South Street Seaport Museum - NYC, NY

*This post was originally posted on our main blog on 10/07/2009*

This is another backdated post. The Smithsonian magazine had their "Museum Day" on September 26, 2009. All we had to do was print out the "Museum Day" admission card from their website and we could enjoy free general admission (for 2 people) to hundreds of museums and cultural venues nationwide. There was quite an extensive list for the NJ/NYC region but we finally decided to go checkout the South Street Seaport Museum. Without the free Smithsonian admission card, it would have cost us $10 per person, just for general admission!

The South Street Seaport is a historical area located where Fulton Street meets the East River, just next to the Financial District. It features some of the oldest architecture in downtown Manhattan and includes the largest concentration of restored early 19th-century commercial buildings in the city. You can find renovated original mercantile buildings, renovated sailing ships, the former Fulton Fish Market, malls, nice restaurants, great nightlife and of course, the famous South Street Seaport Museum here. If you are looking to catch the NY Water Taxi or go on one of the many NY Harbour Cruise, this is the best place to go on one.

The whole South Street Seaport has a great concept. With the streets preserved in cobblestone, almost all buildings and the entire Seaport neighborhood are meant to transport the visitor back in time to New York's mid-1800s, to demonstrate what life in the commercial maritime trade was like. Here is a photo of me in front of the Museums main building as well as the ticket office and gift shop. There are currently two exhibitions going on here at the main building, the "New Amsterdam: Island At The Center Of The World" and "Treasures Of A President: FDR And The Sea". The FDR exhibit just opened 6 days ago, so it was cool to check it out. This row of buildings is called the Schermerhorn Row Galleries. The original intent of the Seaport development was the preservation of this block of buildings, which was threatened with destruction from neglect at a time when the history of New York City's sailing ship industry was not valued.

Opposite the Schermerhorn Row Galleries is the Fulton Market. Apart from housing some very nice restaurants, you can also check out the famous BODIES - The Exhibition. It features over 200 specimens consisting of whole-bodies and individual organs that have been meticulously dissected and preserved through an innovative process. Sounds gross but yet, many people flock to see it. Visiting the exhibition doesn't come cheap though, tickets cost $27.50 a person on weekends.

What I like about the South Street Seaport Museum is the layout. Unlike other museums, it's not constricted to one huge building but it's made up of smaller buildings and piers all over the Seaport area. We are not allowed to take photos inside the exhibits, so I can only show you the buildings from the outside. Here is Kevin outside the Galleries on Water St. This is where you can check out the "Monarchs of the Sea" exhibit. It's permanent exhibition that features plans, models and memorabilia that evoke the majesty and magic of a time when ocean liners were considered luxury travel. Since all the models are made in the same size ratio, it's pretty cool that you can compare the Titanic or the Queen Mary to one of the current day cruise ships, like the ever popular Carnival Cruises.

We also went in to checkout the Bowne & Co. Stationers. New York City was the center of the letterpress printing industry during the 19th century. Printing offices and "job shops" clustered between Park Row and Fulton Street. Bowne & Co. Stationers was one of those shops. Now, it is a part of the South Street Seaport Museum and it still resembles a typical job shop of the late 1870's. It really feels like walking back into time the moment you step into the shop. However, it is not just a museum display. In fact, it is still a working letterpress office and continues to take commissions for cards, announcements and other social stationery. All text is set and composed by hand using Bowne’s historic antique type collection and then printed on original 19th century treadle-powered platen presses. How cool is that?

On our way to Pier 16, we passed by the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse. It is a memorial to the passengers, officers and crew who died as heroes when the steamship Titanic sank after collision with an iceberg on April 15, 1912. It was erected in 1913 and originally stood above the East River on the roof of the old Seamen's Church Institute at the corner of South Street and Coenties Slip. The time ball at the top of the Lighthouse would drop down the pole to signal twelve noon to the ships in the Harbor. This time ball mechanism was activated by a telegraphic signal from the National Observatory in Washington, D.C. How cool is that? When the Seamen's Church Institute moved its headquarters in 1968, the lighthouse was donated to the South Street Seaport Museum. It was erected on this corner at the entrance to the museum complex in May 1976 and continues to stand til today.

After checking out all of the buildings, we headed out of Pier 16 for the highlight of our museum outing - to check out Peking, a steel-hulled four-masted barque and the lightship, Ambrose.

First up, the Peking. It was launched in 1911 in Germany and was used to carry fuel and manufactured goods to the West Coast of South America, around Cape Horn and then return to European ports with nitrate mined in northern Chile.

