And…we’re back

We’re back from our quick trip to the NYC area. The return was much smoother than the trip up!

A summary:

• Monday: travel up, check into hotel, go into the city, wander Fifth Avenue and thereabouts, return to hotel.
• Tuesday: Rainy. Not heavy, but a steady sprinkling and mist. We just wandered, starting around Times Square and moving on down. Ate Smashburger and then fantastic Korean fried chicken in Korea Town – here. A Korean chain, and while I don’t usually eat fried chicken – yah, I’d eat this. We didn’t see big sites, just wandered, finishing up with dinner back in Astoria here.  It was okay – trying to be higher end Italian, but lacking a bit on flavor. 
• Wednesday: I’ll just grab my summary from Instagram:  Spent the first part of the day in museums – the @metmuseum and the @guggenheim with friend and collaborator, artist Ann Engelhart, with whom I’m speaking on Sunday. (Ann’s website is currently in transition, so here is the link to her books) Plus, it was her birthday! Then more wandering, down to Washington Square Park and dinner at an Indian restaurant down there – Brick Lane Curry House…then over to the World Trade Center Memorial – no one doing grinning selfies this time, which was nice to see – and a walk down to Battery Park, peaking at the Statue of Liberty, then back up to the hotel.
• Thursday: Today was the day we’d do the Empire State Building – and do it early, and buy tickets ahead of time, or else I’d wuss out. So we did. I summarized that day here, in 7 Quick Takes. 
• Friday was the 16-year old’s travel day back to the Ham. I’ll tell you one thing. Well, two things: It’s very satisfying to have a well-traveled kid who, while having never flown by himself before as an adult, you know can handle anything very well. Secondly, to have a kid graduate from Unaccompanied Minor Purgatory is fantastic – no reams of forms to fill out, no $100 charge for the service…just drop him off at LGA, knowing he has a phone and money and a sister on the other end ready to pick him up.
• Ann Engelhart very kindly agreed to help with getting him to the airport. So she picked us up from the hotel (we were checking out anyway to transfer to her place for the rest of the weekend) and we stopped here, at the Jackson Hole Diner, for lunch. HUGE hamburgers for the guys and just really good food.  It was a great choice. Ann then navigated all the construction and we got J to the airport, gave him a hug and wave and sent him on his way.
• Then Ann drove M and me down to Brooklyn – that had been my request. The only time I’d ever spent in Brooklyn was in the park and on the bridge – I wanted to see more of the Fabled Land of Artisinal Air. It was fun. We centered our wanderings in Brooklyn Heights and Dumbo – spent a bit of time in the museum, looked at historical buildings, walked the Promenade, talked history, peaked into shops, took a look at St. James Cathedral, but only from the outside because it was closed, then ate some really good Italian here – we shared Orecchiette with Broccoli Rabe and Sausage and a fabulous Shrimp Emiliano. So good. Then back to her place in Long Island.
• Saturday was Long Island day. I’d never seen much of it beyond her town, in the more western part of the island, and I was interested – so we just spent the day on a drive – out to Orient, then on the ferry to Shelter Island, around Shelter Island, then on the ferry to Sag Harbor, then a bit of the south fork – through a couple of the Hamptons, so I could get a sense of what “the Hamptons” actually means – tony, refined shops, and huge shingled homes behind enormous hedges…right?? We had a couple of good meals – breakfast at Love Lane Kitchen in Mattituck and then casual, good seafood eaten on the water at the Point Lookout Clam Bar. 
• Sunday: Mass, then great bagels at the Engelhart’s, then a drive out to the seminary, which included a little science history lesson related to the Cold Spring Harbor labs and lots of nice views. We set up at the seminary, toured the place – the chapel is astonishing and of course one has to process the whole ghostly vibe of knowing that the place was once full of seminarians and now…is not. The talk went well, and then it was time to pack up and dash to the airport for the flight home.
• Things were fine here – J had worked his two weekend shifts – 4:30-10:30 on Saturday night, then up for a 7am-2:30 shift on Sunday, and Mass at 5 on Sunday. Daughter picked us up and went off to her internship this morning, M off to piano camp…and here I am, hoping to get some work done in the sort-of-solitude this week.

• Concluding thoughts: First, on the hotel. As I told you all last week, Manhattan hotel rates were through the roof, and while in the past I’ve been able to cobble together enough points to make it affordable, that didn’t happen this time. I was not going to spend $400/night for a place to sleep. So we went the Long Island City route, and I would certainly go that route again, but with one change: I wouldn’t stay in this specific hotel again. It was this Fairfield Inn – and everyone was very nice and the hotel was clean and so on, but it was just far enough from public transportation to be a pain. It was a good 20 minute walk to the subway, which is not too bad at the beginning of the day, but soul-crushing at the end, especially when you’re tired and especially because the walking route is not especially scenic, unless you like walking under the overpass on a sidewalk scattered with dead pigeons. Hey. Maybe you do, and it did give us something to talk about. The hotel runs a shuttle, which helps – and is easy to get at the beginning of the day, but for which you have to call at the end, and while they are courteous and get there as fast as they can, it’s still a level of hassle that I’d rather not repeat if I don’t have to. There are chain hotels that are closer to public transportation, so that would be my choice next time, unless I could score a deal in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Fantastic view, though.

• Secondly, just on NYC – you notice that much of our day is filled with just wandering. It’s the way I like it, and is a fine education for all. As my 12-year old remarked, “It’s so weird that Birmingham is the biggest city in Alabama, and it’s…like a village compared to this.”  The pace, the variety, the vibe and just the fact of New York City – a fact underlined as you fly in and fly away from it, and you can see it below you, dense, varied, diverse, busy, this fruit of human yearning, creativity, energy, greed, hope, skill and intelligence – just seeing that and being a part of it, if only for a few days, provides a profound education in the fits, starts, glories and failures of the human journey.
• An education that’s almost worth $400 a night. But not quite.