. So instead we veered out the western side to find a subway that would take us home again.

We traveled south to the WTC PATH station by subway. Then took the PATH to Newark Penn, and the bus to the airport, and the hotel shuttle to the hotel. The same drill as before, and we arrived back at the hotel around 8pm. We then relaxed for a couple hours, I watched a movie, and then we packed up our bags to get ready for our cruise tomorrow, and went to bed.