How better to start the first day in New York than with an uncle/niece breakfast date at Le Pain Quotidien. Thus did Brynn encounter the glory that is Belgian hot chocolate.

Then off to the Metropolitan Museum of art, with a brief pause at Grand central Station to marvel at the stars.

In the best traditions of museum guides, I curated the tour to give the people what they wanted. First stop, the Egyptians . . .

. . . where I meter out a few (surely fascinating) tidbits from my time on the Nile. Then downstairs to the Costume Institute’s exhibition on American fashion . . .

. . . which did not disappoint. The Costume Institute never disappoints. Then off to Musical Instruments (Stradivarius! Christofori!) and then the Greek rooms in anticipation of seeing Hadestown that night.

From there we jogged across the park to attempt a visit to the Natural History Museum. We saw some Nature on the way . . .

. . . but we hit a few snags in buying our tickets and so decided to push natural history to tomorrow and headed back to the Met. This time around we paired a fascinating exhibition on Disney and the French decorative arts . . .

. . . with Modern Art and a trip through the firearms rooms. The guns were a hit with the Idahoans but apparently inspired no photography on my part (what can I say).

We had reached museum saturation point and needed dinner. So we fortified ourselves with street food . . .

. . . and set out in search of Miznon, an Israeli pita place I knew from Paris and which has the most delectable grilled cauliflower ever. After discovering that North Miznon is not the same thing, we managed to get ourselves to the right location and were not disappointed.

Alas, as we were wiping the last of our tzatziki sauce from our fingers calamity struck: a call from Broadway telling us that Hadestown had been canceled due to breakthrough covid cases. Tears and despair amongst the teenage set! But ever resourceful, we hied ourselves to the TKTS booth and got tickets to A Jagged Little Pill which was an enjoyable reminder of 90s angst. And as much as Brynn had hoped to stay miserable for a while longer, she quickly discovered that even if it wasn’t her first choice, Broadway is Broadway and therefore on a level she had never seen before; in other words: mind blown.

A late night snack and back to the hotel for some restorative Zs before picking up again in the morning!