16-19 July 2018
New York City
City friends tell me that I always bring good weather when I visit. This continues to be true this time, when except for a very rainy day all day Tuesday, the weather has been bright and sunny with relatively low humidity--a brief break in the stifling July and August that New York always suffers.
Monday, 16 July 2018
On Monday morning we enjoy the short walk to 34th Street and Macy's main store, where we have a light lunch at a branch of Au Bon Pain. The ground floor has been recently remodeled (again) and the decorations and displays are much simpler and more "modern" than the previous reconstruction. The amount of merchandise in the two connected buildings that cover an entire city block is still astonishing. The Men's Store, alone, covers over four floors of half the building.
This evening we meet our cousins Scott and Michelle (on Will's side of the family), who treat us to a wonderful dinner at ViceVersa, an Italian restaurant on West 51st Street. We arrive at 7:30pm and don't leave until we close the restaurant at close to 10pm. With martinis before dinner and a delightful Sicilian red wine with the food, we enjoy several courses of modern Italian cuisine. The highlight for me was the veal and mortadella meatballs I enjoyed as an appetizer.
Tuesday, 17 July 2018
Since Tuesday is a rainy day we decide to spend a quiet morning in the hotel before taking a taxi downtown to 6th Avenue and 13th Street to meet cousin Helen and a friend for lunch at Bar 6, a Moroccan-flavored restaurant. After lunch we spend some time in Helen's co-op visiting with her and her cat, Willy.
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Regarding taxis in New York: the 15-minute ride from the hotel on 36th Street to the restaurant on 13th Street, during a break in the rain, was $10., including the tip. The 30-minute ride back from Helen's to our hotel (basically a shorter ride) cost $24. because of the rain and the start of rush-hour traffic. And on Thursday evening, when we taxi from Helen's to Lincoln Center Theatre on 66th Street, during the height of rush hour in very good weather, it costs $30., takes about an hour, and almost makes us late for the performance.
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This evening we have tickets for The Band's Visit, the Tony Award-winning musical. The performance begins at 7pm--rather early for New York--and is over well before 9pm. While Will and I both enjoy aspects of the musical, he was more impressed with it than I was. I thought the staging was very well done, with a turntable moving the actors and the action along. Kristina Lenk (Best Actress in a Musical Tony Award), was especially outstanding; her co-star and co-winner, Tony Shalhoub, had already left the production by the time we saw it. Will and I both agreed, however, that the actors were often difficult to hear and to understand. When speaking, they used accents that made communication difficult, and they did not project well; when singing, they were often drowned out by the orchestra. We were sitting in the first row mezzanine, actually quite close to the stage, so the clarity problems seemed to come more from the actors than from the listeners.
Since the performance lets out quite early and we had a very big lunch earlier in the day, we opt for a light supper at a self-service French bistro on the walk back to the hotel.
Wednesday, 18 July 2018
The sun is shining again this morning as we prepare to meet with my New York friend, Jay, whom I have known since the second grade. We have gotten together pretty often over the years, and talk on the phone regularly. But it has been a while--probably four years--since we last met in person. We manage to find the first quiet restaurant in the City, in which we can have a decent conversation without shouting--an Irish pub and restaurant not far from the hotel, The Ginger Man.
After bidding farewell to Jay we head back to the Hyatt Place to start packing and weighing our luggage for tomorrow's flight home. We taxi back to Helen's for Chinese delivery food for dinner, before the expensive taxi to Lincoln Center.
We again have great seats, second row on the stage left side, in the thrust-stage auditorium. This revival of the classic has lead actors of roughly the same age playing Eliza and Henry, which makes their relationship more psychologically realistic. At 40 years old, Lauren Ambrose is a little too old for Eliza (Julie Andrews was not quite 21 when when she made her New York debut in the original production). But she has a magnificent soprano voice that she uses to excellent effect. We are very excited to see her on stage, having spent several years of TV watching as she grew up on HBO's Six Feet Under. It is also great fun to watch Diana Rigg (whom I've seen on stage a number of times throughout her career) and Norbert Leo Butz have great fun in supporting roles. A great deal of money was obviously spent on the appropriate costumes and scenery (as well as on our tickets).
We thoroughly enjoy the performance of this classic that deserves its place in the pantheon of American musical comedies. But it does pale in comparison to the deeper romantic musical drama of Carousel, which was so overwhelming. The production is almost three hours long so it is quite late when we get back to the hotel--and we still have some last-minute packing to do before our 11am car takes us to the airport.
Thursday, 19 July 2018
After our morning hotel-included breakfast we finish packing and get our luggage onto a cart and out into the hallway, when I suddenly realize that I do not have my wallet (with all my credit cars, license, etc). I take my carry-on bag back into the room to search through it, but come up empty handed. I decide it must still be in the smaller shoulder bag I carry whenever I am out and about when travelling, but I have packed that bag in my larger suitcase. So I schlep the big suitcase into the room, find the shoulder bag, and the wallet is, indeed, inside it. That problem solved . . .
. . . but when I take the big suitcase back out into the hall, I accidentally close the room door with the side latch (to keep it open when you are inside the room) open, so that the door cannot be opened again. And, of course, my carry-on bag is still in the room! And, of course, it is getting very close to when our pre-paid car will be downstairs waiting for us. Will goes down to the desk and two handymen soon arrive to solve the probelm. They are able to push open the door without breaking it down or tearing the latch out of the wall. So all is well as we pay our bill and head out the door to the waiting car, to whose driver I give my name and destination at JFK . . .
. . . but just as we are driving down the block from the hotel I get a call on my cellphone that our driver is waiting for us at the hotel. In fact, we had gotten into the wrong car (even though I gave him my name), whose driver wanted us to pay for what I had already pre-charged. Fortunately, we are stopped at a red light, so we get out of this first car, put our luggage on the sidewalk, give the driver a tip, and Will goes back to the hotel where he finds the correct car and driver waiting and they come and pick up me and the luggage.
After all this flapdoodle, we are on a quick ride to JFK, without much traffic, arriving at the American Airlines terminal in about an hour. Our flght at 1:30pm leaves on time and we arrive in Phoenix about 20 minutes early, due to strong tail winds. Our early arrival allows us to catch an earlier-than-planned shuttle back to Tucson and we are safely at home with our cats by 9pm--and quite ready for a good night's sleep.
A Special Announcement
It has been a wonderful trip, although, as I mentioned earlier, the cruise was not the most interesting that I have been on. However, I am pleased to announce that we have booked our next cruise, this time on Holland America again. We leave Tucson on 30 November 2018 and fly to Buenos Aires, Argentina, via Houston. We spend two free days in BA (courtesy of Holland America), before joining a 14-day cruise on the ms Zaandam, from BA to San Antonio/Santiago de Chile, and then fly home on 17 December. This will be Will's first trip to South America. For me, it will complete my circumvention of the continent by rounding Cape Horn, having previously sailed from Valparaiso/Santiago de Chile to Ft Lauderdale in 2013, and from Ft Lauderdale to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2014.I will follow up with more details of this trip as our departure date gets nearer. In the meantime, I look forward to the next Bon Voyage!
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