Grand Slam

Noe and I watch a lot of tennis, as you may have gathered from previous posts about attending tennis tournaments in Indianapolis and Newport. This year, we decided that being so close to New York provided too great an opportunity to pass up: we made the decision to attend our first major, the U.S. Open.

We took the Metro-North from New Haven into Grand Central and then hopped on the subway to get to Queens (FYI - the parts of Queens you see from the subway windows do NOT look like "The King of Queens"). We could see the silhouette of Arthur Ashe stadium as the train pulled in - wow.

The Billie Jean King Tennis Center is the most beautiful sports venue I have ever seen. The grounds are meticulously landscaped and extremely clean. Noe and I kind of stood stupidly and stared for awhile before deciding where to head first.

We chose to get in the line to go into the grandstand (the smallest of the three stadiums). We were rewarded for our patient waiting when we walked into the small stadium and on the court was none other than Gael Monfils, one of our favorite up-and-coming French players. Monfils is incredibly athletic and is known for leaping and diving all over the court. He also slides a lot. Naturally, this style of play is particularly effective on clay, but Monfils manages to employ it on a hard court as well. We could hear his sneakers squealing before we even entered the stands.

Monfils running for a shorter shot

After Mofils sewed up his victory over Jermey Chardy, we headed to our nosebleed seats in Arthur Ashe (the big stadium). We had thought about just buying grounds passes but figured if we were going to our first major we should try to see someone really big. Neither of us imagined we would actually see our current favorite, Rafael Nadal. But sure enough, thanks to the luck of the draw, that is exactly who ended up playing the afternoon headliner on Wednesday. And before him, Venus Williams. So we ended up with an excellent double bill, totally worth the money. Actually, had Noe and I known it was going to be Nadal, we would have shelled out the bigger bucks to sit closer.

After the Nadal match ended, we wandered the grounds for awhile. We explored the food and beverage options (the Open has all kinds of food, from sushi to seafood to pasta to crepes; and tennis attracts high-end booze sponsors like Grey Goose, who had beverage carts set up every five feet), then we checked out the wall of champions. We perused the outer courts for awhile, catching Robbie Ginepri's win.

We were headed back to the grandstand to watch some of Lleyton Hewitt's match when we noticed a small crowd gathering. We followed, and found ourselves about three feet away from John and Patrick McEnroe, who were doing some commentary for one of the TV broadcasts. (The guys behind us were debating whether or not to yell "Jimmy Connors rules!"; they ultimately decided on NOT.)

We watched Hewitt grind out the first set with Chela, then sadly gave up our seats to catch the subway and head back to CT. The sadness of leaving the Open was slightly dampened when I found the Grand Central Market still open and was able to make a Murray's run, but we still spent the train ride back wishing we could have stayed.

The U.S. Open is the best sporting event I have ever attended. The grounds are nice, you can see high-quality play up close, and tennis fans are great - they like the big names, but if an underdog starts making a good run, they rally behind him or her. There are about a million different languages being spoken all around and every chair umpire has a different accent. If we stay in CT, I definitely plan to attend this event in the future.

Things to do when your friends come to New York City:

1. Take touristy pictures in Times Square

2. Relax for a few minutes in Bryant Park


3. Take touristy pictures in front of the New York Public Library

4. Order a $63 piece of meat for dinner and be ever-so-slightly sickened by the size

5. Go see a show - preferably a completely un-PC show involving some very inappropriate puppet behavior


6. Get drinks in some random divey bar and wish your friends showed up on the east coast more often

Things that are awesome about coming home from New York

1. (clockwise from top left): Olive oil & sea salt crackers, black crackers, Marcona almonds, Jamon Serrano ham, aged Manchego, Italian soft cheese - all from Murray's;


2. Junior's Most Fabulous Cheesecake;


3. Sleepy kitty who you have missed all day while you were gone!

Art Smart

In order to escape the sense of impending doom that has been building up in our house over the past two weeks ( read the post below this one if you need the details), Noe and I decided to take a breather and head in to New York City on Saturday afternoon. It was a little bittersweet in the sense that it was the last time we'll get to take advantage of Noe's free museum admission perk, but at the same time it was great to get the hell out of town, even for a day.

Noe and I have gone to New York City eight or nine times since we moved to CT. The first time we went (with Joe N.) we took Noe up to the top of the Empire State Building and to the Statue of Liberty because he had never been to New York. The second time - only a month later - was at my insistence because I simply could not handle the fact that a giant Christmas tree was sitting two and a half hours away from me at Rockefeller Center and I might not get to see it.

Mostly, though, we go to museums. This might sound boring to some, but Noe and I love museums and New York City has some of the best. We've visited "the big three" - the MoMA, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Met - multiple times, sometimes for special exhibits; sometimes just to see things we may have missed on the last visit. For our last admission as corporate members, we chose to revisit our favorite, the Met.

