Manhattan Vacation Day 5: Our day at Broadway and more.
The first place that we headed today was to the Musem at Eldridge Street, which I'd tried to visit once before. It's downtown and kinda out of the way, and I was pretty impressed with myself just for navigating the subways and streets well enough to even get there. The museum is inside a beautifully restored old synagogue dedicated to the Jewish immigrant and lower east side experience. We got in for free through our city passes, but I made a little donation. It was very quiet, and we had it almost all to ourselves, which was a really nice change from all the crowds every single other place we've been. Their interior had a lot of mezuzahs, and I took pictures of every one!
It was also the one and only place on the trip that asked us to put on masks. I've seen "masks recommended" signs and some people wearing them, but this was the first place to actually require it, and that includes the airports and airlines. Given my experiences with paranoid/over-cautious Jews, I was not surprised at all!
Then we took the subway back to 42nd Street to go to RiseNY, which Sara had really been wanting to see. It was kind hard to find, too, but for the opposite reason: because the area is so crazy-cluttered with people and signs. I got separated from Sara in Times Square (the only time it happened the whole trip), and even though we weren't that far apart, it took a while for us to find each other through all the hubbub.
RiseNY is a simulated ride where you buckle into seats in front of a screen and then pretend to be flying over all New York City. It sounded silly to me, but it actually did feel pretty real. I think it was designed for people like Sara who want to sightsee and get good views but who have problems with heights. At one point near the beginning, she grabbed my hand, and she and someone else on the ride both yelled, "It's not real!" Before we went on the ride, we went through the museum part of the site, which had a lot of information about New York City's history and how it's changed over time. There was a pretend subway car ride, a pretend freight elevator ride, and a pop culture section about all the shows/movies set in New York. Sara was pretty disgusted when she saw the dress that Carrie wears in the opening of Sex in the City.
After RiseNY, we had some time to kill before our walking tour, so we wound up eating at Junior's Restaurant just off Times Square, like we did last time. I've been trying to eat cheaply on this trip, and I've mostly done a good job (I've stolen a muffin and apple from the hotel breakfast every day to eat for lunch), but this was the exception. "Something Different," the brisket-and-latke sandwich that I ate back here, was still on the menu, and I think that still holds the record for the most expensive single meal I've ever eaten. But this time I had the latke platter and a chocolate egg cream for dessert, which were a little bit cheaper, and Sara had a ruben sandwich with a chocolate milkshake. So delicious.
Then we tried to visit the Disney Store, but there was a line to get in and then they closed early with no explanation. So then we went to the M&Ms store because we had to find a bathroom. Sara loved the huge cannisters of M&Ms sorted by color, and some of the products were interesting. Then we found a bench in Times Square and sat and people-watched until it was time to meet up for the tour. The costumed characters we saw included Mario and Luigi, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Hulk, and two women in nothing but very tiny bikinis, red-white-and-blue body paint, and huge feathered headdresses. We started counting all the people we saw in belly shirts and got to a pretty high number fast.
Our walking tour met up in front of the George Duffy statue, which we learned is the only statue of an actor in all of Manhattan. The tour had a lot of information like that (and we also learned the definition of broadway, off-broadway, and off-off-broadway for at least the third time!). We walked around the theater district, and the guide talked about some of the shows currently running and the history of different theaters. Some bits I found interesting were the curse of the Longacre Theatre (currently running Leopoldstat) and the extreme popularity of the Beetlejuice stage play (who knew?).
Our hotel is pretty close to the theater district, so we walked back there to rest for a while, then ventured out again for our Broadway show, Moulin Rouge. I'd been a little paranoid the entire trip that our tickets wouldn't work because I only had them on my phone in a browser window, not through the stupid app that Broadway tries to make you use, but they worked fine. Wednesday is two performance day, so the show wasn't until 8, and we sat in the very last row of the theater (as usual).
The stage play of Moulin Rouge was a little different from the movie, and mostly not in a good way. They added a lot of new songs, which kept things interesting but some of them felt kinda forced. I liked Satine's verison of "Firework" for how it started off quiet and acapella, then built to be louder and more inspiring, but the placements of "Rolling in the Deep" and "Bad Romance" both felt silly. Satine was much more martyred in this version of the play, Christian was much more of an obtuse, stupid male, The Duke was much more of an over-the-top villain, and Zidler was pretty much exactly the same as Jim Broadbent's version. (Sara said that they made him gay, and I asked, whoever said Jim Broadbent's character wasn't gay?) I also liked that in the movie, Satine had goals for herself, but here, she was just carrying the entire Moulin Rouge and Christian on her back. It was hard to understand what she saw in him, and it definitely subtracted from my enjoyment. Sara and I both felt bad for the one theater employee trying to get people to turn their phones off before the show started. Everyone was ignoring him, and nobody helped him out.
I started kicking myself for forgetting my water bottle as soon as we left the hotel, and I will never forget waiting in a loooong line outside the womens' bathroom during intermission, praying that there would be a water fountain inside, since there wasn't one in the lobby. There was, and I drank like a camel! I can get dehydrated easily, and it makes me prone to syncope. I was close to buying an overpriced drink from concessions, but I didn't. It was late when the show got out, and I was so tired I was tempted to sleep on the corner with the homeless guy instead of walking back to the hotel.
