Day Number Two

Today was full of walking and waiting, punctuated by some pretty fun stuff. Number of modes of transportation taken today = 5. Sightseeing bus (which abandoned us in Harlem), taxi, city bus, subway, and of course, walking.

We started off at St. Patrick's...we had all good intentions of going to mass, but...well, once again the morning got away from us. We did stop in, and this picture is for my friend S, who always teases me about praying to saints. S, I thought of you as I lit this candle, can you guess who the saint is?
We next slogged through the crazy bustle of Times Square, where every building MUST have a "light feature ad":


...and headed for somewhere a little quieter- The Cloisters. (The medieval art museum of the Met. Museum of Art). One the way we saw a few more New York sights...on Central Park West is the Dakota Building, famous for many reasons, but most significantly (in my mind, anyway), it's where John Lennon was killed, right near where that security guard is standing:

and Yoko still lives in the building- her apartment is the one with the shuttered windows. Poor Yoko, I wouldn't want to keep my windows shuttered all the time like that...but then I am one of the annoying people taking pictures outside her building, so...sorry Yoko.


Trying to get to the cloisters proved to be difficult - combination of bad information from our sightseeing bus guide, our own lack of knowledge about the subway, and our frustrating inability to find a cab in Harlem. We finally did, and for $13 (yikes) he drove us all the way uptown to the Cloisters. We got to hear his life story along the way. Good luck moving to Atlanta and becoming a nurse, cab-driver man!

Here's Gretchen enjoying one of the peaceful cloisters:

This corbel was our favorite:
so, we imitated it:
In one of the gardens there were medieval plants and flowers, and I spent a long time trying to get a perfect picture of a bee on the lavender. Each time I'm on vacation, I'm reminded every day that I'm not a great photographer...so this will have to do. (I do, however, get better and better at taking self-portrait-arm-stretched-out picture, out of necessity).

We made our slow, public-transit way home, had a quick sandwich dinner, and headed back out to Avenue Q. Actually, "headed" is less correct than "ran the last three blocks since it was 5 minutes before curtain time and we thought we could walk it in time". We got to our seats a sweaty mess, but hooray, we made it to the show. It was great - hilarious, irreverent, sweet...just great. It's sort of like a Sesame Street for grown ups, and since you can't take pictures, here's a picture of me with another famous muppet:


Tomorrow: Hmm, not sure. Might storm. Many possibilities....we'll see!

It's All About the Pretzel Croissant

...but more about that in a moment.

We began our day, um, a little on the late side. After a slow wake-up, some planning (see below, that's G planning all over my bunk), and ticket-procuring, and breakfast downstairs at the Pod Cafe, it was...12:30.
We'd already decided to spring for the hop on/off bus tour to get the lay of the city. We knew only other tourists would be on the bus, and of course that was true. Lots of Southern accents, and lots of foreign visitors who didn't so much follow the narration given by the guide. (Sometimes they talked loudly through it, but to be fair, so did my fellow Americans, but on their cell phones, which is worse, methinks).

To say that the bus tour, and of course really NYC in general, is full of iconic sights may be cliche, but you know, cliches exist for a reason. For someone who's never been here, I must say I did feel a little thrill as we passed all the big hitters: Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden, Rockefeller Center, Central Park, Times Square, Wall Street, Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building (embarrassing confession - until today I had collapsed those two into the same building in my mind, even after Jay's amazing Chrysler building dress on Project Runway.) I could have taken pictures of them all and posted them here...but instead, I just took pictures in my mind and for blog purposes here are a few of the sillier moments of the day:

So, near Times Square, there are some flagship candy stores. Hershey's (also of PR fame), and M&M are right across the street from each other. In Hershey, I wanted to buy just one small RPB cup pack, because that's my favorite favorite. Nope, no can do. Everything in the store was huge, gimmicky, and not worth the cash. Oh well. There was a cart outside selling much simpler versions for under a dollar.

We declined to pay $9.99 for the real thing, but anyway there we are on a Hershey Bar. I tried to look surprised. I'm not sure why.

Across the street at the M&M extravaganza, there were walls of every color imaginable:

But since they cost a ridiculous $11/pound, I opted instead to eat a blue peanut one that had fallen down in the grating that catches all the rejects:

Yep, I really did do that. One small, kinda gross, act of civil disobedience. (Later, when I tried to take a picture for my pal D in the Swatch store of a watch that I thought she would like, I was scolded by two employees, so I guess everything evens out in the end).

