I got back today (very early today) from a long weekend in New York City with Paul.We walked a lot, as soon as we got to Manhattan on Friday. Starting near Macy's, then heading south to the Village for a cocktail or two at Pennyfeathers and other places, then back up again to see a very crazy Times Square at night. On Saturday, we walked from the Upper West Side, where we had a nice brunch at a nice cafe on Broadway. (So sorry I paid cash, so there's no receipt for me to remember the cafe's name.) We walked down Central Park West, past the closed-for-renovation Plaza Hotel, past the Apple Store and FAO Swartz and around to our destination, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. At dusk, after a nice late lunch/early dinner at the Viand diner on Madison Avenue, we window-shopped down Madison Avenue and crossed over to Rockefeller Center in time to join the throngs walking by the Christmas tree and ice rink at 30 Rock (seen here). Then it was on the subway to the West Village again, where we got excellent service at the Italian restaurant Trattoria Toscana.
On Sunday, it was time to catch up with my good friend Bill Hall. A producer, editor, writer, graphic designer, animator and cameraman who lives and works in New York, he surprised us with a director's cut DVD of Bill Gottlieb: Riffs, his documentary on the photographer who "defined the golden age of jazz." He suggested a great spot - Cafe Mozart, where we had a great brunch and conversation about life in the city.
Then it was down to Columbus Circle and a peak inside the new Shops at Columbus Circle, the new Time Warner shopping mall complex, before a long walk downtown again, through Chelsea, around East Village, going by Soho and into the West Village before rain got the best of us and we headed back to our hotel and the train home.
While visiting NYC, we stayed in Penn Station Hilton in Newark, NJ - which was very convenient and highly recommended. The hotel is across the street from the Newark's Penn Station, which is the western terminus for the PATH commuter train to Hoboken and Manhattan. And an added feature of traveling by the PATH train to and from Newark was the chance to go into (literally) the World Trade Center site. Coming from New Jersey into the site of the disaster for the first time Saturday morning was an amazing experience.
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