Museum-Tree Trek

We made our now annual pilgrimage to the city to see the museum holiday trees--the creche at the Met and the origami tree at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).  And we listened to our first spate of Christmas carols on the way, starting with the standard first one "All I Want for Christmas," then "Christians and Pagans," "Do You Hear What I Hear?", "Do They Know It's Christmas?", "As Long as It's Christmas," "Put a Little Love in Your Heart," "We Need a Little Christmas," "Baby, It's Cold Outside," and others.  

Besides those two trees, we had a few extra stops at the Met, mainly the gorgeous textile exhibition tracing the cultural exchanges via fabric in the early modern period, Interwoven Globe, that I had wanted to see.  Photographs don't do the skill justice--you can see the colors and patterns, but, until you're standing in front of the real thing, you can't appreciate the individual stitches or painting that goes into the creation of chintzes and damasks, silks and cottons, Indian and Chinese trade textiles.  Plus, there were several 18th-century gowns to ogle.  The kids wanted to see the Greco-Roman galleries, to look for mythological subjects,  and stumbled across an actual Percy Jackson scavenger hunt that we went on.  We found all the cards in the brochure and several others on our own, including this Artemis and the stag--the kids really know their myths!

On the way to the creche, we wondered through the Julia Margaret Cameron photography exhibition and the Silla/Golden Age of Korea show.  We spent some time at the creche talking about how long it would take to unpack and install it.

And then we went for lunch.

And headed to AMNH, which was a madhouse.  But the origami tree, themed on "Wicked, Wild, and Wonderful" alongside their poisons exhibition, was marvelous.  I liked the owls, seen here, and the Sherlock Holmes deerstalker cap.

They even had Macbeth's witches.  Clever as well as creative.

Of course, we visited the rabbit diorama in the Hall of North American Mammals and walked through the old Pacific Northwest Native Americans gallery half a dozen times.  

By then, we were ready for home and took our usual route up Broadway and the West Side Highway to head to Connecticut, with the most beautiful pastel sunset in our rearview mirrors.

And about 70+ Christmas trees on cars headed in the opposite direction!