Happy New Year
Hi and Happy New Year to all my LJ friends. I'm at LaGuardia airport waiting for a flight to Washington, and thence home to Paris, after about 5 days each in Colorado Springs (with my dad), Fort Worth (with my mom) and New York (with friends). I seem to have acquired an extra bag - a tote bag my mom gave me, which is full of books and clothes. My suitcase is full of ditto, only rather more books than clothes, or so it seemed when I was packing this morning. I had a grand time in NYC, but it's not a very relaxing city. Looking forward to getting back to the more leisurely pace of Paris.
Let's see, what all did we do? Monday night was Japanese food in Park Slope, our Brooklyn neighborhood. Tuesday my friend Martine and I explored SoHo and the Village, then took shelter from a pouring rainstorm with American friends in the West Village before late-night shopping at the famous Strand bookstore. Lunch and dinner were both Italian. Wednesday started on the High Line, a disused elevated train line that has become a park. And I bought running shoes on sale, but my quest for other new shoes was fruitless - a first for me in NY, where on previous trips I have always been able to find my very hard-to-find size. It was also a museum day: the Frick collection, which, rather like the Courtauld Gallery in London, is one famous masterpiece after another till you want to cry with it. Lunch was bagel sandwiches at a midtown deli, and for dinner I had posh Chinese food in Midtown with elrhiarhodan, an LJ friend I was meeting for the first time. She was fun and interesting, and gave me a ride home on her way back to Queens Long Island, which allowed us to get lost all over Brooklyn thanks to the fact that there are about 3 different 12th streets in the borough and her GPS (and I) mixed them up. Meanwhile, Martine's friends Frédérique and Sylvain got in that night.
The next morning I stayed in to get caught up on this and that while the others explored an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood further north in Brooklyn. We met in a Polish neighborhood nearby for lunch, which was sandwiches again - NY restaurants do great sandwiches. Then we went to Chinatown to pick up another friend, Cristina, who took one of those cheap Chinese immigrant buses down from Boston. Afterward Martine and I went to the Met to see La Fille du Régiment. It was a lovely production by Laurent Pelly and all his usual team, but we were disappointed with the acoustics. We were in the middle of the second (and last) balcony, and the music was much less present than it is from even the very last row of the Opéra Bastille. I suppose the fact that the Met seats 3,800 (against the Bastille's 2,700) could have something to do with that.
Um, I'm starting to get confused now about when we did what. I think Friday was when we went to the upper West Side. We took an express subway almost all the way to the very northern tip of Manhattan, home of The Cloisters, where the Metropolitan Museum keeps its medieval art. I'd been before, many many years ago, and back then I thought it was cool that all these bits and pieces of architecture and art had been brought over from France, Spain, Germany, etc. This time it seemed more heartbreaking than cool; comparing notes later, we found we'd all just mostly stopped looking at the provenance signs after a while and tried to simply appreciate the fact that the stuff was here and in an admittedly magnificent setting overlooking the Hudson River. And who knows, if it hadn't been brought here it might in many cases have been lost entirely, so.
After The Cloisters we took a bus to Morningside Heights, ate lunch at a bistro and dessert at a Hungarian pastry shop, then explored in and around the cathedral of St John the Divine. The French people wanted to see Harlem but as a couple of them have trouble walking, we waited for a bus and by the time we got there it was too dark to see much. Maybe next time. Dinner that night was finger food and soup from Union Market, a foodie paradise in Park Slope.
Yesterday I again took the morning off to do online chores. I may not have been to NY in a long time, but I've been often enough that I didn't feel like I needed to go go go all the time. Frédérique and I did explore a bit in Park Slope, and then we went to Midtown Manhattan to meet the others. Sylvain and Fréddie had New Year's Eve plans in New Jersey but the rest of us wanted to hear a free concert ("of spirituals," we'd been told) at the cathedral. At the last minute, though, fearing NYE crowds, I decided to go home instead. The concert turned out to be A Child of Our Time, and I'm sure it was lovely but since I have tickets to see it in March in London, I'm just as happy to have had some alone time instead.
