NYC Day 2

Jan 5th 2007
Again up at 11am, damn it .
Today's itinerary was the Guggenheim Museum and Central Park, Guggenheim was also part of the city pass attractions.
The weather was nice and sunny(so much for winter in NY and my snowy dreams),hence we decided to visit the park. The best part abut visiting NY was that we got free maps of the subway and the bus lines, which helps us to not take the trouble of printing out directions of how to get to a place. Of course we couldn't afford to rent a car then but then again ,we dint need to. The public transportation is excellent, the city is so well connected that I would recommend public transportation as the best way of getting around Manhattan.
Central park is serene, I forgot for a moment that Im in the middle of a bustling city. Its calm and peaceful. Its the one thing that I love about this country in general, the abundance of parks in cities, whether is San Francisco or New York, or even my house in San Jose( there is Japanese tea garden 15 minutes away from where I live, which is San Jose downtown) Its good to know that you don't have to go far to escape from all the craziness of a city. Coming back to central park, claiming that its huge would be an understatement.. its 2.6 X 0.5 mile rectangular area in Manhattan, so we decided to traverse the 0.5 mile distance. Guggenheim museum is on the border of Central Park East, hence we walked from the west side to east through the park. There are many attractions worth visiting in park and I would suggest at best taking half a day out to visiting central park (unlike us who spend half the day under the blankets).
Guggenheim, well interesting structure,...worth visiting for architecture buffs and people who like strange buildings ( i come in the latter category, i just like anything strange). There was an exhibition on Spanish painters, now me and Abhi have art appreciation sensibilities of an orangutan (at least when it comes to 19th century Spanish painters), but actually we enjoyed it and also learnt quite a bit. By the end of 2 hours we had formed our intelligent opinions and found our favorites (it helped that we took the audio guide along, which prevented us from staring at the paintings with a dumb look). My favorite was Zurbaran and call me an unworldly simpleton, but i just dint get Picasso's paintings. The museum has 4 levels,so roughly takes about 3 hours to view the place.
On our way home we came across St Patrick's Cathedral, magnificent place in midtown manhattan and easy to spot. It was ironic that I had remarked on our way out of the museum that I wanted to see the cathedral and we unknowingly walk right in front of it. One the places i will fondly remember, especially lighting a candle as an offering. Definitely worth a visit even for an atheist, trust me im one too.
will post pics in the next post,as this one turned out to be too long