The NYC part of the trip

We had a half day (Sunday), a full day, and a morning, plus two hotel nights, in the big city. We did all the things: saw a Broadway play, a funny musical; walked through Times Square and Central Park (got lost in Central Park – seems to be a tradition for me) and the length of the High Line; went to two museums, the Whitney and the Metropolitan; rode the subway, twice, and did not get lost; ate a nice Italian dinner our first night and spicy Chinese our last night. We walked 10 miles on our full day, and even grabbed H&H Bagels at the train station for our breakfast on our way out of town.

We’d chosen our hotel to be walking distance from Penn Station, so when we arrived Sunday morning about 11:00, we walked to the hotel to drop our bags and then went seeking breakfast. We ended up at a place called InCommon that was in a big new commercial building, Hudson Commons. We had to wait in line outside, but it went quickly. The food was a little mass produced, but they had a limited menu of things they could crank out fast and reliably. Only two kinds of bread – sourdough or a bun for the egg sandwich. Also they handed out menus and the line went right past the front window so you could see the food, so I’m sure most people knew what they wanted by the time they sat down. We did. The interesting thing to me was that the egg dishes that would normally have a poached egg had whole soft boiled eggs and I spent some time Googling kitchen equipment to see how they did it. On the menu they just said “eggs” rather than poached so as not to attract the wrath of any cooking method geeks. I finally asked the host and he said they boiled them in the shell and peeled by hand, 5,000 eggs per week. They must’ve held them in water or something. The egg in my shakshuka was perfect – hard whites and runny yolk. And it was not very hot, but the sauce was and made up for it. Mark had the Benedict, with sliced ham on top of sourdough, with the same eggs, avocado added.  

   

The musical we saw was Operation Mincemeat, and it was both funny and touching – the link goes to Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s article in the NYT Magazine about how she’s seen it 13 times. It wasn’t exactly on our list of things to see, but we’d heard about it and seen a song or two from it watching the Tonys on TV. And it turned out to be a really good choice. 

Afterward, although we’d gotten a few restaurant recs from friends and the NYT, the places were all kind of hike, so we used Google reviews and maps to find a place on 9th Ave, about 5 blocks from the hotel. Called Nizza, and turned out to be quite nice, regular Italian place. We split a salad, a pizza, and a pasta. I had a Negroni (the pic turned out a little weird, so not included) and had a glass of Chianti with the meal.

We went back to the hotel and watched our Sunday PBS shows (currently, Call the Midwife, The Forsytes, and Count of Monte Cristo) and then went to sleep. The hotel was OK, maybe not as nice a Kimpton, but it was clean and no weird smells. And I was happy with $600 for two nights in Midtown Manhatten. Our room was a little cold, and of course the big space-taking-up heating unit under the windows did nothing. We got another blanket for our second night and that helped a lot. Tuesday morning the cold drove us out of the room, but we went to the extremely nice Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station and got coffee and bagels there. 

But, back to Monday. We got coffee at a place Mark had spotted the night before called Cafe Aroma. Everywhere we ate was along 9th Avenue, actually, even the train hall. The first night, walking to Nizza, a person behind said, “yeah, that time I was here for three weeks, every night I just walked up 9th Avenue and ate somewhere different every night”. The bakery at this cafe was not artisan at all, no whole grains, but we had an OK, yellow cake style blueberry muffin and a chocolate croissant that was even more tasty.

Then we went looking for the Moynihan Train Hall Connector to the High Line, that we thought must be inside the train station. It turned out not to be, you got on the connector outside, across (of course) 9th Avenue. But going inside gave us a chance to scope out the station and and the Red Cap service that Rachael recommended. So all to the good.

We started walking south on the High Line, and the first things that I liked were these hot pink trees.

One of them’s my phone wallpaper now.

Then on to the Whitney for the Biennial. The first thing we looked at was Precious Okoyomon, Everything wants to kill you and you should be afraid, a room with 50+ stuffed toys, many with added wings hanging, from the ceiling. It doesn’t take too long to see that they are all literally hanging, being lynched, nooses around their necks. Below are my photos, and here’s the official photo with caption.