Whisked away from the Times Square mayhem by our friendly red bus, we chose City Bakery for lunch, upon various recommendations from guidebooks and friends. Yum. Expensive, but yum. The highest yum rating went to our new favorite food item here in NYC: The Pretzel Croissant.

It even has it's own website, here. Now I know, it may not look like much, but in person, it would be hard not to heart it - salty and sweet, soft and crunchy. Wish I could bring some home to share with you all.

Next up was some shopping, including this little store with $98 camisoles and a very funky pink rug:
And then a few more sites...here is my ground zero picture, because the actual site didn't strike a chord with me. It's full of construction, and it's not very clear where the towers were when you just look from the side. It's ringed by chain link fences with green security cloth so you can only see in through small gaps. Instead, I walked a bit away and took this photo. The crane sticking up is where the towers would have been. The two big buildings are way behind them.

This is from the inside of St. Paul's, a church nearby where the community gathered and the rescue workers slept. The things that look like leis are chains of paper cranes sent from Japan. The guy on the right is a 9-11 rescue worker signing books that people were buying like crazy.

On to Wall Street, where I gave the bull a good swift kick in the ___. That's for my IRA.

We headed back to the Pod, had a (very) brief rest, and then back out for a classic NYC dinner,

followed by hot street cart nuts for dessert, and then our first show. We got tickets to Tony-award winning Passing Strange, which was excellent. On the way home after the show, we walked right by 30 Rock (another a-ha moment for me- I didn't know the show was named after 30 Rockefeller Center, but now it ALL makes sense!), and we flirted with the idea of going up to the observation deck at Top of the Rock. But not for long, since it cost $20. Sheesh! Instead, we will all have to be content with this photo of what might have been...

Goodnight, friends!
E&G

Arrival in the Apple

We're here! After an inauspicious start in which I realized at the airport that I'd forgotten my ipod, and Gretchen promptly spilled her coffee all over the floor of the plane, we were off. Here is how the flight attendant handled the spill, prompting everyone who came by to either trip or comment:


The flight itself - unremarkable. We flew Virgin America, which felt like the poorer relation of Virgin Atlantic, which I suppose it is. No food provided on the plane, of course, snacks provided by Archer Farms (recognize that brand, Target shoppers?). And while there was a screen at every seat, and lots of things to do and watch, the movies cost $5 or $7 each. Gretchen watched 27 Dresses. I watched, for free, Dave Eggers giving a talk about 826 Valencia. One cool thing, however, was the drink service...it was all done on your screen, so you could just order up as many cranberry juices as you want and the flight attendant brings it straight to your seat. No big cart moving through every few hours. Soon enough (less than 5 hours), we rolled off the plane in JFK, picked up Big Mama and Medium Mama (Gretchen's suitcase is bigger than last time we traveled!), and tried to figure out how to get into Manhattan.

Now, a quick note. Because of circumstances beyond my control like moving and job interviews and stuff, I have decidedly not been up to my usual trip planning activities. No spreadsheet, no grand plan, no carefully researched list of attractions. So, when we got off the plane and were standing there in the arrivals hall, I realized all I had was a scribbled address for our hotel...I didn't know where the airport was in relation to the city, or how to use the subway to get there....nothing. Gretchen usually depends on me for that kind of stuff, and though she's stepped up admirably in the planning dept. this year so far, neither of us knew what to do next. Upon inquiries, we found we could take a taxi for $50, a shuttle for $29, or the airtrain/subway for $7. Guess what we chose?


Judging from the vast, echoing emptiness of the platform, it's not a popular choice. But it worked fine for us, and on the long subway ride into Manhattan we got to a big helping of local color. :) Lots of textbook New York accents, ladies coming back from the beaches in hotpants and high heels, and the sauna-like embrace of the subway air. We kept looking at each other, smiling, and saying "$7!"

We finally climbed up into the city lights,

found our hotel (which will get a post all its own), and had dinner at a neighborhood Italian restaurant aptly named "Lasagna":

Can you guess what exotic NYC delicacy I'm holding up?

Today we will surrender completely to the tourist impulse and take the double decker hop on/off bus tour to get oriented, and begin our attempt to get half price Broadway tickets. (Everything we most want to see, Wicked, Blue Man Group, and Avenue Q, appear to be sold out or at least super hard to get "reasonable" tickets for...)

Ciao for now!
E

Even Less Intrepid than Usual...

