New York City Trip: The Met Art Museum

After years of hermiting and no travel due to the pandemic and various housing issues, it was time to get out of New Zealand for an international trip. And you might as well go big, so I embarked on a six-week adventure to three states back in the US. But before the obligatory family visits, I treated myself to a week in New York City on the new direct flight from Auckland (only around 15 hours!) and stayed with a friend and hung out with some of our group friends. Great decision and I'm so glad I managed solo travel in such a big city! I definitely missed traveling and new experiences and hope I can get back into them gradually.

The Met Art Museum was my first stop, with free entry because one of my friends going with was a member. It was huge - the visit was really only a taster of what they have on exhibit, but it was nice to be able to be surrounded by beautiful art from all around the world and across time spans. Here are some things I saw:

Faberge eggs

Arm & Armor area

Hydra

Beautiful Tiffany stained glass

Classic Ben

Loved the way these cats are eyeing the bird

Egyptian building in the middle of the museum

One of the exhibits featured in Black History Month

 

Hobart, Tasmania

From Melbourne, we traveled across the Bass Strait over to Hobart, Tasmania, which is the big island underneath mainland Australia. The high temperatures were in the 10-12 degrees C range (50-53 F) and lows hovering around 5 degrees C (41 F), just above freezing! Fortunately it was mostly sunny and not very windy, with a couple light rain showers. That made traveling in winter a lot more tolerable.

flying in to Hobart

Hobart was home to some interesting artsy pieces in seemingly unlikely places. And we arrived on the final days of one of the weirdest events, their annual Dark MOFO festival (an abbreviation of the Museum of Old and New Art [MONA] and Festival of Music and Art [FOMA]), which is a wintertime week-long festival. Sunday evening there was a large procession of people walking in the central city with a couple floats, one of which -- the ogoh-ogoh creature -- was to be burned (to dispel the bad spirits?). We waited around but it was freezing and there was no indication that the chanting and drumming were actually leading to something, so we gave up and left. Apparently a couple hours later it finally was burnt. It was one of the strangest things I've been to and confirmed that I was not interested in going to the MONA museum, even though several people in NZ had recommended it. We're not that into modern art, and we didn't have extra time in the schedule to take the ferry out to it.

close-up of the ogoh-ogoh (looked like a dragon)

the procession of the ogoh-ogoh through the city's edge

The conference over the next several days went well, and Hobart had some beautiful (albeit very cold) nights, being on the waterfront with the moon rising.

Fish Frenzy's fried food was just average, though the
Caesar salad was good.

Tried a Panookie (cookie in a pan with ice cream and marshmallows)
at an all-day dessert restaurant

Melbourne: Chinese Museum and Parliament House

Little did we know, our planned trip to visit the Treasury Museum in Melbourne had to be thrown out because Olympic gold medal winner Jared Tallent was having a ceremony out in front of the building (due to a Russian drug scandal whereby the original gold medal winner was disqualified) and it was closed. 

So we went to the Chinese Museum earlier than planned, and it turned out to be quite cool. I have found that I am much more interested in Chinese history and culture now that I have Chinese friends, and this museum had several large dragons used in parades and ceremonies – one wrapped around the building and is the largest processional dragon in the world! It also had a lot of cultural history stuff like clothing, weddings, food, and immigration.

traditional toys

Thought this was interesting: Westerners have been scarfing down
their meals for a long time and being bitter that other cultures don't!

Learning about traditional Chinese weddings

traditional Chinese wedding jacket and skirt

Foot binding shoes

We walked around Federation Square and briefly visited Hosier Lane, a famous street art laneway. There were even two guys graffiti-ing while we were there. Again, more of a hipster vibe than we were really concerned with, but it was interesting to see an acceptance of this art right in the heart of the city. We walked down a restaurant laneway (Melbourne is famous for these) and couldn’t help but notice the lavishly decorated donuts at a shop and store that away for future reference. 

We took a tour of the Parliament House building and learned a little about the state government and got to sit in the chairs of elected officials. Fun fact: the walls have real gold leaf – they spared no expense in the making of this building! 

Sergeant-at-arms gets to carry a big stick

Apparently Queen Victoria was not happy about this statue because
it showed off too much skin, so it was transported to Australia.

We ended up going to a mall that had a huge tower in it and eating at a food court that was artsy in its own way. Birds had gotten in and were hanging out in the light fixtures waiting for scraps. Dessert was at a place we had enjoyed in Brisbane: Chocolateria San Churro. I got a salted caramel cheesecake slice, which was very rich, and D got a big sundae with mint ice cream and four little churros. The city was really buzzing on a Friday night.

salted caramel cheesecake

sundae with churros and marshmallows