Walking through Manhattan on a sunny day:

That’s 77th St. east of Broadway, on the way to Central Park, where apparently you can fish, which would please my mother no end:

What pleases me is being able to get so many places you want to go in Manhattan by walking. I didn’t step in a cab or a subway the first day, although later in the afternoon I got living proof that normal people are able and allowed to drive in Manhattan when I rode with PetiteDov and her oh-so-preppy boyfriend from the Met to an Italian restaurant, the Trattoria, which is such a common name that you must have a location, but the exact location of which I’ve forgotten after misremembering the street corner when I wanted to go back to it on my last night. (Yeah, I was all wound up before I went about where I would eat dinner on the various nights, but in the end I spent my time on the sights and went back to the same convenient finds for food.) I found it, on the east side of Columbus and 80-something St. Good food, rather nonchalant service. Right, the walking–I walked through Central Park shortwise:

and after perusing the various sidewalk vendors, bought The Bean a little elephant carved out of soapstone, I think. The sculptor had many different animals in various sizes–I commented on the work it must take to carve the tiny ones, no bigger than half an inch wide. He was pleased–“People don’t usually get that the little ones are the hardest”–and remarked of my elephant choice that all his elephants have their trunks aloft because it’s a symbol of “removing barriers to forward progress.” On we go, then. The Metropolitan Museum of Art:

I just love this place, despite having been there only twice in my life now (thrice if you count the fact that I went twice on this day in question) and despite being enough of a rube not to notice that the surprising $20 entrance fee is a suggested donation. Ah well. It’s worth it. It has a mystique from my childhood regardless of the fact that I never saw it in my childhood: Didn’t you ever read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler? Claudia, tired of being taken for granted at home, saves her allowance, packs her clothes into her violin case, recruits her brother Jamie, who supplements his income by cheating at cards, and they run away to live in the Metropolitan for a good many days, living on Automat food and bathing in the museum fountain, before they’re lured out by the mystery of Angel, a statue that might have been carved by Michaelangelo but nobody knows for sure. Oh, boloney, Claude. Why do you always pick on my gra[mmar]… / Boloney, boloney! That’s it, Jamie! She bought Angel in Bologna, Italy …

Great book. Great museum. More tomorrow.