As posted on my regular blog, this summer I'll be staying a little closer to home. And I know, even though I've never been to NYC, lots of you have, and you must have recommendations...places to stay? eat? museums not to miss? anyway feel free to post them, and any on DC as well....much appreicated!

One More Thing

The final tally for our high stakes cribbage tourney was Loretta 15 games, Erin 10. I was kind of bummed about this, and Loretta offered a double or nothing game on the plane ride home. It was close, came down to the final hand, but Loretta won.

So...I will be picking up after Jack whenever I'm with them at the dog park for the next two months. Could have been one month, but I really thought I could win that last game. Sigh. :)

Big finale

Hey blog readers!

This is the last post...as we hop on the tube tomorrow morning to head to Heathrow and then hop across the Atlantic and then home. Here are a few photos from our last day in London!

First, we spent a long time enjoying St. Paul's cathedral. No pictures allowed inside, so we climbed the dome and took some from there. (What's a European trip without at least one claustrophobic climb to the top of a gigantic church dome?)
This is the view from a teeny window in the floor of the dome...the people below are small indeed.
Taking a little break halfway through the climb.
Many landmarks in the background...the London Eye, Westminster bridge, the Houses of Parliament...
Spycam at work once again: tourist caught taking pictures at the top of St. Paul's...
Special picture for Hank Lee...can you see the Eiffel Tower way back there in the distance?
Thunderstorms broke out right as we were getting ready to head for dinner...such a far cry from Greece and 111 degrees!
And, finalmente, here is our happy group at the end of our celebratory meal tonight at Nobu London. Not an easily forgotten dinner, that's for sure. Afterwards, Stasia just kept patting her tummy and saying, "So satisfied, so satisfied."

So goodbye, faithful blog readers...it will be sad not to write the blog anymore (because obviously that means vacation is over...), but it's been great fun to write and to read your comments. Happy summer to you all!

E and L

and hey, if you just can't get enough, we've posted most of our many photos here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/loretta.matty/

Happy Summer!

Quite busy today, quite busy....

We did indeed begin our day with a tube trip out to Wimbledon....we had done our research and pretty much decided that even if we were willing to pay 87 pounds per person to see the men's final, we weren't willing to camp out in the queue overnight to get our hot little hands on the tickets. So we thought we'd just go in, walk around, maybe buy some official merchandise. We also brought spy cam, and on the walk to the grounds, we saw these boys:
Given there gear bags and the credential tags they had around their necks, we feel almost certain that they were official ball boys for the tournament. And that's pretty much as close was we got to Wimbledon, as the queue looked like this and it was still 6 hours before the match:
We still soldiered on to the entrance, where we were stopped by an extremely polite older gentleman steward who asked if we had tickets. When we said no we were kindly informed that no, we could not go on the grounds, or to the shops, or anything really, but we were welcome to join the queue. Then he asked where we were from and we had a nice chat about how he's been to California several times to visit his sister and how lovely the Monterey area is, etc etc. Such a polite way to say, "sorry, go away!"

We headed back to our hotel and consoled ourselves with a full English breakfast at our corner pub. See if you can find all the following in the picture: Fried potatoes, fried eggs, bacon, sausage, stewed tomatoes, mushrooms, toast, and of course beans:
The rest of our packed-full day included wandering around Covent Garden:
(look, Jill and Pete, we found two good name choices for kids at a little kids' shop there!)
This was Lo's favorite sign...she said she agrees with the sentiment.

We headed back to our teeny room for a rest before meeting up with the Hansens and a walking tour of the Westminster area.
(This is the whole room, one wall to the next, and i'm standing at the door...)

Scenes from the walking tour:
What's a blog about London without a picture of this particular landmark?
Here's Stasia and I standing in front of Westminster School, one of the top three private schools in the U.K., and a virtual steal at only 24,000 pounds a year for fees!
And, if hobbits lived in central London, this would be where:
We headed into the Abbey for a free organ concert...and check out who looks down from above the entrance!
(Yes, it's our very own MLK Jr...this part of the building is called the 2oth century martyr wall)

And finally, because it's vacation, and treats are good on vacation, some members of our group enjoyed ice cream in the park:
For our last hurrah of the day we all headed to a pub called the Jugged Hare for very delicious beers, homemade meat and veggie pies, and the girls had more treats for dessert. (the grown ups just had another yummy beer.)

Cheers for now,
E