Saturday:
We tried to spend the remaining time in the morning going to the MOMA, but it did not open until 10:30am, which would have been cutting it awfully close with the airport [or so we thought]. So we walked through yet another street festival. It appears that street festivals in Manhattan on summer weekends feature four types of vendors, repeated endlessly: 1) pashmina dealers, 2) knockoff leather bag dealers, 3) cheap New York souvenir T-shirt dealers, and 4) street food of various ethnic backgrounds (usually Mexican, Greek, and Indian). We were taken on a scenic (?!) taxi ride through Queens on the way to LaGuardia [though I think he did avoid the tolls without costing us much time]. Finally, we ended up on a flight to Kansas City rather than Milwaukee because Midwest 'canceled' the flight because of weather. What they really did was combine two half-full flights to the Midwest and keep the non-stop money they charged the Milwaukeeans. Nice. They could have couched it as a green initiative, kind of like ride-sharing, but then they would have probably had to admit that it was a business decision and refund some money. Heaven forbid!
Friday:
Walked through Central Park up to the Guggenheim, saw art [Louise Bourgeois, Rothko, Pollack, early Kandinski, and Ad Reinhardt [all black paintings]], went to Neue Galerie, saw art [Klimt and Schiele], went to Candle 79, ate art [hand-cut Spinach Pasta with veggies in a peach-cashew cream sauce as well as delicious Whale Tail Pale Ale from Cisco Brewery in Nantucket], went to Met, saw art [oh, boy, huge museum, uh, Rembrants, Picassos, Bracques, Dalis, Renoirs, Sargents [Madame X], Degas [Ballerinas galore], El Greco [including the one of the catholic cardinal that Francis Bacon used as basis for Pope with Sides of Beef], Caravaggios [Juan de Pereja], Greek [most of the marble statues of males with the penises knocked off], Egyptian [an entire transplanted temple that would have been under water because of the Great Aswan Dam], Oceania, African, and the list goes on and on], walked home, fell down. Eventually got back up and went to O'Lunneys for beers and some bar food. The conversation turned to reflecting on the vacation and the lessons (or some might call them 'take-aways') from the vacation [more on this in the next Blog].
Thursday:
Grand Central Station, Greenwich Village, Food Tour led by Rahim, our form
er NYU student who is going back to chef school and knows WAY too much about food preparation and is absolutely in love with the Village and SoHo opportunities for eating and experiencing food created and prepared in authentic and delicious ways [restaurant highlight was Monte's [must go back] and old and fabulous coffee shop down the street was Cafe Dante], Soho, Kate's Paperie [air-conditioned place to stop and rest the feet and cool the bodies before the next stage of the walk; yes, stages like the Tour de France], Moo Shoes store font [where Sherry wanted to get some Vegan-friendly shoes] was closed, walked up to Angelica Cafe and met Darwin [our cool waiter who seemed particularly fascinated that we have been married for almost 17 years], walked Uptown to see Empir
e State Building [saw it, felt our pain in the feet, waved at it, and kept walking; caught a glimpse of Famke Janssen], bought beers and Pringles from a deli, watched TV and went to sleep.
Wednesday:
Tennis - Tennis - Tennis. Medina Garrigues and Ruano Pascual versus Spears and Kops-Jones, Pennetta versus Safina, Del Potro versys Murray
[saw it mostly on the Jumbotron while eating and trying to stay cool], Navratilova versus Novotna [exhibition, but still fun], Bryans versys Robredo and Roitman [third row at Armstrong - twenty feet away; over pretty quickly, but the Bryans stayed and signed almost anything the kids pushed at them, very cool.], Williams sisters versus each other [Venus played better, but Serena managed to win anyway], Nadal versus Fish [Nadal wore him down, and the match went until 2am]. Came home, hung 
out the do not disturb, and fell asleep.
Tuesday:
Tennis - Tennis - Tennis. Stosur and Raymond versus Erakovic and Kostanic-Tosic, Gonzalez and Monaco versus Soares and Vemic, Davydenko versus Muller [amazing upset, thought Muller eventually lost to Federer], Bammer and Jankovic [moved to Armstrong]. Went out and
had convenient, cheap [by Manhattan standards] pizza and a couple of Heinekens, and came home and went to sleep.