And that's it, my week in New York. It was much too short. Must keep an eye out for deals on flights, and maybe see about staying at Jane & David's next time. Oh, I was bitten by something, on my right arm and left ear, which both swelled up. Not bedbugs, I think - the bite pattern and type of swelling was different. Spider? Flea? Something in the subway? Who knows. I got an antihistamine and some cortisone cream, and voilà, problem more or less solved.
Let's see, what all did we do? Monday night was Japanese food in Park Slope, our Brooklyn neighborhood. Tuesday my friend Martine and I explored SoHo and the Village, then took shelter from a pouring rainstorm with American friends in the West Village before late-night shopping at the famous Strand bookstore. Lunch and dinner were both Italian. Wednesday started on the High Line, a disused elevated train line that has become a park. And I bought running shoes on sale, but my quest for other new shoes was fruitless - a first for me in NY, where on previous trips I have always been able to find my very hard-to-find size. It was also a museum day: the Frick collection, which, rather like the Courtauld Gallery in London, is one famous masterpiece after another till you want to cry with it. Lunch was bagel sandwiches at a midtown deli, and for dinner I had posh Chinese food in Midtown with elrhiarhodan, an LJ friend I was meeting for the first time. She was fun and interesting, and gave me a ride home on her way back to Queens Long Island, which allowed us to get lost all over Brooklyn thanks to the fact that there are about 3 different 12th streets in the borough and her GPS (and I) mixed them up. Meanwhile, Martine's friends Frédérique and Sylvain got in that night.
The next morning I stayed in to get caught up on this and that while the others explored an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood further north in Brooklyn. We met in a Polish neighborhood nearby for lunch, which was sandwiches again - NY restaurants do great sandwiches. Then we went to Chinatown to pick up another friend, Cristina, who took one of those cheap Chinese immigrant buses down from Boston. Afterward Martine and I went to the Met to see La Fille du Régiment. It was a lovely production by Laurent Pelly and all his usual team, but we were disappointed with the acoustics. We were in the middle of the second (and last) balcony, and the music was much less present than it is from even the very last row of the Opéra Bastille. I suppose the fact that the Met seats 3,800 (against the Bastille's 2,700) could have something to do with that.
Um, I'm starting to get confused now about when we did what. I think Friday was when we went to the upper West Side. We took an express subway almost all the way to the very northern tip of Manhattan, home of The Cloisters, where the Metropolitan Museum keeps its medieval art. I'd been before, many many years ago, and back then I thought it was cool that all these bits and pieces of architecture and art had been brought over from France, Spain, Germany, etc. This time it seemed more heartbreaking than cool; comparing notes later, we found we'd all just mostly stopped looking at the provenance signs after a while and tried to simply appreciate the fact that the stuff was here and in an admittedly magnificent setting overlooking the Hudson River. And who knows, if it hadn't been brought here it might in many cases have been lost entirely, so.
After The Cloisters we took a bus to Morningside Heights, ate lunch at a bistro and dessert at a Hungarian pastry shop, then explored in and around the cathedral of St John the Divine. The French people wanted to see Harlem but as a couple of them have trouble walking, we waited for a bus and by the time we got there it was too dark to see much. Maybe next time. Dinner that night was finger food and soup from Union Market, a foodie paradise in Park Slope.
Yesterday I again took the morning off to do online chores. I may not have been to NY in a long time, but I've been often enough that I didn't feel like I needed to go go go all the time. Frédérique and I did explore a bit in Park Slope, and then we went to Midtown Manhattan to meet the others. Sylvain and Fréddie had New Year's Eve plans in New Jersey but the rest of us wanted to hear a free concert ("of spirituals," we'd been told) at the cathedral. At the last minute, though, fearing NYE crowds, I decided to go home instead. The concert turned out to be A Child of Our Time, and I'm sure it was lovely but since I have tickets to see it in March in London, I'm just as happy to have had some alone time instead.
And that's it, my week in New York. It was much too short. Must keep an eye out for deals on flights, and maybe see about staying at Jane & David's next time. Oh, I was bitten by something, on my right arm and left ear, which both swelled up. Not bedbugs, I think - the bite pattern and type of swelling was different. Spider? Flea? Something in the subway? Who knows. I got an antihistamine and some cortisone cream, and voilà, problem more or less solved.