Wednesday was our only full day in NYC, and we squeezed in quite a bit. We slept in (for us) until about 7:30 and left the hotel about 8:30. We took the subway to Central Park and, despite being rush hour, it was not too crowded. At least, not compared to the Paris subway.
We got off at a station at the south end of the park, just across the street. Our original plan was to rent bikes so we could cover more of the park, but we just felt like walking instead. Before we headed into the park we stopped at a coffee cart because we hadn’t had breakfast. It had pastries, and something called a MozzArepa. Apparently, an arepa is a type of Colombian Corn cake. A MozzArepa is two of those with mozzarella cheese in the middle. Yummy!
We walked around without a plan. From everywhere we were in the park, we could see the tall building surrounding us. This is a very cliche thing to say, but it was really cool being in the middle of nature in the middle of such a giant mass of humanity. I was surprised by the giant rocks in the park. I’ve never seen them, in any of the pictures, movies, or descriptions of the Central Park I’ve seen or read. Why is that?
It started snowing while we were there. It was a light, beautiful, snow-globe-like snow. Brief and beautiful, and it added to the experience. After an hour or so we were getting pretty cold, but it was not intolerable.
We walked over and under some bridges, watched the ice skaters, and saw a few horse-drawn carriages shuttling people around. We went into a couple buildings, and we saw quite a few statues. As we were thinking about leaving we remembered Strawberry Fields and the Imagine memorial to John Lennon. So we took about a 20-minute detour to see that before leaving the park.
After the park we headed south toward midtown and the theater district. We decided we’d stop for lunch somewhere along the way that looked good. We walked down Seventh Avenue, but nothing looked that good, so we ended up relying on our map, and we went to a place called Toasties. It was really good, and it also felt good to be sitting down out of the cold. When we were done eating we had about an hour to kill before we needed to be at the theater, and we ended up at a neat bar called The Brazen Tavern, just about a block and a half from the theater. I had a beer that was specifically brewed for that place. It was good, and before we knew it, it was time to head to the show!
Deciding which show to go to was hard, but we ended up seeing To Kill a Mockingbird at the Shubert Theatre. This was the first Broadway show for both Andrew and me, so that was exciting. Not surprisingly, the theater was gorgeous.
The play was really, really good. I especially liked the sets. There were many things that I would have done differently if I had been involved, but that’s not unusual. All in all, it was a great first Broadway experience.
We didn’t really know what we would do after the play, so we decided to walk to Grand Central Station by way of Bryant Park. We stopped into the mid-Manhattan branch of the New York City Public Library — the location with the famous lion statutes. It was gorgeous inside, and I want to go back and take a guided tour.
Our next stop was Grand Central Station, which was also gorgeous inside, and I also want to go back and take a guided tour. However, it was rush hour, and crowded, so I didn’t take any pictures. We did, however, find a “secret” bar that Andrew had read about, and stopped for drinks. It was not a beer type of place, although they had beer on the menu, so Andrew had an old fashioned and I had a hot toddy. It did not seem like the type of place where you take pictures, but I couldn’t resist getting a covert shot of the ceiling, and the wall and the light fixture in the process.
From there, we floundered a bit. We tried going to a bookstore but couldn’t find it, then found another bookstore but it lacked personality. Then we went to a pizza place, but it did not reel us in. We decided to take the train back to Brooklyn and have dinner at a place I’d identified before the trip.
I’ll tell about that part of the day in another post.