A Full Day in NYC (Including The Whitney)

Though over 1.5 million people live in Manhattan, it felt like a small town last week when we arrived at the 81st Street Subway Station and found a note taped to the column outside the Museum of Natural History entrance that read "Gabov and Akos . . . We went to get some beers" and though we never caught up with Gabov and Akos at the bar, my two sons enjoyed the giant mamenchisaurus exhibit-- the museum staff actually built one of these creatures, with muscle and organ cutaways . . . very illuminating and highly recommended . . . also highly recommended (thanks Zman!) is lunch at the Shake Shack-- which is on Columbus between 77th and 78th and so a very short walk from the museum . . . the Shake Shack has awesome burgers, fries, and shakes and it is far cheaper than museum food, and they'll let you back into the museum after you go eat there (warning: get there before noon or you'll wait in a giant line) and after the museum, we trekked across Central Park to see The Whitney-- The Museum of American Art, not the all around fun guy that lives in Norfolk-- which had an exhibit of Lyonel Feininger's colorful expressionist paintings-- which we all enjoyed-- but I think my kids liked Cory Arcangel's "Pro Tools" exhibit more . . . he creates weird technological installations, such as Various Self Playing Bowling Games, which is a bowling alley consisting of large-scale projections of bowling games from the late 1970s to now, with each bowler only chucking gutter balls . . . there was also an optical illusion he created with metal carts that made Catherine and I question our sanity and a film of hundreds of different people on YouTube playing a Paganini piece, stitched together note by note . . . it almost gave me a epileptic seizure but it is SFW, so check it out . . . and we ended the day by taking a taxi ride back to Penn Station . . . Alex and Ian fell asleep the moment their heads hit the dirty, germ encrusted taxi seats.