Next stop was the 7th floor where they had a selection of the permanent collection on view, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, all the faves, much of which I saw in 2015, when the Museum opened with a show called “America Is hard to See”. Mark liked that the best, I think.

Then we went through the rest pretty quickly.

“To produce Civic Views, Emilio Martínez Poppe visited more than twenty Philadelphia government agencies, interviewed employees, and took multiple photographs of the views from their office windows, which he has reproduced at a one-to-one scale and installed at a height that replicates the experience of looking out of each window. The project was inspired in part by the oldest surviving photograph in the United States, taken in 1839 by a worker at the US Mint in Philadelphia from an office window.”

I liked the kitch-y-ness of these ceramics by Erin Jane Nelson, they’re almost like picture frames or figurines that you could buy at Target, but the ceramics are also pin hole cameras, used to take the pictures in the frames.

This was all I liked well enough, or had the energy enough, to take a picture of. There’s lots more, here.

After, I kind of wanted to go to the Guggenheim and see Rauschenberg, but Mark wanted to go see Raphael at the Metropolitan. Either required cutting though Central Park, so we figured out our route ad walked a few blocks east where we could get the C subway, a straight shot up the west side of the park. We got off at 81st and found a coffee place for caffeinated drinks before attempting the walk through the park. Where we got lost, of course. I was trying to follow blue ball on the Google map and Mark was trying to follow his nose/sense of direction, and didn’t believe me when I said we were going the wrong way. Even after we asked a volunteer for directions, it wasn’t easy – they said go straight on this path and you’ll get to the Met – but it was really hard to tell if straight meant the left turn or the right turn. We got there, finally, and had about an hour and a half to see Raphael.

Here’s just a very small selection.

We walked back south outside the park and got the C at Columbus Circle, to head back to our hotel. Where we found a fancy Hunan Chinese place for dinner, Mountain House. Not right on 9th this time, but only half a block off. The picture of their green beans on Google maps was calling out to me. 

There were other nearby Chinese places that looked good, but they were more casual. After walking all day in the cold, I really wanted to eat somewhere we would be sitting down with real silverware and cloth napkins. We couldn’t get a reservation at Mountain House, but decided it’d be OK to just go and see if we could get a table, and if not, we could always go to one of the other more casual places. Giving up my dream of real plates and cutlery and cloth napkins. We did get a table after just a short wait because we were only 2, and they definitely had all those things, including a warmer for the tea and the chicken stew we got. We just ordered too much, dumplings (six in the order rather than the four we thought there’d be), the green beans, the tofu, AND the chicken stew. We should’ve gone for two out of the four.  

In the morning, like I said, it was too cold in our room, so we just checked out via text, and went to the train station for H&H bagels and Blue Bottle coffee. I wanted to visit H&H this trip because I’d seen an instagram post “Don’t buy hedgefund bagels” jeering at the Chicagoans waiting two plus hours to get PopUp Bagels, a big national chain, which lead me to read this NYT article, Big money is betting on bagels. Especially the bagel chains that make sandwiches, instead of being the kind where you buy your bag of bagels to take home. Like H&H – and Bagels Forever here in WI – used to be. Personally, I wish Bagels Forever never added the sandwiches. But I thoroughly enjoyed my H&H whole wheat bagel, toasted, with cream cheese. It was a really good bagel, even the cream cheese was good. The perfect breakfast for before a train trip.

We were back in the Hudson Valley by noon. It was a little warmer and the plan was to go do a little wandering around, shopping, touristing, and go into Woodstock. Yes, that Woodstock, not the one in IL. The site of the 1969 music festival is almost 60 miles away, though, over an hour on little country roads. And it costs $20 to get in nowadays, which come to think of it was about the price of a ticket to the 3-day event in 1969. (yep, $18 in advance, $24 at the door, $7 for a single day. Which all became moot early on, because the organizers didn’t set up ticket booths and there were too many ways to get in without showing a ticket, and it became a free concert.)

I bought Jasper a tie dye shirt.

After Woodstock we drove to another scenic little town,  Phoenicia, for a late lunch at the Phoenicia Diner. 

And that’s the rooster, signing off. Hard to believe it’s already been a week since last Sunday at this time when we were leaving the theater after Operation Mincemeat, seeking supper.