Why I Love the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Last week, I mentioned that I wanted to make this a regular thing - a sort of column about travel and my favorite places. The majority of those will be museums, and generally art museums at that, and I figured where better to start than one of my favorite museums in the world? And since this all came about with talk of New York City, it's only fitting to start with the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art). In this post, I'm only talking about the main museum, not the Cloisters as well. I will cover them in a later post.

If you're easily overwhelmed, the Met is not a good place to go without a plan. It would take ages to see everything. It's the largest art museum in the US and in the top for size around the world, at around two million square feet. The facade actually doesn't do the intimidating size justice; it merely makes it look big. However, once you accept that one day is simply not enough time to see everything and select what you do want to see, it's a bit more manageable. This is easily a museum where you could arrive when it opened, leave when it closed, and still feel like you needed several more visits to explore in depth.

New York in Another Light

When Crafty wrote her post about New York, it was strange for me. I don't know how to experience the world the way other people do, because I only know my own experiences. However, she references being afraid of cities and that's just something I don't know. I have never been afraid of cities. I'm terrified of people and extremely shy, but cities? They're just centralized hubs of culture, so what's to be scared of?!

Now, to be fair, I've traveled extensively, but this has always been my attitude. In college, I was really active in the music industry, as well as in nonprofits and activist causes. So I ended up spending a lot of time in New York. It's only a few hours away and everything was based there - or Boston, but Boston isn't big. And I'd spent many weekends in Boston growing up. But it never bothered me being in New York, and this was well before the gentrification started and Disney took over Times Square. Perhaps it was the ignorance of youth, but I found nothing terrifying about roaming the city alone. Now I look back and think I was really stupid, and my parents would be less than thrilled to know about the strangers' lofts I found myself in or the fact that I was too fearless to consider that maybe it was a bad idea to stroll through the Bowery by myself at 2 AM, but I'm here.

Little Crafty in a Big City

Just before Christmas, my daughter's Girl Scouts troop started planning a trip to New York City. The girls have been working on their anti-bullying and drama badges so they were going to a workshop, followed by seeing Matilda on Broadway. My daughter begged me to go with them on the bus, but didn't care if I went to see the show, so in an effort to save money, I decided to take the day to explore the city instead.