Million-Dollar views

Saturday 7 August

Garden Court, Frick Collection

After breakfast I wandered through Central Park over to the East Side and to the Frick Collection on E 70th Street. Henry Clay Frick was a coke and steel magnate who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He amassed a huge fortune which he spent on works of art - paintings, sculpture and furniture - and an enormous mansion to put them in. The house cost $5 million in 1914 and when Frick died in 1919 his collection was valued at around $15 million. In his will he stated that after his wife's death (she lived until 1931) the house and the collection should be left to the nation as a museum. It is an amazing place - hard to imagine you're in New York City as it is more like a cross between an English stately home, a French château and an Italian villa. Some of the most famous paintings in the world are there - Holbeins, Gainsboroughs, Constables, Turners, French Impressionist and far more. Frick clearly wanted works that would fit well into home so there is nothing that might offend or make the viewer uncomfortable.

View from Top of the Rock

I took a walk along Fifth Avenue past the park and back to the Rockefeller Center. This time there was no wait for tickets to the Top of the Rock so up I went! The observatory is on three levels on the 67th and 68th floors as well as on the roof. Although not as high at the Empire State Building it has an amazing view and there is more space and fewer people. And, of course, there is a great view of the ESB itself.

Lower Manhattan from the boat

The tour company that is arranging our choir tour had laid on a complementary ticket for a twilight cruise so I went down to Pier 78 and boarded the boat. As the sun set, it sailed gently down the Hudson River, around the tip of Lower Manhattan and up the East River as far as the UN building. It then turned around and went back the same way, by which time it was dark and there were great views of the nighttime skyline.