Thursday with the Perrys

This morning we took the subway to the American Museum of Natural History. We got it wrong the first time and had to double back because we were on the F or Blue line going to Jamaica instead of the C or Orange line to the museum. Anyway, we got there eventually, stood in line for tickets, and entered the museum. (Everywhere you go in NYC, you wait in line for whatever you want. It's like China.)

Our goal was to see the Hayden Planetarium. We found it and were herded, along with a bazillion 5- and 6-year-olds, into a domed theatre to watch the movie "Dark Matter" explaining how the universe was formed and the discovery of dark matter. You'll have to ask Neil deGrasse Tyson to explain. 

After the show, we did a little shopping in the museum gift shop and then went outside to wait for Haim and Nettie Perry to pick us up. Haim and Nettie live in New Jersy but come into the city often so they know what's going on there. They took us to the Museum of Art and Design, where we looked at the exhibits and had a light lunch at a very nice restaurant there. 

Then we all went to a place called Eatily, which was like an Italian whole foods market and eatery. After browsing the market goods, we went up to the roof restaurant for dinner. We didn't stay, though, because there was nothing, and I mean nothing, on the menu I would eat. All they had were body parts...pigs ears, veal sweetbreads, and I forget what else but it was other similar bits of animals. 

So then we got into the car again and went to SoHo to see the Casper bed that we saw on the Fareed Zakaria show. They said we could take a nap on it to try it out. We did lie on it for a few minutes but Haim and Nettie were waiting in the car so we didn't stay long. It seemed like a nice mattress though.

We had one more errand to run: I promised my hair stylist, Kim, that I would send her a New York cheesecake so we went to a bakery recommended by Baruck and ordered a 6-inch cheesecake to be delivered to Alpine, CA. The cheesecake cost $16 and the shipping was $54. Oh well, what the heck.

Haim and Nettie had heard about a pizza restaurant, Keste Pizza, and wanted to try it, so we went there for dinner. The pizzas were very good and had no weird stuff on them so I was happy, 

Finally, after a very full day, we returned to our hotel and said goodbye to our friends. We will probably see them again in San Diego.

Book of Mormon

Yesterday after our bus tour of Central Park, we caught a cab and met our friend Baruch at a Turkish restaurant for lunch. After lunch he drove us to a bakery restaurant for dessert. Baruch told us the restaurant was the one used in the movie When Harry Met Sally. We engulfed in a chocolate fondue of fresh fruit and marshmallows.

After lunch we went back to our hotel to rest for the evening performance of Book of Mormon. The play was everything we thought it would be...funny, rowdy and irreverent. It was a lot of fun and over much too soon.

Hop On & Off

This morning we took the Hop On, Hop Off bus for a tour around NY City. It was a bit cool & windy, but we were dressed warmly so it was ok. I took a few photos on the trip.

Beautiful

Last night we had dinner at Bond 45 then went to the theatre to see Beautiful, the story of writer/singer Carole King. We really enjoyed both the true story and the wonderful music. It was a very enjoyable event.

Tuesday, Our First Day in NYC

We are staying at The Muse hotel in Times Square, a vey nice hotel. Thankfully, they held our reservation since we never made it in on Monday. We have a suite on the 19th floor. Our view, though is only the buildings across the street. Views are hard to come by in NY. 

The first thing we did was take a nap. Boy were we tired. Afterwards, we set off walking toward Central Park, some 10 blocks away. At one corner we were accosted by a middle eastern bicycle cab driver who talked us into taking his cab on a tour of Central Park. But first he drove us to our restaurant for lunch. After lunch, we called him and he picked us up for the tour. He told us he left Turkey when he was 5, grew up in London, and has lived in the NY area for 20 years. Still, his accent was thick and we only caught parts of what he was saying. He was a funny guy, though, and we enjoyed the tour.

Inauspicious beginning

We left San Diego at 7:30 a.m. for New York with a change of planes in Atlanta. On the way to Atlanta we watched one of the movies I downloaded on my new IPad Air 2. The movie was Big Eyes, about Margaret Greene, the painter of the Big Eyes paintings--children with huge, sad eyes. Anyway, the flight was smooth and uneventful all the way to Atlanta. 

That's when all the trouble started. There was a half-hour delay before we got on the plane at Atlanta. Then when we got settled on the plane, they announced there would be a 2-hour delay because of bad weather in NY. They said we could disembark or stay on the plane. If we chose to get off, we would have to get new boarding passes to get back on. Most of us left the plane. Dennis and I got off the plane and checked in at the desk for new boarding passes. Of course there would be a delay before the boarding passes could be printed. 

It was about 5:30 p.m. by then and we thought we'd better get something to eat so we split a subway sandwich. We also had time to have a gelato. We finally were allowed back on the plane and flew off to our destination of La Guardia Airport. We watched another movie: Kill the Messenger, about the reporter who broke the Iran-Contra story during the Reagan administration. A thriller.

We had finished the movie and we thought we were ready to land when they announced they were circling the airport because of built-up traffic and bad weather. After going around and around for awhile, the pilot announced that La Guardia was closed and we were being diverted to Baltimore. As we were getting off the plane, they told us to check with the customer service desk to see about options for getting us to NY.

Because we were in the back of the plane, we ended up at the end of a long line of tired and disgruntled passengers. It was about 10 o'clock by then. People kept coming back from the customer service desk saying Southwest was telling everyone that there were no connections from Baltimore to any NY airport--ever. You can't  get from Baltimore to NY on Southwest Airlines. Eventually, we gave up and went to get our luggage and find a hotel for the night. We waited another hour for our luggage, which couldn't be unloaded because the containers were metal and there was lightning all around. 

Dennis got on the phone and made a reservation at the Microtel hotel near the airport. He also made reservations for the train to get us to NY in the morning. We finally got our luggage and went outside to meet the hotel shuttle. After 3 calls and nearly another hour we finally got loaded on the shuttle and taken to the hotel. By then it was after midnight EST.

We got about 4-5 hours of sleep then hopped on the shuttle, destination train station. The train ride was soothing after all yesterday's trauma. I wrote most of this blog on the train until it pulled into Penn Station. We rolled our bags off the train into the underground station, following most of the people up the stairs. 

Dennis said, "Everyone seems to be going that way, so we should probably go, too." I said, "Ok" and started going toward the stairs. I dragged my suitcase up the stairs with some difficulty and when I got to the top, I turned around and Dennis was nowhere to be found. Uh oh. I called him and he eventually found me. He went up the escalator on the other side of the stairs and I didn't know it. He thought it was all my fault because I didn't follow him and I thought it was all his fault because he was behind me and should have noticed I was going the wrong way. Oh, brother!

We eventually got over that and stood in another long line for the taxi. The taxi deposited us in front of our hotel and the situation started to improve.

Movie Tuesday

Movie Tuesday was a pleasure today. Woman in Gold is a fine film and Helen Mirren is wonderful in it. Of course, she always is.  Helen Mirren plays Maria Altmann, a Jewish refugee who enlists a young lawyer to help her recover a painting of her aunt stolen by the Nazis in WWII. The story is based on a Tacoma man's family history. This is one of the few good movie out there and worth seeing.