All aboard! Let's go explore the Peking!

With her four masted bark rig, steel hull & masts and midship bridge deck, the Peking represents the final generation of sailing ships built for world trade. Though a product of the 20th century, she still sailed in the traditional way, with few labor saving devices or safety features. Her crew followed the standard sailing vessel routine of four hours on duty and four hours off duty, alternating around the clock, 7 days a week.

Check out the sailor boy with the giant wheel! Look at the big smile plastered on his face, I guess it brings back some good memories from his sailing days :P

The Peking was retired in 1933, when steamers using the Panama Canal took over what was left of the nitrate trade. She served as a nautical school for boys, moored in a British river until she was acquired by the museum in 1974.

Today, she is docked on Pier 16 as a permanent feature in the South Street Seaport Museum. You can get an awesome view of the Brooklyn Bridge, East River and the skyline of Brooklyn Heights from her stern.

You can also find the Living Harbour Wet Lab on board the Peking. It is a collection of live marine life that can be found in the Harbours of NYC. Small exhibit, but pretty interesting.

From the Peking, we will now head over to the lightship, Ambrose. The Ambrose lightship was built in 1908 to guide ships safely into the broad mouth of lower New York Bay, between Coney Island, NY and Sandy Hook, NJ - an area filled with sand bars and shoals invisible to approaching vessels. While a light house is normally used for this purpose, the water here was too deep and the bottom was too soft, so...this floating alternative was devised.

Up on the gangway we go!

Here am I in the pilot house. It's way smaller than Pekings but the Ambrose was swaying like crazy that day. I felt like I was drunk or something :P

Kevin down at the anchor windlass. Again, its really small and cramp. I would just die if I had to work in there!

What is a lightship without the light? This is the star of the whole tour. A vessel approaching the port would search the horizon for the lightship, identifying it at night by a pattern of light at the top of the mast and in daylight by it's distinctive hull color and name lettered on the side.

In rain or fog, the lightship will announce its location using powerful foghorns.

The Ambrose served as a lightship until 1963 and was given to the museum by the US Coast Guard in 1968. Today, it is docked permanently on Pier 16 and is still one of the best places to go to in Manhattan if you are looking for an awesome view of the skyline of Brooklyn Heights!

Our last stop before we headed out to lunch was the South Street Seaport Museum's Maritime Craft Center. The workshop was erected in 1983 and was made out of two ship containers joined together with the windows and doors cut out. Here wood carvers and model builders demonstrate their skills, showing that they are at home using traditional skills of the past as well as new techniques. With that, it concludes our day out to the South Street Seaport Museum. It's very well laid out and I safely can say that even though you are not really interested in all things related to ships and the maritime (Kevin loves anything to do with ships and the sea, but me...not really :P), you will not be bored and will still have loads of fun exploring this museum! Definitely one of the 'must see' museums if you are planning to visit NYC!

South Street Seaport Museum
12 Fulton Street,
New York, NY 10038
Tel: (212) 748.8786
Web: http://www.southstreetseaportmuseum.org/

Grounds For Sculpture - Hamilton, NJ

*This post was originally posted on our main blog on 10/01/2009*

This is another very backdated post (sorry, I know..I am also getting tired of saying that at the beginning of almost every post :P). It's the first weekend of September and once again, Bank of America was having their Museums On Us promotion. For those of you who still don't know what that is, it's a program that Bank Of America is running. BoA customers can get free entrance to a whole list of museums nationwide (the list is on the BoA website) just by flashing their BoA card, every first weekend of the month. Since it's the Labor Day long weekend, Kevin and I decided to take a nice leisurely one and a half hours drive to Hamilton, NJ to check out Grounds For Sculpture (about 20 minutes away from Princeton).

Grounds For Sculpture is a 35-acre sculpture park and museum that was originally part of the New Jersey State Fairgrounds. Founded in 1992 by John Seward Johnson II, it opened it's doors to the public in 2000. Today, this sculpture park is home to over 240 large-scale contemporary sculptures, more than 2,000 rose bushes, 1,000 trees and numerous other flowers and shrubs planted to provide a beautiful setting for art. Waterways have also been excavated to create topographical contours and backdrops for sculpture.

Our first stop was the museum's visitors centre. A little tip for all of you who are planning to visit the Grounds For Sculpture. Head over to the visitors centre first before you do anything and buy yourself an Exhibition Site Map. It's only $1 and trust me, it will be a dollar well spent. Apart from a detailed map, you can also find all sorts of information about each sculpture/exhibition. Also, you can fill out a short survey at the information counter in the visitors centre and you get a Grounds For Sculpture souvenir poster free!

