After two stimulating days in New York City, a letdown was inevitable.

The agenda for today was, by design, a little bit looser than the weekend. Having done the museum and theater thing, today's plan was to tour some SoHo/Tribeca galleries in the late morning and early afternoon, and then head north to Lincoln Center for the New Directors/New Films series. Monday is generally a dark day for the theater and museums, and many galleries are closed as well, so I carefully researched hours and dates on line before developing my plan of attack.Not that it did me much good. My first stop was the NYU Library on Washington Square (okay, not a gallery, but the exception to the rule) to see The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974-1984. Two venues are splitting this exhibit - NYU's Grey Art Gallery and their Fales Library. The art gallery was closed on Monday, I had learned, but the show was open at the library.

Well, what was presented at the library was interesting enough (punk rock art posters, some lesser Mapplethorpes, photos of performances by Annie Sprinkles, Lydia Lunch, Karen Finley, etc.), but it took all of about 10 minutes to take in. The Times described it as a "humongous" show (yes, they actually used that word) with over 450 paintings, sculptures, drawings, photos, etc. I guess the bulk of it was being shown (but not on Mondays) at the Grey.

But no matter. Onward I marched to my next destination, the Peter Blum Gallery on Wooster Street. There was a group show there of 26 artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Jackson Pollock and more, and the information I had obtained indicated that the gallery was open on Monday. But when I got there, the security gate was drawn tight, and there was no indication of the gallery's hours anywhere to be seen.

Slightly daunted, I walked a couple more blocks to the Feldman Gallery on Mercer Street. It too, was supposed to be open, and it too had the security gate drawn tight and no visible sign of gallery hours, plus the added indignity of newspapers piled up on its doorstep.

Daunted, I hiked even further downtown to DFN Gallery on Franklin Street in Tribeca. To my delight and amazement, it was open. They were displaying work by two artists, John Hardy and Tom Bickner, and a photographer was busy archiving the paintings for the gallery owner. While satisfying, again it only took about 10 minutes, and hardly seemed worth the walk from Washington Square to Franklin, by way of Wooster and Mercer Streets.

The problem was that although the movie screening wasn't until 3:30, it was barely noon by the time I left DFN. I went and got some lunch at the Tribeca Grill on Franklin among a bunch of young stockbrokers, and retraced my steps to see if either of the closed galleries had opened in the meantime. I got back to the Feldman Gallery at 1:00, and just as I walked up, someone was unlocking the security gate from within to retrieve the newspapers on the doorstep. Encouraged, I walked up and asked "Are you open?" and was told "No. Come back tomorrow. We're having a photographer shoot some of the paintings today." I thought about telling him that that didn't seem to be a problem at DFN, but realized that the argument wouldn't get me anywhere. The person, though, could see the conflict on my face, and repeated "Come back tomorrow."

When I got back to the Peter Blum, everything still looked as it had earlier, with no indication of opening any time soon. So I decided to head uptown and try my luck around Lincoln Center. I jumped on a 1 train, and got to West 64th Street around 2.

There's a lot to be said for Lincoln Center, home of the Metropolitan Opera, Philharmonic Hall, Avery Fischer Hall and Julliard School of Music, but if there aren't any performances going on, the neighborhood can be kind of dull. Sure, there's a Barnes and Noble and a Tower Records, but I can kill time in those stores just about anywhere. So I just wandered aimlessly around for an hour, and finally, at 3:00, went to the Walter Reade Theater box office to pick up my tickets at will-call.

Today's screening in the New Directors/New Films series was called "Good Girl," by the young French director Sophie Fillieres. The Times was dismissive, calling it a "meringue" and a "fluffy omelet" (the reviews weren't out yet when I purchased the tickets on line), but the director was to be present for a Q&A, so it still had the potential for interest.

Well, funny thing - it turns out that young Ms. Fillieres had to catch a flight back to Paris, and could only be present to introduce the film. Even then, she said that she didn't want to describe it, because it was better if we all just saw it for ourselves. Well, it turns out that the Times was right - the film was a light-weight little truffle. The title character enlivens her straight-and-narrow life by going on mildly zany behavioral tangents, and one reviewer compared these unexpected tangents to Bunuel's technique of pulling the narrative rug out from under the viewer (as in "The Phantom of Liberty" or "That Obscure Object of Desire"). Well, I didn't see the similarity, and Ms. Fillieres was somewhere over the Atlantic on Air France when the time came to ask her about it.

But overall, the day was not lost. The forecast was for rain, but the clouds burned off early and it was a warm and beautiful spring day. I did get into two of the four galleries I had intended, and even a lightweight French romantic comedy has its pleasures, especially when viewed in Lincoln Center.

Tomorrow, I finally have to work (I'm actually up here for a brownfields conference). After the conference, I catch a plane back home, so I have no more time to play. But as Ms. Fillieres would say, "Je ne regrette rien."