As well as visiting monuments we swung by the Air & Space Museum to touch a piece of the moon and marvel at how tiny and home made the apollo space craft were. The really do look like oversized cone-shaped tin cans with barely enough room to fit the astronauts inside. You can clearly see the welding marks on the outside: I'm not sure I would have wanted to be flung up into space in something that looked like it had been cobbled together by a chap with some scrap metal and a blowtorch!
We finished the day at the American Art Muesum which was great. The portraits of the presidents were particularly good - showcasing the presidents' different personalities and the varying talents of the artists chosen to paint them. Nam June Paik's Electronic Superhighway was also memorable and Alexis Rockman's dystopian images were repulsive at first but the more I looked at them the more they appealed.
That evening we celebrated the New Year with an Ethiopian meal, some drinks with friends of Sam's at the Wonderland Ballroom and finally a glass of champagne back at the apartment to round off the night.
