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New York City Trip

While Martha was playing music for dances in France, I took a trip to New York City. In these pages I’ll tell the story of my trip and show some of the pictures I took.

I arrived in NYC on Sunday, July 2, 2006 and returned to Ann Arbor on Saturday, July 8. My plan was to see Broadway shows most evenings and find other points of interest during the day, and perhaps eat at some really good restaurants.

I arrived in NYC on Sunday and spent the rest of that day just relaxing. I got out of the hotel to eat at Daisy May’s BBQ. The pulled pork sandwich was delicious.

Monday was a big day. After breakfast at the hotel, I set out on an excursion with 3 goals in mind: learning to get around on the subway, seeing the Statue of Liberty, and get lunch at a Thai restaurant on the east side. Well I took the subway down to South Ferry with very little trouble. There I hopped on the Staten Island Ferry and got a good look (and lots of photos) at Lady Liberty. On Staten Island I saw a memorial to the people who lost their
lives when the WTC was destroyed (pictured here). Then I took the subway to the east side and found that the Thai restaurant I wanted to go to was only for dinner and was not open for lunch. So l grabbed a BLT sandwich at a deli there and took the subway back to the hotel.

Monday was also my first show of the trip. I had dinner at The Playwright Tavern, and then went on to see Sweeney Todd. It was an absolutely fabulous performance. Aside from the fact that the actors are also the orchestra, their acting was superb, bringing out nuances in the characters I had never seen in any previous performance. OK, so l’ve only seen one other performance, but this cast was superb.

There were hardly any shows playing on Tuesday because it was the 4th of July, and the MoMA was closed as well, so it was again a fairly laid back day. I don’t really care for fireworks, so I didn’t go to see those. I skipped breakfast and went for an early lunch at the Carnegie Deli. I ordered what was called “Ah, there’s the reuben,” which I expected would be a reuben sandwich, and took it up to central park to eat it among the trees. When I opened the bag I discovered that it was not a reuben sandwich, but a pile-o-reuben. It was a dinner plate sized tin with a slice of bread somewhere at the bottom, and a huge pile of corned beef, sauerkraut, and cheese on top. I did eat the whole thing, which might not have been a great idea, but then I skipped dinner. I also explored the Rockefeller Center a bit.

Wednesday started off with a trip to the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) after breakfast. I spent a couple of hours there and took lots of photos. You can see them on the photos pages. Later I had dinner at the New York Thai Grill & Sushi Bar, then did my usual afternoon routine of checking out what shows were available at TKTS. Then I went down to the box office for “Wicked” to see if there were seats. There were premium seats, but they were $250 a pop. So I went back and got a ticket for “Avenue Q” which was only $30. The seat was in the “nose-bleed” section; actually the very back row of the second mezzanine, but the view was still quite good. The show was very good; lighter fare than Sweeney Todd, but very clever and entertaining.

On Thursday I took the subway down to the site of what was the World Trade Center. It basically is a large construction site with placards and fences, but I took some pictures anyway. Then I started to consider seeing “Wicked” if there were tickets available, in spite of the price. I figured I had already skipped seeing a show on Tuesday, got a very cheap ticket on Wednesday, and if I was willing to skip seeing a show on Friday, then I could get a $250 ticket and still stay in my budget. After much inner deliberation, and interrogation of the man at the box office about how good the seats were, I bought the ticket.

Then I had dinner at 44 Southwest, which was a very good Italian restaurant. I had a dish called “Chicken 44” and it was delicious. The only sour note was that I came across a piece of glass in the bread I bit into. No harm done and I exchanged the bread

Then I was off to see “Wicked”. I was not disappointed. My seat was perfect, and the show was an awesome grand musical. I can’t say much about it without spoiling it for others who may one day see it, but l can say that it has me wanting to read the Oz books and the revisionist view of Oz that the play is based on; “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West”, by Gregory Maguire.

On Friday I went to the Frick Museum. I walked there by way of central park, and on the way back I stopped at Lindy’s. I got a bacon cheese burger, a slice of cheesecake, and a call from Martha.