When it comes to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I just don't know where to begin. The first time we went (in the fall) we headed immediately for the Egyptian wing and the Temple of Dendur. Maybe I read The Egypt Game too many times as a kid, but I knew that I had to see this collection. I was not disappointed in the least. From the small ornaments and figurines to the hieroglyphic scrolls; from the ornately decorated tombs to the reconstructed temple itself, Noe and I were completely entranced. We spent half our first visit in this wing alone.

Temple of Dendur

The Egyptians liked their cats as much as I like mine.

Almost better than the Egyptian wing (almost) is are Greek and Roman galleries. I love looking at the old pottery, the urns (some with extremely racy scenes depicted) and most of all, the statuary. It's these objects that for whatever reason really click in my mind as being old. The fact that you can stand two inches away from something that was sculpted or crafted in dates that end with "B.C." resonates with me. The statues are my favorites; I love to picture how these must have appeared when they were first unveiled, not missing any appendages or facial features.

If you are inclined to giggle at naked statues,
the Met may not be the place for you.

"See Noe? This guy has no face."

This visit, however, we mainly wandered amidst the Asian art objects and the various paintings. The Asian collections contains some beautiful scrolls and prints, including the "36 Views of Mount Fuji" series by Katsushika Hokusai, which contains the fairly famous The Great Wave off Kanagawa (below).

I love this print.

The Met has a great number of paintings (duh, it is an ART museum) and Noe and I made it a point to check out more of those this time. Last time we were fresh off a visit from the MoMA, so we skipped the Modern Art wings all together. This time, however, we were rewarded for our efforts with numerous Picassos and Dalis. We also checked out a ton of van Gogh and an impressive Georgia O'Keefe selection (unfortunately, we did not remember the camera until we were already in the van Goghs).

You need to get up close and personal with a van Gogh
to understand how much paint is actually on this canvas.

Yet as cultured and sophisticated as Noe and I appear to be, we are not above laughing at great works of art. One particular painting in the European wing caused us to dissolve into giggles to the confusion of the people around us:


Sacrilegious as it may seem, Noe and cracked up the second we saw this painting of St. Michael and St. Francis (being Catholic, we recognized Francis immediately - he gets a lot of love from the painting and statue world). We're not sure why St. Francis was painted with such an "ooh, big deal" expression, but that's how we interpret this painting. The imaginary conversation goes something like this:

St. Michael: Hey Francis, check this out!

St. Francis: Ooh, you killed a dragon. Whoop-de-freakin'-do.

All in all, a Saturday spent at the Met was a great way to unwind from the week. The stop at the Grand Central Market before the train ride back never hurts either, especially when I get to collect an assortment of cheeses from Murray's or prosciutto and salami from the meat counters. And no Grand Central stop is complete without picking up a Junior's cheesecake, but that's another post in itself...

Noe took a picture of me buying $30 worth of cheese at Murray's.

Modern Marvels

It's been longer than I usually go without posting, but my cousin Katie was here this weekend so I was busy being a good hostess. Thank you for your patience (all eight of you who regularly read this blog, that is).

The good news about Katie visiting - other than the fact that she is my cousin and she is awesome - is that she's an art student, so it gave us a good excuse to head in to New York City and hit a major museum. One of the (few) perks about Noe being relocated out here is that we can actually take advantage of that corporate membership to places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and - in this case - the Museum of Modern Art.


We took a 10:55 train into Grand Central and hit the MoMA around 1:30-2:00 (stopping along the way at Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick's Cathedral). We split up and agreed to meet in a couple hours so that we could see what we each were interested in and so Katie could hang out at certain pieces and sketch.

Noe and I headed up to the fourth and fifth floors, which house paintings and sculpture. We took our time to make our way through the airy and open galleries. The MoMA is a great space with plenty of room to spread out. Even for a Saturday afternoon, it didn't seem crowded - at least not until we hit the fifth floor gallery where the Van Goghs are kept. It was a little congested around Starry Night.


You can walk right up to most of the art at the MoMA and really examine it at close range, which is great because so many of the modern works play with texture and different mediums. It's pretty cool to stand (almost) nose-to-canvas with a Jackson Pollock and find the objects embedded in the paint.

There was an awesome exhibit on the sixtrh floor, Design and the Elastic Mind. Noe referred to this exhibit as "science art" which is not innaccurate. If you are in the NYC area, try and check it out.

Here are some highlights of the trip - sorry if the photos are of somewhat poor quality; no flash photography in the MoMA. A camera isn't really going to do them justice anyway.









These were, of course, just some of many. We stuck to floors four, five, and six, but definitely plan to head back soon to check out the prints and photographs - and the sculpture garden when it gets warm. I may struggle with my feelings for Connecticut, but I do love being so close to New York.