Category Travel

The American Museum of Natural History in NY, NY

September 17, 2014 Comments Off read Attractions, New York, Northeast, Travel, USA

One could easily spend an entire day seeing everything there is to see in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City (or longer, hence their overnight visits!), which is why, of course, we only spent about two hours there and bemoaned the fact that we couldn’t see more. Since my energy levels were low due to the plague, I had to carefully choose which things were most important for me to see, and thus we had visited The Cloisters earlier in the day which didn’t leave much time for AMNH. But I’d rather see part of a museum than none of it!

Since we knew right off the bat we wouldn’t be able to see everything, we narrowed it down to the halls that would have the least overlap with museum visits we’d done recently: The Hall of Biodiversity, The Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life, The Hall of North American Forests, the Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites, the Morgan Memorial Hall of Gems, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Hall of Minerals. We also took a peek at the Gardner D. Stout Hall of Asian Peoples on our way out, and passed through the Akeley Hall of African Mammals on our way in. Mainly, we skipped out on fossils and the center for Earth and Space even though planetariums and dinosaurs are my jam.

The Hall of Biodiversity was insanely awesome. It features more than 1,500 specimens and models, showcasing both the diversity of life on Earth and the threats to that life, including a timeline of the five previous mass extinctions. More than any museum exhibit I’ve ever seen, it serves as a call to action to guests to do what they can to preserve the variety of life teeming around them as each creature plays a important role.

The Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life features, in addition to a 10.5 ton model of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling from a relatively small anchor point, some of the diversity of life in the sea, from the shores to the deep oceans. The quality of these displays are top-notch: if you can close your ears to the people around you, it’s almost like you’re underwater with these creatures. They also feature a squid vs whale sea battle, though it’s far from being the largest in the world.

The Life of the Forest Floor exhibit shows how terrifying it would be to be insect size. “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” doesn’t even begin to touch on the nightmare world beneath our feet. I don’t even like centipedes at centipede size. Centipedes the size of a horse? Kill me now.

Up until The Hall of Meteorites, I was really impressed with the attention to detail and the care given to the museum’s subjects: to display them in a way that’s interesting and relevant to the modern viewer. However, some of the latter exhibits we visited have begun to show their age, the Earth and Planetary Sciences Halls in particular. The Hall of Meteorites is the only one that appears to have been touched since the 1970s; everything else has a display quality on par with the mineral exhibit we saw in some guy’s backyard near House on the Rock. Stained carpet everywhere, dusty exhibits, exhibits falling apart that haven’t been tended to, and a “wet paint” sign for paint that’s so old that the wall has since been scraped and chipped again. I know that minerals aren’t the most exciting subject, but there’s got to be a better way to display them than ringed in carpet.

Overall, we enjoyed our visit to AMNH, and I think it would definitely warrant a repeat visit should we find ourselves in New York again. I just hope that some of our admission fee was earmarked toward updating some of the lesser-loved exhibits so that the museum can be truly distinguished in every way.

Evil Is Not A Scientific Word: The Jekyll & Hyde Club

September 15, 2014 Comments Off read Attractions, Masticating With Mellzah, New York, Northeast, Travel, USA

When I talked about my upcoming trip to New York, my polite friends would inevitably inquire what sights were on the docket, and were generally perplexed when the first words that came out of my mouth were “I’m going to the horror Chuck E. Cheese!” The look of confusion in their eyes would say everything. “Isn’t that just the regular Chuck E. Cheese?” “You’re going to a city with the best restaurants in the world and you’d choose Chuck E. Cheese?” “I bet the horror is what you find in the ball pit.” “What’s wrong with you?”

In some ways, The Jekyll & Hyde Club is the horror Chuck E. Cheese, but it’s also so much more: if Chuck E. Cheese and an English library and freak show shared a magical evening and somehow split their DNA three ways and had a baby, The Jekyll & Hyde Club would be that baby. Unlike Chuck E. Cheese, the animatronic parts of the restaurant were created much more recently than the 1970s, and they’re creepy in an enjoyable way, not a “I can’t believe they’d let that dusty half-rotted material jerk around near food intended for human consumption” way. No detail was neglected: the servers dressed like Victorian-era butlers, complete with bowler hats, every seat in the house was near something interesting to look at (unlike the sequestered mine area in Casa Bonita), there was even a secret entrance to the restrooms through the fireplace and down a book-lined corridor, AND in said restrooms sometimes a face would pop out at you in the mirror like the Bloody Mary nightmares of your childhood sleepovers….good thing you’d already let go of your bowels just minutes earlier! The eyes in some portraits would move. Other portraits would morph over time–sometimes it would look like a standard portrait, sometimes the subject would blink, slowly erupt in boils, his face would twist in pain, or the shadow of a tarantula would start crawling across. It was excellent. Truth be told, this place looks exactly how I’d decorate my house if I had infinite money and no one to tell me no. Except I’d also have a dinosaur room.

