December 8-10, 2017: New York City

Over the past several years one of the things Christine has treated me to is a birthday weekend in New York City.  This year, my 66th birthday, we went to the City for a couple of very special activities.  For some reason, after I read a review in the New York Times of the Broadway revival of Hello Dolly, which the review said was great, I’ve wanted to see the show.  The starring role is played by none other than Bette Midler.  That was the draw for me.  Although I’ve enjoyed Bette Midler over the years, I’m certainly not an avid fan, but the review said that Dolly Levi was a tailor-made role for her.  I had apparently mentioned at some point that I’d like to see Hello Dolly.  One day when I was talking with Christine about the NYC trip, I looked up online to see whether tickets to Hello Dolly were available and at what price.  Once I saw the exorbitant price, that ended that desire.  After our discussion, Christine left the room and returned a moment later with tickets for Hello Dolly.  I cried.  What a birthday present!  In addition to Hello Dolly, the other event we’ve attended during past birthday weekends in the City is the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater.  We’ve attended several times and have thoroughly enjoyed their performances and we so look forward to seeing these marvelous dancers.

So, off to New York City we went.  We took the bus from Binghamton to Port Authority, a nice 3-1/2 hour ride, and no car to park in the City!  Christine had done all the arranging, including where we were going to eat and so on our way up 8th Avenue to the Hampton Inn, we stopped at the Europa Cafe for  lunch.  We arrived at the Hampton prior to check-in time and spent about 45 minutes hanging out in the lobby.  Once in our room, we settled in and then got ready for exploring a bit prior to dinner and the show.

We walked down 5th Avenue to Rockefeller Center, no small feat considering the holiday shopping crowds clogging up the sidewalk.

It was hard getting around that area due to the large crowds.  The gold and silver flags around the square were really snapping in the breeze.

We watched the ice skaters for a bit and then walked over to Saks 5th Avenue where their windows were decorated with the story of Snow White.  The windows were so cute with nice animation.

We walked down 5th Avenue to the New York Public Library.  I have never been in that library and since we had some time prior to our dinner reservation, we went into the library.

Sometime we’re going to return to take a tour because it is a fabulous building with lots of very wonderful rooms and lots of artwork.

I thought of our daughter Eve when I saw this John Milton quote over the entrance to the Rose Main Reading Room.

Walking towards the place we were having dinner we saw two iconic NYC buildings.

We then arrived at the Brooklyn Diner at 43rd and Broadway.  We wanted to check out this place because next weekend we return to NYC for a couple of reasons – one of which is to meet up with the son of one of Christine’s Australian cousins who is in the City studying for the bar exam.  We’ll be having lunch with Zac on Dec. 17th at the Brooklyn Dinner.  We had a nice dinner in a relaxed atmosphere.  We had guacamole and chips with drinks, spicy chili (Christine) and arugula and avocado salad (Linda).  Afterwards, we wandered around Times Square for a bit.  We saw some street performers doing amazing break dancing and marveled at all the bright lights and electronic billboards.  Here is one billboard that is always quite shocking to see.

It racks up about $50,000 per second.

We made our way over to the Shubert Theater on West 44th Street.  The house wasn’t open yet and so there were 2 long lines – one for people who had tickets and one for people who were trying to purchase tickets.  I doubt many in the to purchase line were going to get in.  This show is quite the hot ticket, and very pricey, too.

Our seats were in what I refer to as the nose bleed seats, at the top of the third tier.  The seating rows are quite steep so we really weren’t that far from the stage.  However, there’s no leg room because of the steepness of the rows.

