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One of the fun things about dinners in the Trustees Dining Room of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is that the Museum has been closed for hours by the time you leave! We sat down to dinner at 8 PM, and by 8:30 the Museum was closed. That means we got to walk out through a totally empty museum. Now, that does not mean we got to wander around: one is required to leave by a prescribed route, and there are guards stationed along the way. (The Museum does not trust even us to avoid being tempted by the presence of some of the world's greatest artistic treasures.) There just are no other visitors sharing the space with us --and halls on on our route were already in darkness.

After a delicious dinner, wonderful wines, and far-too-rich desserts, the celebrants finally departed at about 11 PM.

On Our Way Out Through The African Collection, a Museum Guard Took a Picture of the Birthday Celebrants