New York, New York!

My good friend Sandra treated me to a first class visit to New York's wonders.

Following a first class seat on the Acela, we arrived at the Carlyle Hotel around 11am, where JFK and Jackie O stayed and one of the last places where there are elevator operators still in service, only to whisk off to the Spanish Historical Society to view the magical murals of Sorolla. If you have never seen these murals, you must! They are spectacular! In one of the murals, I found a girl in the painting that could be Kacie. I was blown away by how much it looks exactly like her.

From there we visited the Frisk Museum. If I wasn't intoxicated enough from the murals, then the Vermeers and Titans I saw at this beautiful mansion completed the high. This wonderful man collected so many masterpieces for his home and generously left them for the rest of the world to see. What a day.

We reluctantly left to return to our beautiful hotel and had dinner in their 5 star restaurant. I started with a lobster bisque and had the best sirloin steak of my life with truffle potatoes and spinach. Aaahh.

The next day, we headed to the Met and spent 11 hours of heaven there. If you have never been there, you know that we didn't see everything that day. We enjoyed lunch and another wonderful dinner inside the museum. Seeing everything after dark was a magical experience. My favorite place was the Visual Storage area where you could see the master pieces up close behind glass. Sargents and Winslows and Hassams oh my!!!! You can imagine how tired we were when we got back!
Saturday we headed back to the Met. It was much more crowded that day. We left there to go to the Guggenheim. We both felt nauseous from the spiraling room and slanted floors. We didn't stay there long. I appreciated some of the work there, but I don't think I will go back there!

We then went into the Whitney, but was not impressed with the work there so moved onto the Carnegie home which houses a design museum. It had a green exhibit there. Not much art, but very interesting.

We were not looking forward to our 4 hour trip home, but managed to have a really fun ride home.

It is not a trip I will soon forget!!!

Nahant Historical Society's Garden Party

Dianne was invited to this special event to raise funds for the Nahant Historical Society on July 25, 2010. Norman Laliberte was an exceptional host and donated his own special pieces.

Many wonderful artists including my good friend Carolyn Jundzilo, Tom Sutherland, Bill Cloutman and many others were asked to come and paint the beautiful landscapes that Nahant has to offer. Their names will be added to the Historical Society's roaster of impressive artists that have painted in this beautiful town.

Although it was an incredibly hot day, many paintings were sold making this a very successful event.