New York, New York!

I've just returned from an exhilarating trip to the Big Apple, my first experience of this mega- city. It lives up to all the hype and superlatives you may have heard. What I hadn't been prepared for however, was how strangely familiar the whole place was, given many years of exposure to films and TV based in the City!

I visited all of the must-see iconic sites with my family, and managed to squeeze in some trips to a few galleries along the way - MOMA, which houses a collection of 'modern' artworks and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which houses the entire collection of everything in the world........or so it seemed!

Of the two, the Met won out for sheer spectacle (entire Egyptian temples and re-assembled Stately Home interiors, etc). It also had a huge collection over several rooms of paintings by Degas, which were just beautiful.

My only gripe is that both venues suffered from a lack of obvious routes and planning. Apps could be downloaded - but only for Apple software. Even the simple leaflets, which had numbered rooms, had no information on content. This meant that I missed rooms that I wished I had seen, and stumbled across rooms that housed a classic (which was a pleasant surprise in most cases). Note to self - do more research on the venue next time I visit a large museum gallery in a new city.

One such pleasant surprise whilst meandering around the American Art collection at the Met was Madame X by Sargent. Wonderful to see it in the flesh, so to speak.

Madame X by John Singer Sargent

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