I was seated opposite this, so I had a lot of time to watch these most-excellent moving portraits.

Sometimes the pharoah would talk!

Frankly, I’ve seen a few dolls that are scarier than this.

What I didn’t know was that the Jekyll & Hyde Club also contained its own haunted house: The Chamber of Horrors. If I hadn’t already decided to visit, this would have sealed the deal for me. Objectively, it’s not the best haunted house I’ve ever been to–it was fairly evident that there were only a few employees working inside and they relied overly much on the room being pitch black for scares. However, just having the place to ourselves was enough to make it better than our experience at Halloween Horror Nights Orlando : it’s hard to be scared with a line of bros penguin walking with their arms around their girlfriends in front of you. I don’t know how the experience would change when the restaurant is full. The night that we went was relatively dead and we were some of the last people through the maze before it closed for the night.

They also put on combination live/animatronic show every so often (Every hour? Two hours? We only saw one while we were there, so it’s not often enough to be obnoxious) that was definitely Frankensteinian in nature, not Jekyll and Hyde. Not that I’m complaining! The show was entertaining, the actors looked like they were having fun, and the audience was definitely into it, which are all important elements to keep it from from feeling sad and awkward.

It’s weird to talk about a restaurant and not mention the food, right? I went in with really low expectations, because restaurants in this category rarely make food that you feel enthusiastic about eating, and I ended up being more than pleasantly surprised, as was Jason. Granted, the things that we ordered were hard to mess up (a Memphis burger and a margherita pizza, respectively), neither one of us have food critic tendencies, and we were both quite hungry, so a boiled shoe probably would have been acceptable at that point in time as long as it was a large one. Still, I would say that it outclasses many of its theme restaurant peers. As far as prices go, I didn’t find it shockingly expensive save for the stupid-expensive drink I ordered ($20!!! In USD! For a drink that didn’t get me drunk!)–in general, the prices seem in line with other theme restaurants. They do tack on a $3 “entertainment fee” per person which is a little annoying, but seems reasonable by comparison to Casa Bonita‘s insistence that no one may enter without purchasing an entire meal. Neither would be preferable, but ultimately $3 is negligible. The Chamber of Horrors isn’t included in that $3 fee, it comes at an additional charge which varies depending on whether or not you’re dining at the restaurant.

I would say that the biggest downsides to the Jekyll and Hyde club are that it’s in Times Square (which is all-around horrible unless you are a fundamentally different sort of person who enjoys massive crowds of people wandering aimlessly and excruciatingly slowly in a mall filled with stores you have at home and advertisements flashing at you on all sides…it’s like walking in a stinky, annoying, pop-up banner), the seats all have arms which make them difficult to climb into when you’re butted back to back with another customer, and your experience is wholly dependent on how much effort the employees are willing to put forth into their performances. None of these caveats would prevent me from going back, should I find myself in NYC at some point in the future. In fact, I think Casa Bonita has a serious contender for the title of “most exciting restaurant in the world.”

The Cloisters Museum of Art in NYC

September 12, 2014 Comments Off read New York, Northeast, Travel, USA

One of my top priorities in New York was to visit The Cloisters Museum & Gardens: the branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated solely to their extensive collection of medieval art and architecture. Instead of creating a copy of one specific building, The Cloisters combines religious and secular architecture in chronological order throughout the building. This makes each room a beautiful complement to the art as well as an immersive experience; it’s rare to see period art in context with its surroundings. Medieval art tends toward the highly religious, and while I’m not generally entranced with the subject matter, the craftsmanship is undeniable, and visiting The Cloisters was a unique opportunity that I refused to miss.

Fuentiduena Chapel

Lion relief tramples a dragon

Saint-Guilhem Cloister

Romanesque Hall

Langon Chapel

Door with ironwork

Pontaut Chapter House

Monks from the Cistercian abbey at Pontaut in Aquitaine once gathered for daily meetings in this twelfth-century enclosure known as a chapter house. At the time of its purchase in the 1930s by a Parisian dealer, the column supports were being used to tether farm animals.

Cuxa Cloister & Garden

Both medieval and modern species of plants are grown in the garden, the pink stone of which was quarried in the twelfth century for the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa.