Nevertheless, we were seeing Bette Midler in Hello Dolly!  And what a fantastic show it was.  We both enjoyed it tremendously.  It was a bright, sassy, colorful spectacle, really tightly constructed and choreographed.  The sets were wonderful and included a horse drawn street car and a train.  It took a minute to realize the horse wasn’t real when it came out.  It’s head was so realistic, but then you saw the dancing legs.  Bette made her entrance riding on the street car and the audience went nuts.  The theater was full of Midler fans and they adored her every move, dialogue and song.  I will say, although it was a thrill to see Bette Midler in person, I actually thought she was the weakest part of the production.  It’s not that she wasn’t good, it’s that everyone else was great.  Mr. Vandergelder was played by David Hyde Pierce, you know, Niles from the TV show Fraser.  He was funny playing a cranky, crabby Mr. Vandergelder.  The actors playing the secondary roles of Cornelius Hackl and Mrs. Molloy were really good.  The show was action packed with never a dull moment.  The dancing waiters throughout the second act were amazing running around in complex patterns carrying various trays of food and drink clashing the covers on the trays.  It was really fun.  I am really happy to have seen the show because even though Midler was less that I expected, the entire show was brilliant.

That ended a very good Friday in New York City.

On Saturday, we headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Michelangelo Exhibition.  I had read about it and thought it would be interesting.  To get to the Met we walked through Central Park, one of our very favorite things to do in the City.  The scenery is really beautiful and, unexpectedly, it started snowing as we made our way to the Met.

I had purchased tickets to the Met, which promised to let us skip waiting in line, NOT!  We didn’t have to wait in the line to purchase tickets once inside, but we had to stand in the security check line.  Fortunately, that line moved quickly.  We chatted with a couple originally from Sicily, which was interesting since we’re going to Sicily next fall.  As expected, the museum was packed.  We headed to the Michelangelo exhibit first.  The bulk of the exhibit was drawings done by Michelangelo in planning his major works.  Some of it was interesting, but most of it not so much.  One interesting thing is that he didn’t waste any paper and reused paper already containing drawings, so there are rub outs and drawings over other ones.  There were a couple of his sculptures, lots of drawings and a couple of paintings.  What was quite interesting to see was the one-quarter size replica of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.  I was also intrigued by a drawing of hands and arms Michelangelo did in preparing for the Creation of Adam panel of the fingers touching.

The Met is a wonderful museum and is so fun to just wander around and explore all the various galleries.  We have our favorite paintings and pieces that are like coming back to old friends.  But it is thrilling to see new paintings and items that you haven’t noticed or seen before.  I was taken by some landscape paintings in a small gallery we couldn’t enter.  Three paintings across the room were so striking because of the lighting contained in the painting.  My photo doesn’t do them justice, but they were exceptional.

I also was intrigued by the technique in a painting by French painter Paul Signac.  He used little rectangular strokes so that it looks similar to mosaic.

The big open rooms in the museum are wonderful.  With the falling snow outside, we had interesting views from the windows.

Mid-afternoon we headed back to the hotel, walking through Central Park.  The snow made the park just that more magical. But the walking was a little treacherous.  They don’t do snow removal very well in the City.

Saturday evening we had dinner and saw the dance performance.

We slipped and slid over to the McGee Pub on West 55th Street for dinner.  We had Shepherd’s Pie and it was delicious.  Then down the block to New York City Center to see the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater.  This has been a birthday weekend in NYC tradition. We really love this dance company and that night’s performance was truly thrilling.  There were three pieces and we loved each of them.

The first was titled Memoria,  choreographed in 1979 by Alvin Ailey as a tribute after the death of his dear friend and colleague, Joyce Trisler.  He dedicated the ballet “to the joy…the beauty…the creativity…and the wild spirit of my friend” and set it to the sublime music of jazz pianist Keith Jarrett.  And it was a joy to watch.  The second piece was very interesting, Walking Mad, Johan Inger’s daring contemporary take on Ravel’s Bolero. The work brings waves of emotion – first laughter, then tears – and employs a long, movable wall that can also be viewed as a symbol of the barriers people construct in their relationships.  It was spellbinding to see this long 8 feet tall, 20 feet long wall used in all sorts of ways with dancers running around it, into it, over it and with the wall moving around the stage.  It was so fascinating.  The final piece, The Winter in Lisbon, was also stunning.  Dizzy Gillespie’s brilliant music sets the tone for this sizzling ballet celebrating four decades of his work. Choreographed in 1992 by Billy Wilson, The Winter in Lisbon pays tribute to Mr. Gillespie as the consummate jazz musician, evoking an atmosphere in which the dancers challenge, tease, and pursue romance against a backdrop of rhythm and color.   It was a fantastic night of dance and we were exhilarated by it.

