New York City - November 2014

Finally, after at least 35 years, I went back to New York City.  Over the years so many people I know have praised the city but for some reason I was never interested enough to return until this year.  Nancy and I left Sacramento on the red-eye arriving in New York around 8:00 on Saturday morning.  Despite not having any real sleep on the flight, we did a good job of staying awake and keeping active for the rest of the day.

We took a cab from the airport to our hotel near Times Square (The Casablanca on 43 Street).  I was a bit surprised at the clear plastic barrier between the passengers and the driver - what kind of world is this where the cab drivers need such protection from their passengers?

The High Line Park

We immediately set out to walk the High Line Park - quite a nice urban park on an old overhead railway.  They have done an excellent job in creating this park and it certainly seemed very popular among locals as well as tourists.  We dropped down from the High Line into the Meat Packing district - an interesting neighborhood with great shops and restaurants.  From there we made our way through Washington Square Park to the Tenement Museum.  This was another relatively new project showing how people lived in the late 1800’s in the over-crowded and often quite squalid tenement buildings.  We took the Irish family tour which describes the life of an Irish immigrant family at the end of the 19th century.  Highly recommended and I would certainly go back and take one of their other tours.  

911 Memorial

We then headed over to the 911 Memorial and the new World Trade Center. The new building had just recently been opened to its first tenants. It is certainly a tall building but I didn't think it was a great building. The twin pools in the foot print of the old Twin Towers are quite a moving monument to the events that occurred there. We did not make it inside the museum on the site.

We walked back to the hotel for a brief nap and then walked down 6th Avenue to dine at Babbo’s, a highly recommended restaurant near West 8th run by a Mario Batali (apparently a TV Chef who I had never heard of).  The restaurant was heaving with people and we were very lucky to get a table.  A bit of a shock at the prices in the wine menu, but we found a reasonable $60 bottle which was about the cheapest in the house.   Grilled octopus, Wild Boar Ragu, and a Chocolate Dessert - what’s not to like.

Central Park

Sunday morning we were up and off to Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  New York is a great walking city and the weather was great for a walk through the park to the Met.  The Metropolitan must be one of the largest museum/galleries on the planet.  They have a bit of everything there and quite often they have a lot of some things - there must have been two or three roomfuls of pieces by Degas.

After an all too brief trip around the modern section of the museum we were off to Grand Central Station to catch the train out of town to visit Nancy’s second cousin Parris and his wife Stephanie.  Grand Central was quite spectacular - how wonderful it must have been in the heyday of steam travel.   The train ride up north to the town of Katona was quite nice, through some lovely little towns in the commuter belt for New York City.   We had dinner with Parris and Stephanie and their three sons and then took the train back to the city.    

Grand Central Station

Back at Grand Central we had a rather expensive cocktail in the Campbell Apartment - a little haven in the station which was once the private office of some high flying executive - despite its name it was never an apartment.  Another little treasure that is worth a visit.

Monday morning was wet and a little chilly.   I caught a cab up to the Metropolitan to get a head start on the museum while Nancy took a more leisurely walk.  There is so much material to work through but I particularly enjoyed the C.F. Martin guitar exhibit - a rare collection of some of the first guitars built by the founder of the Martin Guitar Company, pus one recent one used by Eric Clapton.   After the museum it was really raining hard so we ducked into a nice little Italian restaurant for lunch.  After lunch the rain had subsided and we walked up to the Guggenheim Museum.  A not too interesting (to me) exhibit of the German Post-War Zero movement but Frank Lloyd Wright’s building itself is worth the visit.

Guggenheim Museum

As night fell we went into the Apple Store on 5th Avenue by the park to marvel at the glass cube and staircase and then we adjourned to the Plaza Hotel for a cocktail.  After the Plaza we were walking past the Bergdorf Goodman department store as they opened their Christmas window displays (their Christmas windows are apparently a big thing). Alas it was not even Thanksgiving yet! It is going to be a long Christmas season.

In the evening we decided to try another Mario Batali restaurant, Esca on W 43 Street in Hell’s Kitchen.  It was a short walk from the hotel and again we were stunned by the wine prices - perhaps only half a dozen under $100 and practically none that I had heard of.  Who should be in the restaurant but Billy Joel.   He is looking a bit old these days, but then aren’t we all.

A cold front came through in the night and when we got up Tuesday morning the temperature was 21 degrees.   That is seriously cold.  We were walking towards the Park again and we passed the Ed Sullivan Theater where they film David Letterman’s Late Show (and where The Beatles made their US TV debut).  We looked inside the theater and put our names on the list to attend that afternoon’s show - it’s a lottery and they said they would call us back if we were selected.  We walked up the west side of Central Park past The Dakota Apartments where John Lennon met his end and then paid a visit to the Natural History Museum.  The National History Museum looked a bit tired and jaded but it had a wonderful collection of stuffed animal exhibits, and a multitude of dinosaur and early vertebrate fossils.

Natural History Museum

We got the call for the Letterman show while we were walking around, and were instructed to appear at the theater and say we were in “John’s Golden List” - that made us feel important.  Actually the list was not that exclusive and we along with a hundred other folks were on John’s list.  It was all a bit of a palaver - line up here, show your id’s there, line up again here for your tickets, come back an hour later for the show.   The show was interesting, but Dave has lost most if not all of the edge he once had.  The Paul Shafer band was impressive - really, really professional though I must admit I find Paul a bit hard to take. I have no memory of the guests, none of whom I knew.

Time Square is a very over the top display of electronic billboards and that night the largest of its kind on the planet was being unveiled - some 20 million pixels and stretching almost an entire city block.

Times Square Mega Display

Nancy likes musicals and I really can’t stand them, so that evening we compromised.  Nancy went to a show - Kinky Boots - and I went to a concert at Carnegie Hall.  Anne-Sophie Mutter was playing a Bach piece, a Previn piece and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.  It’s a really nice hall and the performance was great.  Andre Previn was there and the poor guy is not looking too well - he is quite large now, almost obese.

Manhattan from the Brooklyn Bridge

Wednesday morning I did a quick trip to the south end of Manhattan and walked through Battery Park, Wall Street and over the Brooklyn Bridge.  Then it was back to the hotel and a cab ride out to the airport for what turned out to be our delayed Jet Blue flight back home.  All in all a great weekend in a great city.

Here are some more photos.