We had a great time just walking around the beautifully landscaped park, looking at various sculptures. Some were cute, modern looking and abstract...

While some was just downright weird! :P

Some of our favorite exhibits were works by Seward Johnson. A number of Johnson’s tableaus based on well-known nineteenth-century paintings are on view throughout Grounds For Sculpture. In the park are such favorites as Déjeuner Déjà Vu, inspired by Manet’s Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe and Family Secret, which is from Renoir’s On the Terrace. Here is an example of one of his more popular work in the park. He recreates Edouard Manet's (1832-83) painting, Déjeuner Sur l'Herbe, in his sculpture Déjeuner Déjà Vu with precise accuracy. It is difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is art. Johnson's three-dimensional play on a two-dimensional artwork brings Manet's painting one step closer to real life. Pretty cool eh? Here are more photos of his other works.

Yup, the best thing about recreating two-dimensional artwork to three-dimension is....we get to goof around and feel like we are 'part of the painting' :P We have tons of photos of us in various silly poses but we will spare you the ordeal of looking at them and just show you a few.

Another highlight is the Grounds for Sculpture’s charming restaurant, Rat’s. Rat's was conceived with Seward Johnson's vision of making visitors feel they have stepped into a village reminiscent of French impressionist Claude Monet's beloved town of Giverny. Overlooking Johnson’s sculptures inspired by Impressionists paintings, as well as the lily pond and bridge inspired by the works of Monet, Rat’s offers a magical ambiance for dining and a lovely compliment to the Grounds for Sculpture experience.

Here is the famous lily pond and bridge. With the smoke machine constantly going off at various intervals, it really does look like something out of a Monet painting. Don't you think so? Very beautiful.

After a long day of walking around the exhibits, we headed over to The Gazebo for a drink. Light snacks are also served here. The Gazebo is only opened during the warmer months of the year.

Here we are with our root beers. Too bad you can't really see the pond behind us. It was just so beautiful, with water lilies and willows trees by the bank. A perfect place to just sit back and relax. Drinks don't come cheap though. It cost us $7 just for two bottle of root beer :P You can also bring a picnic basket if you like. There are many picnic tables set up near the lake, all with awesome views.

We ended the day by heading over to the Domestic Arts Building to check out the museum gift shop as well as the Water Garden exhibit next to it. Back in the day, the Domestic Arts Building was an exhibit hall built in the 1920s for the NJ Fairgrounds to house displays of handicrafts, needlework, canned goods and other practical arts relating to the home. Today, it houses the museum gift shop as well as a cafe. Here are some photos from the Water Garden.

We spent just about 10 minutes or so here, cos it wasn't all that big. Also, the sky was getting dark and it started to drizzle a little, so we decided to call it a day.

On the way to the car, we stopped at the garden just next to the car park to snap a few photos of the peacocks. It's known as the peacock garden and you can find peacocks just roaming freely. I've never seen so many peacocks roaming freely in one small area. Cool stuff! :D We had a great time at the Grounds For Sculpture, a perfect place for a short getaway/day trip from the city. We will definitely try to return next summer, this time...maybe with a picnic basket!

Grounds For Sculpture
18 Fairgrounds Road
Hamilton, NJ 08619
Tel: (609) 586-0616
Fax: (609) 586-0968
Web: http://www.groundsforsculpture.org/

Intrepid - Sea, Air & Space Museum (Final Part)

*This post was originally posted on our main blog on 04/09/2009*

After finishing our Gatorade in the Mess Deck, we headed out to the Pier. The newly renovated Pier looks real good. There are loads of cafe like tables and chairs as well as park benches for museum visitors to take a break or to have a picnic lunch. They even have free WIFI so that you can access the Internet if you need to. From the Pier, we can also check out the USS Intrepid's stern.You can see how the giant spool of thread mooring lines is used to tie it up to the dock.

As we continued to walk towards the end of the Pier, we were greeted by this magnificent British Airways Concorde Alpha Delta G-BOAD. We were pretty excited to see the Concorde up close. This Concorde was built in 1976 and cost $152 million dollars! That was a LOT of money back in 1976, hmmm come to think of it, that is lot of money even for NOW! :P It's the fastest and highest flying airliner in existence, taking less than three hours to fly from New York to London (half the time of regular airliners). Do not be alarmed by the dark black smoke behind the Concorde. The black smoke was coming from a brush fire in New Jersey :D

We were kinda surprise that the Concorde is actually very very slim. It has a max cruise speed of 1,350 mph (mach 2.04) and a cruising altitude of 60,000', high enough for it's passengers to see the curvature of the earth!! It's about 203' in length and a wingspan of 83'. The Concorde is powered by four Rolls Royce/SNECMA Olympus 593 engines and is capable of covering 3,900 nautical miles without refueling. An interesting fact that we learned while we were there was the Concorde expands approximately 8 inches during flight due to friction heating. Wow! I didn't know that.

