Ham and Jam and Spam-a-looooooot!

Or: New York in a Nutshell

So we're back from New York! Okay, so this will be waaaay too long to do as one post so I'm basically going to do the rundown now. Pics to follow.

I'm pretty sure one could've squeezed more than we did in 2 1/2 days, but I wouldn't want to try it.

Day 1:

Fly to New York. Note to self: from now on, take Midwest Airlines if they go where you're going.

Check-in: hotel 2 blocks off Times Square. Tiny little room. Good view of the theatre in which The Wedding Singer (the musical!) is playing. Greaaat.

Dinner: quick at the Nathan's Hot Dog place right across from the hotel (I'm sure it was no Zweigle's but it sufficed).

Spamalot: in a word...hilarious. Can you really go wrong when the big numbers are called "The Song that goes like this" and "You can't succeed on Broadway if you don't have any Jews". The staging was tremendous. It's nice to see that they still use sets creatively in a multi-million dollar show. There was one unintentionally hilarious moment in the second act where Lancelot is "coming out" and they totally gaffed. You know it's a loose production when even the actors are laughing on stage. Did I mention that the show was hilarious?

After the show we did another typical touristy-type thing and just wandered around Times Square taking pictures.

Day 2:

Breakfast at the Westway Diner. We had no idea at the time but according to our tour guide this was the place where Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld hatched there little show about narcisstic New Yorkers (and not much else).

Bus tour of Manhattan. I had a fantastic time (more than I can say for some of the kids). It was interesting seeing all these places that I'd only read about. Once the tour guide (a funny little man named Lee with an unforgettable mustache) found out we were a music group he basically customized the tour for us on the fly. I thought that was pretty awesome. He pointed out buildings and their histories, architects, etc.

Stops included:

1) Lincoln Center. For those that don't know this is the facility that comprises the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre and New York City Opera and the Juilliard School (New York City's finest community college, according to Howard Hansen).

2) Strawberry Fields in Central Park and the memorial to John Lennon.

3) Greenwich Village

4) The courthouse where they shoot externals for Law and Order, City Hall and the financial district.

5) The Winter Gardens at the World Financial Center. From the atrium (where, had stayed a few days longer, Herr Vogler would have had a grand time at the Bang on a Can Marathon) you had a clear, unobstructed view of the work being done at Ground Zero. This was a surreal and not unemotional experience. It was weird to think that in this footprint once stood two colossal buildings.

6) After lunch we took the Staten Island Ferry out and back so we could get some good pictures of Lady Liberty (what's under that toga, anyway?).

I don't know that the kids appreciated the tour as much as we did. Then again, my wife and I are the type that like to go to concerts, museums, the opera and art galleries when we're on vacation. I guess that makes us nerds. I gladly embrace this.

After hanging out at Rockefeller Center for a few hours we went back to the hotel, changed and went to see Mamma Mia! I'm with Michael on this. I'm not wild about canned musicals where the 'creators' try to build a storyline around preexisting songs. It had its fun moments but I still fell asleep twice in the first act. Why did we go see this, you ask? Because that and Spamalot were the only shows for which we could get tickets (and I would have paid not to go to Phantom). Our ticket buyer got laughed at over the phone when he asked about tickets for The Lion King (that or Sweeney Todd would have been my 2nd choice).

Day 3: A butterfly flaps its wings in Peking...

Chinatown. It was a warm, muggy day so Chinatown smelled like, well, an expired fish market. Die Frau and I decided to skip it and head north to...

Little Italy. We wandered mostly, just seeing where we wound up. We stumbled across several little shops including a little independent bookstore (we never seem to be able to pass up a bookstore and it was air conditioned...whew!). After that we wandered into the Old St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was a beautiful old building in which mass was provided in English, Spanish and Chinese. Of course, it was the Old St. Patrick Cathedral because the new one was downtown (which I learned Day 2 the parishoners had original thought it was "too far" to travel to get to mass).

We had lunch in a great little restaurant with several of the kids. Mmmmmmmm...yes that means lunch was good.

We spent the afternoon wandering through SoHo and, much to die Frau's delight, we found her favorite bath and body store. Guys, if you're looking for something a little different than Bath and Body Works for your wife, girlfriend, concubine, etc. it's almost impossible to go wrong here.

Then came the rain. And more rain. And still more rain. It rained so hard for 10 hours straight that the subway was shut down the entire length of Manhattan for over 8 hours. Luckily we made it back to the hotel before all this happened. Well the shutting down of the subway part. We were all soaked.

With Hard Rock (gimme a break, it was close to the hotel) and an overcooked tuna steak sandwich in our rear view we made our pilgrimmage to the Virgin Megastore. I would like to say that this is the part where the heavens opened and sunshine beamed down on us from above and guarded us on our quest...but it just kept raining. Anyway something happened to me there that has never happened to me before: I wasn't the last one left standing shopping for CDs. I know, die Frau couldn't believe it, either! I was slightly disappointed that the selection of some of the composers I was looking for but I left with enough esoterica to keep me happy for a little while.

Day 4:

Just the plane ride home...with 2 really annoying middle-aged women sitting right in front of us who thought that they were teenagers in a nightclub rather than an airplane. They were also singing at the top of their lungs with their iPods so loud that they could hear neither how bad they were nor the disparaging remarks emanating from behind them. Hmmm...I wonder who would've done that?

Reflections:

Overall the trip was great. Die Frau and I have decided that we need to go back and drink in more of the city (sometime after we take our trip to New Zealand). I had a really good time (mostly) and it was nice to escape work for a few days. I'm pretty sure that there were a few kids that didn't really appreciate a lot of what they experienced but the fact is they still got to do it and one day they may reflect on it and be grateful.