After spending the first part of the year in St Petersburg, we paid a short (5 day) trip to New York to visit Diana's daughter, Lana. We flew into Newark, NJ, which is not the most convenient airport for New York, especially when we were staying in Brooklyn. It was a long drive through the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan and then a crawl through heavy traffic over to our hotel in Williamsburg, the Hoxton Hotel. We were pleasantly surprised when the hotel room had a wonderful view over the East River to Manhattan. What a spectacular view of Manhattan it is from this side of the River.
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| View from the Hotel Room, Williamsburg |
In the late afternoon we walked down to the East River and explored a little. The views across the River to the city were quite impressive.
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| Salatim at Laser Wolf |
In the evening, Lana joined us for dinner in our hotel. The restaurant on the top of our hotel was the Laser Wolf, an Israeli restaurant, Michelin rated, and it was quite good. Every main dish came with a tray of some 10 different dips and appetizers, the salatim (Hebrew for salad).
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| Night time view of Manhattan |
At night the view from our hotel room was even more impressive.
The next morning it was raining so we walked over to the nearest subway station and caught the train into Manhattan. The subway trains are old and rickety (at least the ones we rode) and they are a little dirty and smelly but I suppose that is all a part of the New York experience.
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| Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer |
Our first destination was the Neue Gallery on 5th Ave and 86th Street. A small but impressive gallery of early 20th century German and Austrian art. The most famous piece in the gallery is the Klimpt portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. The movie "Woman in Gold" tells the story of the theft of the picture by the Nazis and its eventual return to the Block-Bauer family in 2006.
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| Self Portrait in Camp - Felix Nussbaum |
There were plenty of other fine work there too - Klee, Kandinsky, Dix, Schiele. The very bleak self portrait by Felix Nussbaum of his time in a concentration camp is quite disturbing. He pictures himself during his time in a camp in France. The poor guy left Germany for Belgium before the war; he was arrested in Belgium during the war and sent to a prison camp in France; he was then transported back to Germany but escaped while in transit; he went back to Belgium again; painted the self portrait of him in the camp; he was then arrested again and transferred to Auschwitz which was his final resting place. The portrait is rather bleak and disturbing.
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| A fine Viennese Coffee in the Cafe Sabarsky |
The Neue Gallery has a rather fine cafe on the ground floor, the Cafe Sabarsky. This old wood paneled cafe has a great old world feel to it and the menu has all manner of German/Austrian food and of course some very fine cream cakes and tortes. We had lunch there.
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| Reservoir in Central Park |
From the Neue Gallery we went across the road to Central Park and walked around the reservoir there. It was still cold and the reservoir was still partly frozen. There were a few geese and ducks around the water's edge and quite a few dead geese and ducks too. Victims of avian flu apparently.
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| The Daily Show Set |
From the other side of the park we walked on through Hell's Kitchen to our late afternoon attendance at the filming of the Daily Show. Sadly, on this Thursday night, John Stewart was not hosting, it was Michael Kosta with Jordan Klepper. Nevertheless it was very entertaining.
It was quite a lot of waiting for the show to get going but it was most interesting to see how they put the program together. The warmup comedian that got us all in a good mood was a brilliant improviser. He had the audience in stitches. He picked on a lot of people in the audience to supply material for his banter. We were singled out too - he extracted from us that we were from England and Bosnia and that we were newly wed and that it was my first marriage in my 70's and that Diana made the first move on me. All good fun.
After the show we took the subway to Dumbo (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overcrossing) and met Lana and her husband, Adam for pizza. A Bosnian owned pizza restaurant. Those Bosnians get everywhere.
The next morning, Friday, we were picked up at the hotel by Lana and driven north out of the City into Westchester County and the town of North Salem where Lana kept her horse, Calvin.
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| Calvin |
Calvin is a fine looking horse and the stable was quite luxurious, as you would expect for Westchester County. I am sure Calvin has a fine life there - his own stall, his daily exercise, his grooming and food - all of it is taken care of. There was a covered ring with jumps and plenty of outdoor trails through the woods. We watched while Lana rode around the arena and took a few jumps.
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| Calvin and Lana in action |
I am not very knowledgeable about horses and jumping and I always assumed that jumping was all about the skill of the horse and very little of it had to do with the rider - they just have to sit there and try not fall off. Lana informed me that that was not the case. It is more the rider's skill than he horse's skill. The rider has to be figure out how to approach the jump and where to start the run up so that the horse is in the right position when he gets to the fence. Who knew?
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| Port Washington |
From the stable we headed back south and visited Port Washington on Long Island. Diana and Lana had lived there in the early 2000's so we visited their old home and some of the places that they knew from their time there. It is not the most exciting place but there were some very nice homes by the shore of Long Island Sound. There were nice distant views of the skyline of Manhattan too. Diana had watched the attack on the twin towers back in 2001 from there.