While it was in operation, more than 2.5 million passengers experienced the luxury of the Concorde Alpha Delta. It's so cool that we had a chance to actually go on board to see what it looks like inside. An average transatlantic fare was about $6,000! Wow $6,000! With $6,000, I can get five return tickets to fly home to Malaysia and back!! Another thing I noticed about the Concorde is that the windows are very very very tiny. Look at it. It just slighter larger than a passport. Something like the size of a large PDA. I guess it's so fast you won't have time to look out of the window!! :D

Upon entering the plane, we get to walk through the cabins. The Concorde can hold between 90 to 100 passengers. The seats looks really small and tight. The legroom was alright but the width of the seats were really small. Even the aisle was really tight. I would hate to be sitting in the aisle seat when the food cart is coming by :P Oh, what about if you really really need to go to the toilet and the food cart was there? Man, there is no way to go around it! Hahaha! Talking about the toilets on board, they are really small too!! If you think the regular airline toilets are small, you should checkout the Concorde's toilet.

On the way out of the plane, we had a chance to peek into the cockpit. So many buttons and knobs! The Concorde has a flight crew of two pilots, one flight engineer and six cabin crew. I guess one of the criteria for being a flight crew member, be it pilot or cabin crew is that you must be super skinny. I cannot imagine myself working in that tight and compact environment. No fatties please!

Protest from environmentalists prevented it's supersonic use over the United States and limited airport operations here. A crash upon take off in July 2000 grounded the fleet until 2001. The Concorde flew VIP passengers until 2003 and that's when both British Airways as well as Air France retired their fleets from service. Once we finished walking through the Concorde, we went to check out the little cafe/picnic area under the Concorde. You can just sit UNDER a Concorde for a cup of coffee or a snack. Isn't that wayyyy cool? Where else can you have a cup of coffee under the Concorde as well as enjoy the view of the Hudson River? Very very nice!

From the Concorde, we headed to the other side of the Pier to see the Growler submarine! We read in the museum guide book that we would be able to go aboard this diesel powered nuclear missile submarine. However, our excitement vanish when we saw a big sign saying that it was close for repairs :( Mannn, what a bummer. I read in some article online later on that it was undergoing some repairs because its hull was leaking. The Growler submarine will only be opened to the public in late May. Oh well, it was still cool to see a submarine up close. Here is a photo of the Gowler submarine as well as the 56 ft long Regulus cruise missile.

We headed to the Museum Gift Shop on the way out. There were the usual t-shirts, fridge magnets, key chains, shot glasses, post cards..ect for sale as well as Armed Forces inspired toys and books. They also had some space kits and models of ships and airplanes for children. Guess what we bought from the gift shop? :D

SPACE FOOD STICKS!! We bought one chocolate and one peanut butter flavor ($2.95 each). Yup, that's right. Astronaut food. They were actually developed as high protein energy snacks for early space missions. Kevin told me that he tried astronaut ice cream when he visited the Kennedy Space Center a long time ago when he was a kid. He said that it was yummy so we wanted to try and see if this is good too. The verdict? Boyyy, I have never eaten anything so gross before! We opened the chocolate stick first. It was a weird brown color (looks like poop) and when I tried to break it into two, it wouldn't break! It just bend into half and wouldn't break! I took a tiny bite and I was glad it was a tiny bite! It had this weird powdery texture, had some sort of plastic smell and tasted terrible! Yucks!! The peanut butter stick was even worse. It didn't taste like peanut butter at all!! Just some tasteless plastic smelling stick. Very very bad!!! :P Please remind me never to buy space food ever again. Hahaha!

Overall, we had a greeeaaat time at the Intrepid Museum. It was a very informative and interesting outing. The weather was perfect, with the sun shining brightly and a nice cool breeze was blowing. We had fun and would definitely recommend the Intrepid to anybody who is looking for something fun to do in NYC!

Intrepid - Sea, Air & Space Museum
Pier 86, W 46th St and 12th Ave
New York, NY 10036
Tel: (212)245 0072
Web: http://www.intrepidmuseum.org/