New York... the finale

You have probably read about New York Part 1 and New York Part 2, so here is our final day.

Wednesday, December 1

Today it absolutely poured rain all day. We were lucky that up until now we had had quite nice weather, cold but at least sunny. But today was wet and dark. So we headed of to MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art). I think about half of New York must have had the same idea because it was very crowded!

This museum was also huge and so we concentrated on just a few sections. They had a great kids highlights program again, so James and I took the girls to see some of the works of art on that. First we saw a painting by Jackson Pollock (Number 31, 1950) and then a metal sculpture by David Smith called Australia!

Another activity was centred around the Gallery of Works of American artist, Mark Rothco. First, the girls had to write down words that a painting made them think of onto little cards. Then they arranged them into a free-form poem. Very artistic!


Here is the painting Pia chose to describe and her poem is:
Desert sand
Fur free
Colourful happy
Hot fire
Dead grass blur
Bright

Ella chose the painting entitled No.10, 1950.

No. 10, 1950

Her poem is:
yellow
white
blue
beach

Pia then chose a much darker painting, also by Rothko.

Her poem for this one is:
Stormy rain
icy water
sad gloomy
cold mud
frozen winter
cloudy fog

Both Pia and Ella loved this poem making activity and it kept them entertained for much longer than I was expecting. So perhaps we have a few poets in the making!!

James and I also enjoyed seeing some of the panels from Monet's Water Lillies series and Van Gogh's Starry Night.

After all that creativity we headed home for a rest before the evening's activities. James, Sophie and Jeannie headed off to the Lincoln Centre again, this time to see the opera, La Boheme. They thought it was beautiful, despite there being some technical difficulties which meant it did not finish until close to midnight.

Pia, Ella and I went to see something a little more recent, but spectacular in its own way. We went to Radio City Hall at the Rockefeller Centre to see the Rockettes in the annual Christmas Spectaclar. The girls and I really enjoyed the lights, Christmas songs and nativity scene, as well as the Rockettes with their amazing legs! The girls also loved the appearance by Santa, who at one point transformed himself into a stage full of Santas! Here are some pictures from the show.













On our way home we walked past the Rockefeller Centre Christmas tree, which looked beautiful all lit up.


So that was our 6 days in New York. The next day we sadly packed our bags and headed back to Washington (even though we do love DC we were sad to leave the vibrancy of New York). Jeannie and Sophie had a few more days with us before they flew home.