We tried to spend the remaining time in the morning going to the MOMA, but it did not open until 10:30am, which would have been cutting it awfully close with the airport [or so we thought]. So we walked through yet another street festival. It appears that street festivals in Manhattan on summer weekends feature four types of vendors, repeated endlessly: 1) pashmina dealers, 2) knockoff leather bag dealers, 3) cheap New York souvenir T-shirt dealers, and 4) street food of various ethnic backgrounds (usually Mexican, Greek, and Indian). We were taken on a scenic (?!) taxi ride through Queens on the way to LaGuardia [though I think he did avoid the tolls without costing us much time]. Finally, we ended up on a flight to Kansas City rather than Milwaukee because Midwest 'canceled' the flight because of weather. What they really did was combine two half-full flights to the Midwest and keep the non-stop money they charged the Milwaukeeans. Nice. They could have couched it as a green initiative, kind of like ride-sharing, but then they would have probably had to admit that it was a business decision and refund some money. Heaven forbid!
Friday:
Walked through Central Park up to the Guggenheim, saw art [Louise Bourgeois, Rothko, Pollack, early Kandinski, and Ad Reinhardt [all black paintings]], went to Neue Galerie, saw art [Klimt and Schiele], went to Candle 79, ate art [hand-cut Spinach Pasta with veggies in a peach-cashew cream sauce as well as delicious Whale Tail Pale Ale from Cisco Brewery in Nantucket], went to Met, saw art [oh, boy, huge museum, uh, Rembrants, Picassos, Bracques, Dalis, Renoirs, Sargents [Madame X], Degas [Ballerinas galore], El Greco [including the one of the catholic cardinal that Francis Bacon used as basis for Pope with Sides of Beef], Caravaggios [Juan de Pereja], Greek [most of the marble statues of males with the penises knocked off], Egyptian [an entire transplanted temple that would have been under water because of the Great Aswan Dam], Oceania, African, and the list goes on and on], walked home, fell down. Eventually got back up and went to O'Lunneys for beers and some bar food. The conversation turned to reflecting on the vacation and the lessons (or some might call them 'take-aways') from the vacation [more on this in the next Blog].
Thursday:
Grand Central Station, Greenwich Village, Food Tour led by Rahim, our form
er NYU student who is going back to chef school and knows WAY too much about food preparation and is absolutely in love with the Village and SoHo opportunities for eating and experiencing food created and prepared in authentic and delicious ways [restaurant highlight was Monte's [must go back] and old and fabulous coffee shop down the street was Cafe Dante], Soho, Kate's Paperie [air-conditioned place to stop and rest the feet and cool the bodies before the next stage of the walk; yes, stages like the Tour de France], Moo Shoes store font [where Sherry wanted to get some Vegan-friendly shoes] was closed, walked up to Angelica Cafe and met Darwin [our cool waiter who seemed particularly fascinated that we have been married for almost 17 years], walked Uptown to see Empir
e State Building [saw it, felt our pain in the feet, waved at it, and kept walking; caught a glimpse of Famke Janssen], bought beers and Pringles from a deli, watched TV and went to sleep.Wednesday:
Tennis - Tennis - Tennis. Medina Garrigues and Ruano Pascual versus Spears and Kops-Jones, Pennetta versus Safina, Del Potro versys Murray
[saw it mostly on the Jumbotron while eating and trying to stay cool], Navratilova versus Novotna [exhibition, but still fun], Bryans versys Robredo and Roitman [third row at Armstrong - twenty feet away; over pretty quickly, but the Bryans stayed and signed almost anything the kids pushed at them, very cool.], Williams sisters versus each other [Venus played better, but Serena managed to win anyway], Nadal versus Fish [Nadal wore him down, and the match went until 2am]. Came home, hung 
out the do not disturb, and fell asleep.Tuesday:
Tennis - Tennis - Tennis. Stosur and Raymond versus Erakovic and Kostanic-Tosic, Gonzalez and Monaco versus Soares and Vemic, Davydenko versus Muller [amazing upset, thought Muller eventually lost to Federer], Bammer and Jankovic [moved to Armstrong]. Went out and
had convenient, cheap [by Manhattan standards] pizza and a couple of Heinekens, and came home and went to sleep.
2 comments:
OMG, i can't believe how much stuff you did on your trip, it sounds _fabulous_
busy and fun!
Bill's right, you guys really packed it in...
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