We're waking up around 6am tomorrow to check out and leave for LaGuardia airport. What a fun trip... and it sure went by in a blink!
Distance walked today: 4.9 miles.
It was also the one and only place on the trip that asked us to put on masks. I've seen "masks recommended" signs and some people wearing them, but this was the first place to actually require it, and that includes the airports and airlines. Given my experiences with paranoid/over-cautious Jews, I was not surprised at all!
Then we took the subway back to 42nd Street to go to RiseNY, which Sara had really been wanting to see. It was kind hard to find, too, but for the opposite reason: because the area is so crazy-cluttered with people and signs. I got separated from Sara in Times Square (the only time it happened the whole trip), and even though we weren't that far apart, it took a while for us to find each other through all the hubbub.
RiseNY is a simulated ride where you buckle into seats in front of a screen and then pretend to be flying over all New York City. It sounded silly to me, but it actually did feel pretty real. I think it was designed for people like Sara who want to sightsee and get good views but who have problems with heights. At one point near the beginning, she grabbed my hand, and she and someone else on the ride both yelled, "It's not real!" Before we went on the ride, we went through the museum part of the site, which had a lot of information about New York City's history and how it's changed over time. There was a pretend subway car ride, a pretend freight elevator ride, and a pop culture section about all the shows/movies set in New York. Sara was pretty disgusted when she saw the dress that Carrie wears in the opening of Sex in the City.
After RiseNY, we had some time to kill before our walking tour, so we wound up eating at Junior's Restaurant just off Times Square, like we did last time. I've been trying to eat cheaply on this trip, and I've mostly done a good job (I've stolen a muffin and apple from the hotel breakfast every day to eat for lunch), but this was the exception. "Something Different," the brisket-and-latke sandwich that I ate back here, was still on the menu, and I think that still holds the record for the most expensive single meal I've ever eaten. But this time I had the latke platter and a chocolate egg cream for dessert, which were a little bit cheaper, and Sara had a ruben sandwich with a chocolate milkshake. So delicious.
Then we tried to visit the Disney Store, but there was a line to get in and then they closed early with no explanation. So then we went to the M&Ms store because we had to find a bathroom. Sara loved the huge cannisters of M&Ms sorted by color, and some of the products were interesting. Then we found a bench in Times Square and sat and people-watched until it was time to meet up for the tour. The costumed characters we saw included Mario and Luigi, Sonic the Hedgehog, The Hulk, and two women in nothing but very tiny bikinis, red-white-and-blue body paint, and huge feathered headdresses. We started counting all the people we saw in belly shirts and got to a pretty high number fast.
Our walking tour met up in front of the George Duffy statue, which we learned is the only statue of an actor in all of Manhattan. The tour had a lot of information like that (and we also learned the definition of broadway, off-broadway, and off-off-broadway for at least the third time!). We walked around the theater district, and the guide talked about some of the shows currently running and the history of different theaters. Some bits I found interesting were the curse of the Longacre Theatre (currently running Leopoldstat) and the extreme popularity of the Beetlejuice stage play (who knew?).
Our hotel is pretty close to the theater district, so we walked back there to rest for a while, then ventured out again for our Broadway show, Moulin Rouge. I'd been a little paranoid the entire trip that our tickets wouldn't work because I only had them on my phone in a browser window, not through the stupid app that Broadway tries to make you use, but they worked fine. Wednesday is two performance day, so the show wasn't until 8, and we sat in the very last row of the theater (as usual).
The stage play of Moulin Rouge was a little different from the movie, and mostly not in a good way. They added a lot of new songs, which kept things interesting but some of them felt kinda forced. I liked Satine's verison of "Firework" for how it started off quiet and acapella, then built to be louder and more inspiring, but the placements of "Rolling in the Deep" and "Bad Romance" both felt silly. Satine was much more martyred in this version of the play, Christian was much more of an obtuse, stupid male, The Duke was much more of an over-the-top villain, and Zidler was pretty much exactly the same as Jim Broadbent's version. (Sara said that they made him gay, and I asked, whoever said Jim Broadbent's character wasn't gay?) I also liked that in the movie, Satine had goals for herself, but here, she was just carrying the entire Moulin Rouge and Christian on her back. It was hard to understand what she saw in him, and it definitely subtracted from my enjoyment. Sara and I both felt bad for the one theater employee trying to get people to turn their phones off before the show started. Everyone was ignoring him, and nobody helped him out.
I started kicking myself for forgetting my water bottle as soon as we left the hotel, and I will never forget waiting in a loooong line outside the womens' bathroom during intermission, praying that there would be a water fountain inside, since there wasn't one in the lobby. There was, and I drank like a camel! I can get dehydrated easily, and it makes me prone to syncope. I was close to buying an overpriced drink from concessions, but I didn't. It was late when the show got out, and I was so tired I was tempted to sleep on the corner with the homeless guy instead of walking back to the hotel.
We're waking up around 6am tomorrow to check out and leave for LaGuardia airport. What a fun trip... and it sure went by in a blink!
Distance walked today: 4.9 miles.