New York City
Fasten your seatbelts. This is not just another leisurely vacation day in the Northeast - this is a day preceded by months of planning to maximize our one day in Manhattan. Meredith knows her parents and how they can pack activities together so as “not to miss anything”! Yikes!! Did she do a job!
Richard dropped us off at the Peekskill train station to catch the 9:14 Metro North into the city. Once we arrived at Grand Central, we shifted to the 4/5/6 subway for a surprise trip past the last stop to see the “Easter Egg” of all subway trips - the now-closed FIRST subway station in Manhattan! Most New Yorkers have never seen this, and Meredith just happened to discover it through serious reading in preparation for out trip! When the conductor came out of his cubby and saw us sitting there (the only ones still on the train) he got into it with further description of this gorgeous stop and even took a photo of us with Meredith’s camera!
Off the subway in lower Manhattan, we had coffee in the Temple Bar of the Beekman Hotel (www.thebeekman.com) where multiple waiters treated us as if we were ordering buckets of champagne!
Next, we were to have a guided tour of St. Paul’s Chapel, the charming stone structure that survived the 9/11 collapses next door and the revolving demonstrations that seem to take place around there daily. Today, however, they were setting up for a concert, so we just soaked up the ambience and exited with the other tourists out the back door where they were handing out food to the poor.
Meredith’s new office at Abrams Publishing is across the street, and her team looks out the 9th floor windows at the top of St. Paul’s. This is one of the bas reliefs that adorn her gorgeous building. A short tour of Abrams and shelf of new projects she is editing, and we were off to lunch at Eataly (https://www.eataly.com/us_en/stores/nyc-downtown/). Come on…like 3 double-sided King Soopers rows of nothing but cheeses from all over the world; another two rows of nothing but different kinds of pasta! Who would have thought there were so many varieties?? Oh, and the food in the restaurant…to die for! The view…our table overlooked the 9/11 Memorial Site. Hmmmm.
I love this city. I love the Freedom Tower and the Oculus (exterior…not so much the interior). The 9/11 Memorial is just as moving as I remember from the last visit.
My camera could not resist taking two more before we left the area.
OK, make that THREE more.
We were next due for a tour through the Morgan Library (www.themorgan.org), however, we missed our window or strolled too slowly through Bryant Park or some such excuse. So, Meredith did a quick recalculation, perhaps inspired by this next location…
Where else but New York City would you find a free Reading Room in the middle of a sumptuous urban park for the people? Here it is in Bryant Park and financed by a bank! However, where are the readers?? Perhaps on their “smart” phones…
The midcourse correction became obvious as we started walking down this narrow street towards a neo-classic building at its end - the New York Public Library.
These bronze plaques mounted into the cement sidewalk on E. 41st St. (now christened “Library Way”) extend two blocks and incorporate 96 plaques designed by Gregg LeFevre. http://travelwithterrynyc.blogspot.com/2009/04/library-way-east-41st-street.html
Naturally, my greedy camera wanted to photograph ALL 96 of them, but the time schedule and traffic fortunately would not permit more than a few.
The first exhibit inside the library was this Mother’s Day collection of photos and verse. Meredith has the photo on her phone of the two strong women who accompanied me here. Cool.
I mentioned the architecture from the outside, but the inside was equally intriguing.
Meredith said that the ceiling in this reading room had recently been restored as some of the plaster parts had fallen down alarming several patrons.
However, this restoration was WAY beyond anything we were imagining. Look at that detail! Some great time lapse video of the reopening of the Rose Reading Room: https://www.nypl.org/blog/2016/10/05/rose-main-reading-room-reopens
Trying to stay on schedule, we cruised through Times Square on our way to dinner at the Glass House Tavern (http://www.glasshousetavern.com/) which was just across the street from the Ethel Barrymore Theater on W. 47th St. The meal was to die for (of course), and we finished just in time to wait in a very short line before the doors opened at 7 p.m.