Early Gothic Hall

The title of this piece of artwork kills me: “Head, perhaps of an Angel”. It reminds me of nothing so much as the conclusions that the Ghost Adventures bros leap to. You could just call it “Head”? Or stick to your convictions and call it “Angel Head”?

Gothic Chapel

The Gothic Chapel contains stained glass windows from fourteenth century Austria and carved images from royal and noble tombs of Spain and France.

Glass Gallery

Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy bong

A water vessel of a dragon eating a man or a man escaping from a dragon’s mouth.

Unicorn water vessel

Selection of fanciful water vessels

Seasonal Cafe in Trie Cloister

Jason, refreshed after drinking a $6 bottle of medieval Sprite. My $6 medieval water was just ok.

Treasury

A room that illustrates the wealth of medieval churches, containing precious objects wrought in gold, silver, ivory, and silk.

In days of old when knights were bold, bishops dressed like wizards.

This chalice is legit. Even crappy booze would seem fancy when sipped out of this thing, which after you paid for it, would be the only type of booze you could afford.

Illuminated bible

15th century illuminated playing cards

This must be Jamie Lannister’s lesser-used gold hand reserved for fun times.

Quatrefoil roundel with arms and secular scenes

Bishop saint and female saint wrought in silver. I feel that it’s a missed opportunity to not have had reproductions in the gift shop as salt and pepper shakers.

Boppard Room

Stained glass from the fifteenth century Carmelite convent

Merode RoomEven the wood beams on the ceilings in the Merode Room were works of art!

Late Gothic Hall

The archangel Michael defeats the antichrist. Possibly the inspiration for the “bitchin tattoo” an ex of mine expressed a desire to acquire. Frankly, this depiction of the antichrist only raises more questions for me, like, what the eff does he do with all of those mouths and why is he helping Michael to jab him through the uppermost mouth and if he has mouths all over and salamander arms and chicken feet, why are Christians worried that he walks among us unseen? He’s not exactly Waldo, I’m pretty sure I could pick him out of a crowd with no trouble.

Nine Heroes Tapestries Room

From a series of nine hangings created around 1400 for a member of the Valois court; they are among the earliest sets of surviving medieval tapestries.

Unicorn Tapestries Room

The Cloisters wouldn’t be what it is without the contributions of John D Rockefeller Jr–not only did he donate the land for the site of the museum, but he also donated a significant amount of land around the museum to preserve the view of the Hudson river, as well as donating works of art from his own collection, including the Unicorn Tapestries. In truth, the Unicorn Tapestries were the main impetus behind my visit. I’ve always had it bad for unicorns, and I recall first encountering the Unicorn Tapestries in an enormous book in the library filled with unicorn art throughout history. The book was incredible…and I never saw it in the library again, nor have been able to find its like. It was then that I realized that the introduction to The Last Unicorn cribbed heavily from the Unicorn Tapestries. Well, one of them, anyway.

Their origin and symbolism remain a mystery. The initials found in several of the tapestries point to two different potential owners/commissioners, as well as signs that they may be part of two separate sets. If not, there’s debate as to whether they were woven in Brussels or the Netherlands and as to whether their meaning is religious or secular. My uneducated belief is secular, if only because by this point in the museum, it was clear that people weren’t exactly afraid of putting Jesus on everything so there wasn’t exactly a need to couch it in hunt symbolism.

We didn’t enter the Unicorn Tapestries room until close to the end of our visit, and I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s the closest thing to a religious experience I’ve ever had. Here is this artwork that I’ve seen small, lesser versions of for over twenty five years, in person, large as life. Much larger than I’d imagined. Vivid, astoundingly detailed. Lush. I almost cried at their beauty.

Nothing compares with seeing them in person, but the Met has high quality scans so you can see more of the detail. They did offer Unicorn in Captivity tapestry decorative pillows in the gift shop, but they were pale shadows compared to the original, which is a shame. If they were even somewhat close to the beauty of the tapestries themselves, I’d have flung money at them for the opportunity to have a reminder in my home of how I felt standing in the Cloisters.

The 7th, 2nd, and 3rd Unicorn Tapestries (l-r)

The 4th, 5th, and 6th Unicorn Tapestries (l-r)

The 2nd tapestry, The Unicorn is Found. Also known as The Unicorn at the Fountain.

Jason attempted to point out these bunny butts on the second tapestry to me, and apparently his finger crossed some sort of laser beam line because all of a sudden a siren was going off and a guard was furiously motioning at us to stay away from the tapestries. He didn’t touch anything! That bun is an instigator. Troublemaker. Tattler.