New York, New York

We've been back for a couple of weeks, but there is still a slight glow left over from our recent trip to NYC. Here's the executive summary:

Journeyed via Midwest Airlines to LGA. OLGS got us in a gypsy cab that quickly took us to our hotel in lower Manhattan, with a view of Ground Zero and the New Jersey skyline.

Then off to Avery Fisher Hall to hear the New York Philharmonic, surrounded by lots of the matinee set -- elderly ladies in fur coats, a few dragging long-suffering husbands behind them.

Stroll to Cafe Luxemburg on W. 70th Street. A nice bistro; the cool bit was that the wait staff, all uniformly young and beautiful, were getting instructions about the menu for the dinner hour. I wonder how much of that they actually remember. Then back downtown.

Saturday AM, off to the Whitney Museum to meet OLGS's cousin Blanche and her husband and son for brunch. I had the blintzes, to which husband Charles, who is 18 years my senior and a doctor, said, "You must be on Lipitor. No way you could eat that stuff without it." I mumbled something about good genes and continued stuffing my face.

Took the bus uptown to Columbia, across 110th street, to visit the statue of great Hungarian Louis Kossuth on Riverside Drive. Took pictures of OLGS standing in front Tom's Restaurant, famous among Columbia students long before it became a fixture in Seinfeld.

Then cab to the Ethel Barrymore theater to see new play by David Mamet, "Race". Theater packed, play OK but a little forced. Audience tittered at slightly funny bits to relieve tension caused by talking about uncomfortable subjects.

Then strolled around Times Square, visited a deli, primarily for a bathroom stop but also for cheesecake, then hopped a bus downtown. This is the way to see New York if you don't walk. Bus crawled down Broadway, past innumerable shops with trendy clothing, interior decorating boutiques, bookstores, etc. Who buys all this stuff?

By the time we got to Fulton, it was dark. We hopped off the bus, briefly stopped in our hotel room, and then cabbed to Chelsea to visit some friends. Nice dinner in a restaurant featuring local food. We were by far the oldest people there.

Sunday--Church at Trinity Church -- Washington slept here... Sermon had something to do with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and how he would be appalled by life in 2010. At least that's what I think it was about. Then brunch at another bistro. When we came out, it was pouring. We cabbed up to a movie theater, the Angelika, where we saw a film about the last year of Tolstoy's life with the incomparable Helen Mirren. You could hear the subway rumbling under the theater. I liked the movie, OLGS did not.

When we came out of the theater, it had stopped raining. Off to the Strand bookstore (18 MILES OF BOOKS). I bought a paperback to read on the plane, OLGS bought hundreds of dollars worth of books on Hungarian history and Hungarian emigration to the US. "It's all deductible," says he. Back to the hotel to get our bags, and then a cab to LGA. Pouring again. OLGS talked cab talk with the driver, who seemed to be pleased to have a former NYC cabbie in his backseat. Then onto Midwest Airlines, and thence home via Milwaukee.

And if I had several million dollars, I'd move there in a heartbeat.