I did this once before, in the spring of 2015.
This trip is a little longer; 2 nights in NYC, and 3 nights in the Hudson River Valley. And Jenny moved to the Bronx.
I flew on American from Madison to Charlotte NC – their new hub. We had to walk across the tarmac, like how it was years ago when we flew to Raleigh-Durham on the way to visit Mark’s parents in Pinehurst. I was thinking that maybe the Charlotte airport wasn’t quite up to being an American hub, then I found that it was just that my flight came in on the older and most remote E concourse. And I realized how big CLT really is when I had to sprint from B4 to E19 on the way home. My flight from New York was late, and the one to Madison on time.
On Thursday I went to the Met, and wandered in Central Park, and had a glass of Prosecco at the Carlyle.
On Friday, I went to the MoMA – which I’ve decided is a terrible place to see art, too many people jostling you, and cutting you off, obliviously. I walked back to the upper west side through Central park again, and had really good Pad Thai for a late late lunch at 5:00, and then Jenny and I went to Warpaint.
15,000+ steps on both my NYC tourist days.
On Saturday morning we walked around in Jenny’s neighborhood in the Bronx, Riverdale. Evidently the Kennedys lived there for awhile when JFK was a child, in a big white mansion on the same street as Jenny’s more modest apartment building. But that’s the cool thing about Riverdale – there’s a wide variety of homes. We spotted something truly un-explainable on the sidewalk, not too far from the playground of one of the many synagogues in Jenny’s neighborhood, and because it was Saturday, there were quite a few kids there. Number 21 in the slideshow.
We had coffee and breakfast sandwiches at a Starbucks, cooling off from our walk, and then drove to the Upper West Side. I stashed my bags at the shop, and hung out in the Amsterdam Ave. NYPL until it was time to cab down to Penn Station and get the train to Rhinecliff.
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In the Hudson Valley, we went to Olana, the home of Hudson River School painter Frederick Church. And Rach worked out a braided style for me to wear to Al’s wedding.
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I had a couple of “only in the big city experiences”: On my first day, when I was at the Carlyle about 2/3 of the way through my first glass of Proseco, my bartender started making noise about how he was leaving soon. I took that as my cue to order another drink, so I did and closed out my tab. The resulting pour was HUGE, so I must’ve done the right thing. And #21 in the slideshow.