Lana dropped us off at our hotel in Williamsburg. We hung out there for a while and then got an Uber down to Dumbo again for dinner. Ubers are so ubiquitous there and we never had to wait more than a couple of minutes.
The next morning we took the ferry down to Dumbo and walked to pick up Lana and her husband Adam. We walked through Brooklyn and bought pastries and coffee to eat in a park in Brooklyn Heights overlooking the East River and Manhattan.
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| Brooklyn Bridge |
Diana and I then went off to explore on our own for while. We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. A popular thing to do, with great views of downtown Manhattan.
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| The 9/11 Memorial |
In Manhattan we walked over to the 9/11 Monument. It is quite a moving site with two pools in the footprint of the two towers. Water cascades down the edges of the pool and disappears into a deeper chamber below the main water level.
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| The St Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church |
There is a new Greek Orthodox Church adjacent to the site - St Nicholas's. The church that originally stood on the site was destroyed when the towers came down. This was the replacement. Inside there were some nice icons and murals.
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| The Globe |
The remains of the Globe, a sculpture that once stood in front of the twin towers is now mounted near the Orthodox Church. It is a little damaged from the tower's collapse but since it was once the largest modern day bronze sculpture (weighing some 20 tons) it was able to be recovered from the debris and reinstalled.
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| The Oculus Mall |
There is a huge subterranean mall, the Oculus, adjacent to the Twin Towers. It is an impressive piece of architecture but, alas, many stores were vacant.
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| The Statue of Liberty |
From the memorial we walked over to the south end of Manhattan Island where there is a nice view over to the Statue of Liberty. We continued around the shoreline to the west side (the Hudson River side) and then cut through Manhattan to Wall Street and the Stock Exchange. We caught the ferry from the Wall Street pier over to our hotel in North Williamsburg. A nice journey in the late afternoon on top of the ferry in the open air.
That evening we took an Uber to a restaurant in the Fort Greene area of Williamsburg for dinner with Lana and one of her long time friends. The restaurant, Theodora, served a wonderful meal but prices are quite ridiculous in New York - you can easily figure that it will be of the order of $100 per head.
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| The United Nations Building |
The next morning, Sunday, we took the ferry from North Williamsburg over to the East River to the East 34th St dock. This is just south of the United Nations building, an immediately recognizable building. The ferry is a wonderful way for us to get around. They are relatively frequent and they provide amazing views of the city from the river.
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| Rockefeller Center |
We walked through town on 34th Street to 5th Avenue where we turned north towards Rockefeller Center and Central Park. Lots of people, lots of traffic, lots of fine shops.
We had brunch in the restaurant at the top of Saks Fifth Avenue. A very nice restaurant, somewhat formal, very quiet, and just perfect after all the hustle of Rockefeller Center and 5th Avenue.
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| Anti-Trump Protestors |
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| Simon Bolivar, El Libertador |
We paid homage to the iconic Apple Store on 5th Avenue by the park, wandered around and marveled at the statues of South American revolutionaries there - San Martin, Jose Marti and Simon Bolivar. Why are they honored there?
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| Big Jazz Band by Jean Dubuffet |
We paid a brief visit to the Museum of Modern Art. It is a huge museum with so much art but, by now, we were feeling a little weary. We made a very cursory visit to the artwork and sat in the cafe for a while. We need to come back with more time and more energy. There were many great pieces - one of my favorites was Jean Dubuffet's Big Jazz Band painting.
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| The Lyceum Theater |
We next had tickets to a Broadway show, "Oh Mary". It was being performed at the Lyceum Theater on Broadway. The show had a full house and the tickets were not cheap. I am not a great fan of Broadway style shows and this one did nothing to improve that view. It was mildly funny, a little bit crass, but thankfully short (80 minutes).
After the show we took an Uber over back to Dumbo and went to dinner. Another fine but expensive meal.
The next morning, Monday morning, was our last day in New York. We had been wanting to try the bicycle rentals in the city so we decided to bike down to Dumbo to have breakfast with Lana. The city appears to have done a good job with creating bike lanes and providing adequate bike rental stands. You can usually rent both electric and manual bicycles and we were intending to do the electric version. Alas, at all the rental stations in North Williamsburg none of the electric bikes had sufficient charge so we settled for the human powered version.
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| City Bikes |
Thankfully it was a relatively flat course over to Dumbo so it wasn't too bad. However, it did make Diana emphatically state that she was taking a different mode of transportation back to our hotel.
After buying croissants and coffee, we sat in a park by the river with a great view over to Manhattan. We said farewell to Lana and caught the ferry up from Dumbo to North Williamsburg.
At the hotel we checked out and took an Uber to Newark airport. Newark isn't the easiest New York airport to get to from the city and next time we will use one of the other more convenient airports. Again our Uber arrived in a couple of minutes. That there are so many Ubers and Lyfts readily obtainable likely says a lot about the economy and the job market in New York City.
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