Central Park and The Met

Central Park. What a quintessential New York experience. Our first full day in New York, after a college visit in the morning, we took the subway straight to Central Park to wander through its trails and trees and eventually made our way to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, more commonly know as the Met, (conveniently located right on the edge of Central Park). I don’t know how anyone would survive living in New York without Central Park; it’s such a breath of fresh air. You’d think it would be an oasis away from the city, and it is, for the most part. But the city noises and skyscrapers peeking out over the trees are always there to remind you that you are, in fact, still in one of the biggest cities in the world. Some might complain about this, claiming the park isn’t really true nature because it’s surrounded by such urban influences, but I loved the contrast of the buildings against the natural landscape, and the sounds of the city heard behind the chirping of the birds.

I was amazed by The Met and its extremely diverse variety of exhibits. They had everything from early Near Eastern art to modern photography exhibits. Since it would probably take a person about a week to visit the entire museum, we decided to visit exhibits that were pretty unique to The Met, skipping exhibits like European paintings and sculptures that we could find at most art museums. The exhibits we visited included: ancient Egyptian art, early Near Eastern art, Asian art, Islamic art, and a bit of Greek and Roman art.

Walking through Central Park and around The Met, I couldn’t help thinking of TV shows like Friends and Gossip Girl that take place around these iconic locations. The main setting of Friends is a coffe shop called Central Perk, which we can only assume is near Central Park. And a little known fact about Gossip Girl: the steps where the main characters eat lunch every day in high school are actually the steps of The Met.