Unfortunately our second Saturday was very rainy as well, but we made the most of it. We started off the day with crepes then headed to East Harlem to the Museum of the City of New York. I had never heard of this museum before. Anshu noticed it on event calendars because they were celebrating their 100th birthday and we decided it would be a good rainy day activity. This museum was a gem. I definitely would recommend a visit and I would like to go again - there was so much to take in there. We used our time to visit three exhibits:

Timescapes:
We started off our visit with this 28 minute film about the history of New York City. There’s a lot of history to pack into 28 minutes and the film did it well using animated maps, archival photographs, prints, and paintings. The transformations NYC has gone through in its 400 years is pretty amazing!

NYC at its Core: 400 Years of NYC History:
After watching Timescapes we joined a museum tour and it was primarily in this exhibit. The exhibit took us through the early days of the city to the present; breaking down its history into different eras and detailing the various ups and downs and transformations the city has undergone and all the various factors that have helped shape it. Similar to the film, this exhibit packs in a lot of history. It uses a variety of historic objects and images, video, and text to explore the city’s past and it was highly informative and interesting.

This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture:
This exhibit was fun to wander through as it contained an eclectic collection of pieces from depictions of NYC in various art forms to illustrate how the city has inspired storytelling. In addition to the items on display, there were several interactive exhibits that were fun to try out - “Songs of New York” exploring songs from the different boroughs and “At Home in New York” that spotlighted NYC in literature. You could choose a book, place it on the table, then watch an animated sequence from the book. A really cool feature in this exhibit was “You Are Here” in the section that explored NYC in film. This was an immersive 16-screen experience showing clips from movies about NYC. Very cool!

In addition to the exhibits we checked out the gift shop, picked up cupcakes for the museum’s birthday, and admired the light installation in the main entry space called Starlight. It was conceived by Cooper Joseph Studio and consists of 5,283 points of light in a hanging grid. No surprise this is among the museum’s most photographed features. We had a great visit here - I am sure we will be back!

On the way back to Anshu’s we had to visit the Petco in Union Square. The first few times we walked by we thought the grooming area was a hair salon and some of the retail space looked like an upscale outdoors store, until we looked more closely and noticed it was a pet store. And a Petco nonetheless. Definitely the most bougie Petco we have ever seen! It was really nice inside and as much as I wanted to buy Owen a “I Love NY” shirt, I resisted. We initially were going to do a rooftop dinner, but the weather changed our plans and instead we met Norman and Maiko at Nomad Girl for Italian food. Good food and company for our last NY meal. It was such a great week!