Crazy day in NYC

Yesterday was one of those weird days where traveling through the Lincoln Tunnel was like going down the rabbit hole. My co-worker Melissa came down to NJ to meet me so we could take the bus into the city. There was a lot of traffic because of the Columbus Day parade, so we decided to get out on the West Side and walk across Central Park to the Met.
The parade was very surreal. The floats were just finishing up outside the museum when we got there. There was a woman in a sort of giant inflatable hamster ball. Some women in clamshells. People dressed up like banquet tables. There was also opera music blaring. It was just all unusual and maybe Veneitian.
We met up with Buddy in the Met's cafeteria, because he wanted us to see it. Don't ask. He's a strange one. So even stranger that we were hanging out with him. We were there to see this awesome exhibit Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde. This guy Vollard was an art dealer who knew :) and sold works by all of my favorite painters: Renoir, Cezanne, Picasso, Monet, Manet, Van Gogh. So all of the works in the exibit were owned, sold or commissioned by him. He seemed a little jerky though because he's convince painters to do things, sometimes sell stuff on them at low prices, and would never buy stuff for his own! But it was some collection. There were a lot of early Picassos. And I liked reading about how all the painters owned different pieces by the other artists, that they would sometimes trade or sell when they needed money.
We also saw a pretty devestating exhibit of photos from New Orleans after Katrina, and then spent sometime up on the rooftop garden. It was really gorgeous weather. Check out the weird stuff up there! :)
This is from Cai Guo-Qiang's Transparent Monument, which is pretty much a sheet of glass that looks like these birds crashed into it. Yuck!
And then there were two of these poor crocodiles (or are the aligators?).

On our walk back through the park, Melissa and I saw a man conducting turtle races. And then - remembering it was John Lennon's birthday - I wanted to stop buy Strawberry Field. Where we found...
... lots of people gathered singing Beatles songs! So we hung out there a bit and sang along with the crowd for awhile! This area of the park is right across the street from the Dakota where John lived.

On the way back to the subway, we found the cutest little bakery that sold mostly cupcakes. But I was good and didn't have any. But I did splurge and have a big margarita when we got back and went to dinner at Cheeseburger in Paradise.