Travelling to the eastern US without going to New York is a bit like having a bath
with your socks on, so off we went on Tuesday July 31.
It’s only a four hour drive from Bawston and
what’s more, you can collect states. You start in Massachusetts then go SW
through Connecticut, around Rhode Island, maybe glancing off Noo Joisey before hitting New York State. We’ve now got
six: California, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New
York.
The big detour was a shopping attack at
Woodbury Green factory outlets, an hour out of NY, on recommendation from
Anna’s friend Tash. Imagine ten thousand already quite well dressed people
bargain hunting in a place got up as a
New England village, hitting each other with Lacoste carrier bags and you have
some idea. Add in the fact that they’re about equal numbers Anglos, French
Canadians, Chinese and Brazilians and you can imagine what the food hall
sounded like.
We’d actually set off underweight so we
could get some new clobber at half price. Tee shirts, runners and other
assorted footwear went in the bag, Anna’s highlight being a couple of very nice
slinky dresses for laughable sums while I got a Ralph Lauren blazer with what
seems like neon buttons that completely outclasses everything else I’ve
brought.
After what Anna later admitted were four
hours and around $800 (I’d retreated to the café with my New York Times half
way through) we batted on down for the big one: driving into NY.
The good news was that by then we’d had the
car for four days and Anna had a slew of maps, most kindly provided by Henry in
Canada. It was a snap, much easier than Boston, particularly as you count down
the street numbers from 250th to 41st as you go south. It
only gets messy after the 60s as you jostle with taxis that try to toot their
way ahead of you and ignore lane markings.
And the crowning coup was handing back the
car about three blocks from our hotel, thanks to Melodie having booked the hire
for us. We actually felt like geniuses, helped by the fact that we were able to
walk through the concourse of Grand Central Station en route to the hotel.
And the Library Hotel! We’ve booked two
nights there as a bit of a splash before decamping to Brooklyn to stay with
Dana and Dennis (and their lovely daughter Sydney). It’s small, friendly,
perfectly located and unlike the place in Boston, the Wi-Fi and the fridge and
the TV actually work. And the front desk just helped us get tickets for
tonight’s showing of War Horse at the Lincoln Centre. Magic.
Sightseeing? We went up the Rockefeller
Centre in the morning “Top of the Rock’’ to orientate (tick) then went south with
our new one week subway passes past Wall Street to the Battery to go to the
Statue of Liberty. Our first setback was that it was raining and cloudy and you
can ‘t see a thing, plus the ferry didn’t go from the Battery (at the foot of
Manhattan) anyway. And when the going gets tough, these urban guerillas go back
to the hotel for a rest.
Later: War Horse was a wonderful show. It
was directed by the National Theatre in the UK and the actors were locals in
NY, and very good if a bit more racially diverse than history buffs would like.
One British officer was Vietnamese and one of the soldiers was African
American. But hey, this was never trying to be historically accurate. The
acting was good but most of the joy was in the puppet horses, operated by three
people each and each capable of carrying a man. A very memorable evening and a
great opportunity to see a show that is currently running in the US and Canada
but hasn’t got to Australia.
Thursday: Fell at the first fence by
finding the Guggenheim was closed but gave nearby Central Park a shake on a hot
day. Cross, then Tick.
Went to MoMA instead and went well. Tick. It has late 19th and early
20th century art that beats almost everywhere else outside maybe the
Musee D’Orsay. Picasso, Van Gogh times three, Cezanne, Gauguin, Leger, Toulouse
Lautrec, Degas, a roomful of Monet water lilies, etc etc. That was on the Fifth
Floor. Then we went modern on the Fourth and it just wasn’t the same. Warhol
and Lichtenstein were the best known, AND local, but a lot of the other stuff
hasn’t really stood the test of time and while it was pretty “out there” in
1910 or so, now it firmly isn’t.
There we went off to the UN to have a
guided tour and that worked well. It’s a
bit tatty as few of the 163 countries seem to get round to paying their dues
but we were shown round by a nice Japanese lady who is a clear believer and
told us a lot about all those subsidiary things like UNICEF and UNHCR and
landmine removal etc that don’t get as much publicity as the often difficult
issues like Syria.
And then we went to Brooklyn. Took bags on
subway to Dana and Dennis where we were happily reunited with a couole whose
wife Dana used to work for Anna in Sydney. Their daughter Sydney is now three
and gorgeous as ever. Little Miss America with an Australian name . Dana and
Dennis live in the garden flat at the
bottom of a nice 1890s brownstone and they had vacated their room for us so we
took them and Sydney out to dinner. Chaotic but fun, topped off by the world’s
best ice cream at a new place nearby called Ample Hills Creamery where Anna had
an ice cream called “caught in the rain’’ because it tastes of Pina Colada.
Friday…back to Anna.