Sunday our plan was to walk downtown to the High Line Park.  This is a re-purposed elevated railroad spur that has been turned into a park that is 1.45 miles long on the West side from about 34th street down to about 10th street.  The abandoned railway has been redesigned as a “living system” that draws from multiple disciplines including landscape architecture, urban design, and ecology.  It opened in 2009 and I’ve wanted to visit the park since I learned about it.  We walked from 51st street downtown to 34th street and then west to 10th Avenue where the park starts.  Our plan was to walk downtown on the High Line to its end and then take the subway back uptown.  It was really treacherous walking.  Although it was a bright sunny morning, the cold overnight froze all the slush and snow so that the sidewalks were slippery and difficult to navigate.  Near where we thought we could enter the park, we saw a very strange area of construction.  I learned, though, that it is a work of art called the Vessel.  It is 154 staircases, shipped from Italy and welded together here creating a linear space equal to a mile long.

We found an entrance to the High Line, but it was locked.  We continued down the west side along the Hudson River thinking that we would find other entrances.  We walked through Hudson River Park to Chelsea Piers, an amazing area of sporting venues.  There’s everything there from skating to bowling, to soccer, to golf – over 25 sporting venues.  It’s an ingenious use of old passenger ship terminals that were converted to all these sporting venues.  Walking through the area, on the walls were huge old photographs showing historical events connected with Chelsea Piers, like the final departure of the Lusitania before it was sunk and the arrival of the Carpathian with Titanic survivors.  It was interesting to read the stories about the photos.

We then walked down 14th Street to where there was a elevator to get to the High Line.  One the door to the elevated was a sign posted – “park closed due to snow and ice.”  I was disappointed, but we’ll have the High Line to look forward to during another trip to the City.

We stopped in a Starbucks and had coffee for a rest.  We walked a long way.  We decided to wander around Greenwich Village for a while and then take the subway back uptown.  We walked over to Washington Square Park where we were very surprised, but very pleased to find the piano guy busking.  We saw him last year during a visit to the City in October.  And here he was in 30 degree temperature playing his grand piano.  I Googled him and learned his name is Colin Huggins and he is quite a story, not the least of toting his grand piano around.  He is a very talented pianist and we bought a flash drive he was selling of his playing.

We then got on the subway.  Our plan was to get off at 50th Street, but we learned too late that we were on an express train that didn’t stop at 50th Street.  A lady was trying to help us figure out what to do.  We got on the express train, then before the doors closed she pointed to the other track and said the D train just arriving would stop at 50th Street.  We raced across the platform but the D train didn’t stop so we raced back to the A express train just as the doors were closing.  We got off at the 59th Street Columbus Circle stop.  The lady told us if we walked through the underground we could come out at 57th Street, which is what we did.  It was kind of fun seeing all the little shops in the underground in this area.

We got back to the hotel to retrieve our luggage, hung out a while until it was time to head to Port Authority.  We walked back down to 42nd Street, which was about the limit of my walking for the day.  We probably walked over 4 miles today and I was tired.  We ate some lunch at Port Authority and waited for our bus.  We had an uneventful bus ride home.  I had parked at the Doubletree Hotel in the covered area in case it snowed.  We walked the 3 blocks there and arrived home tired and happy at about 7:30 p.m.

It was a fantastic weekend, a great birthday celebration.  Always great to visit some place, but it is nicer to arrive home safe and sound.  I add the safe and sound part because there was an attempted terrorist attack at Port Authority less than 24 hours after we were right there.  It is somewhat eerie to think about what could happen at any one of the venues we visited over the weekend, but we can’t let fear rule our lives.  So we’ll continue to have adventures and live life to its fullest and hope that all our adventures are fun and safe.  I know this is a long post, so thanks for reading it.