Are we becoming boring with a routine? Not quite. Today we are taking care of laundry stuff and a little Walgreen’s shopping for supplies.

Our errands over, we walk the Brooklyn Bridge towards Manhattan and decide to keep walking up Hudson St. To 14th St to go to the Columbia Sportswear store. This is a nice street to walk with lots of interesting architecture. It runs through Tribeca, Soho, Greenwich and ends up on the edge of Chelsea.

4 miles of walking later, we reach our destination and satisfy our Columbia clothing addiction. Return to Brooklyn by subway and some downtime in our hotel room.

This evening we pick-up the girls from their day care/school and bring them home where Ansley (their nanny) is waiting to help organize dinner and bedtime. Thank you, Ansley! Our time is spent playing and talking with the girls while Ansley prepares dinner. I take charge of Ila after dinner by diaper change and putting on pajamas. Ansley handles Emme – a real 3 year old handful!

Lesley and Mike are at “Angels in America” – a 7 1/2 hour play. They make it one at midnight and we walk back to our hotel.

Our daily stats are a new record – 27,439 steps – 13.28 miles – yikes!

Thursday, May 10th

We slept in after our late night and have breakfast at The New Apollo Diner on Smith St. Nothing to rave about – standard coffee shop breakfast. Service ok, food so-so, busy before 9 am and then starts to clear out.

I have tickets to the Neue Gallerie – German and Austrian Art Gallery where the famous Gustav Klimt painting is hanging called- “Adele Bloch-Bauer.” The film “Woman in Gold” tells the complete story and history of this painting. When we were in Vienna, we were able to see more of Gustav Klimt’s works in the Galerie Belvedere. Amazing artist.

Another couple of artists were intriguing to us at the Neue Gallerie in their exhibit “Before the Fall: German and Austrian Art of the 1930’s.” Franz Sedlacek, Max Beckman and Richard Oelze are from that era and each had an fascinating life story told on the audio device provided by the museum. Surrealism and modern/contemporary works have always interested us. This era in history clearly inspired expressive works of art in the countries most affected by the rise of the Nazi Regime. Here’s a link to Oelze’s most famous never been seen in the USA before – https://www.wikiart.org/en/richard-oelze/the-expectation-1936

A walk across Central Park to grab a subway on the West Side leads us right to the front of the Museum of Natural History.

We love that Theodore Roosevelt and a Native American are displayed in a statue right in front of the museum. This wasn’t on our list of places to visit but we are intrigued enough to add it to the list of what we will make some time to experience while here.

Back at the hotel – blogging and readying ourselves for some granddaughter time later this afternoon.