New York over Spring Break 2016

Solomon (15)  and Nova (13)

Over Spring Break Solomon, Nova, and I went to New York City to visit my sister, Brynn.  It was my first trip with just the big kids, Nova's first time on a plane, and Brynn's first time working on a show that went to Broadway.  (More on that later).

After we arrived, we met Brynn at a little crepe and coffee shop.  From there we were off through the city, winding our way through the flower district to the High Line park, an elevated greenway made by converting out of service railway.




Our first day there has been dubbed 'Boat Day' because we went on tour boat around Manhattan, as well as a little row boat through Central Park.  The day was gorgeous and unseasonably warm--nearly 80 degrees.  We spent the entire day outside, and I'm sorry to say, got a little sun burned.  Nova and Solomon did a little bouldering in Central park.  You could tell climbing on the rocks was a popular activity because the well traveled routs were smooth and slippery, though the rock was naturally rough.  I was taken with the architectural adornments of gazebos and ponds, not to mention all the spring bulbs and flowering trees.  We wandered about, stopped at the dairy, watched little remote control sail boats and heard street musicians and poets.  On the way out we hurried past Strawberry Fields.  Though listening to my dad play Strawberry Fields from a record is one of my first memories of pop music, I never knew that Strawberry Fields was also a place in Central Park.



The row boat was refreshing, fun, and slightly challenging.  Solomon was our first and best rower. We all took turns.  Some sibling splashing ensued, but it was a more or less peaceful expericene.  The turtles were out in force, gathering in groups of as many as 10.




















Our second day was Museum Day.  Inspired by our boat ride to check out The Cloisters museum, we set out for the far northern tip of Manhattan.  At 'the end of the line' we found one of the fabled New York subway public restrooms, plus tiled covered in quotes from neighborhood residents.



Walking around The Cloister felt like another world, just like my sister said it would.  Starring out at the Hudson River, you could see nothing of the gigantic city that it was someone still a part of.  It truly felt like being in a medieval monastery.



Our favorite parts included the intricate wooden prayer beads and the medieval gardens.  I admit I stocked up on return gifts here--George and the Dragon for Ariadne, Robin Hood for Charlotte, and reproduction Medieval playing cards for Charles.

Like the gardens outside, this crypt completely transported me to the Medieval period.  

 These playing cards are the oldest complete set known.  The suits are slightly different from ours, focused on the theme of a hunt, but essentially they are the same and can be used to play any modern card game.  

Illuminated manuscripts always intrigue me.  This one was particularly beautiful.

On the way back to Brooklyn we stopped at The Met.  Since the The Cloisters and The MET are all run by The MET, if you go the same day, you only pay once.

The kids know The MET through The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwieler, as much as anything else.  Though we could not look at the Egyptian exhibit up close, it was fun to see the waiters practicing choreographed individual service for an upcoming event (Easter Brunch?)

One of the main reasons for the trip (or the timing of the trip anyway) was the Broadway premiere of Anastasia, the musical my sister had been working on.  She was part of the costume department, and had been with the production since the summer before.

After going back to our hotel to get fancied up (why not? It is fun to dress up, and we were going to Broadway) we met Brynn for dinner at a collection of restaurants more or less across the street.  We chatted a little and got our food.  We zoomed through a NYC themed gift shop, picking up an I heart NYC teddy bear for Ariadne and an NYC snow globe for Charlotte (that child loves snow globes), in record time.

Spring flowers at The MET

Brynn left to work on the show, and we left to see it.  The line was long, the anticipation great.  Our seats were perfect--front, middle.  The show was everything one could ask for in a Broadway performance, a grand story, excellent singing, acting, dancing, and production value.  The plot was somewhat changed from the animated version, which I found both more historically plausible and more compelling.  Instead of Rasputin playing the part of the villain, it was a Soviet officer bent on tracking down any possible heirs to the throne.

After the show, Brynn showed us backstage where all the costumes are kept.

We also got to meet Brynn's boyfriend Karl while we were visiting her in New York.  They had been dating for awhile, but we were the first family members who got to meet Karl.  He made a good first impression.  We met up at an Italian restaurant with Brynn and Karl. Karl was kind and polite, asking Solomon and Nova questions as if they were adults, which they both appreciated.  Later in the trip we all went to Karl's apartment, ordered take out,  and played board games until it was well past my bedtime.

Part of what is best about visiting friends and relatives far away is seeing their day to day.  We walked through the park she visited nearly every day, rode the subway from her station and saw her apartment.  We saw the costume jewelry shop where the sparkly necklaces in Anastasia came from, Brynn's favorite knickknack store, and the expensive furniture store with a surprisingly good toy section.  We experienced the sights, sounds and smells. Mounted police strolled by near Central Park.  The people walking down the street were from all over the world, and were literally dressed for any and every occasion.  Street performers showed up all over the city, whether playing saxophone outside the MET,  or reciting poetry in Central Park.  There was even a band with a bass banjo in Washington Square doing a mean rendition of Summertime.  The kids had New York Style pizza, and got bubble tea in China town.

Many of the pictures from this trip are trapped on an ancient computer, so I don't have any of either Karl or Broadway. Words will have to suffice.  Maybe some day we will get them uploaded, but in the mean time, I wanted to post what we have instead of letting these languish in draft mode.

Baby Shower!

Parents to be. I am pretty sure Brynn made the name tags.

In November I got to host a baby shower, for my sister! (I am excited, can you tell?) Karl's sister and mom sent these beautiful flowers. 


  

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Painting onsies was a hit. Friends and relatives all got involved.

 There was a woodland theme, including a veggie owl, cheese ball hedgehog, and a delicious tree stump cake. One of the party games was to guess potential names. Brynn has kept lists of favorite names since she was in elementary school, so this game was especially fun for me. As you may have guessed, some were nature related. 

 

New York Part Two: Playing Tourist

What do you remember from a trip?  A week later,  a month later, ten years later?

When I was 17 I visited Paris for two weeks.  That was almost 20 years ago now.  I remember cigarette smoke, my host sister Magalie's aunt and grandmother discussing her parents' impending divorce while I sat, eating french pastry, pretending not to understand.  I remember Magalie's friend bumming a cigarette off of everyone she saw light up between the metro station and the Louvre, resulting in half a pack.  I remember almost skipping the Mona Lisa because my friend Tim and I didn't think it could stand up to the hype (or be worth the long line).  We were wrong. I don't have pictures of these things.  They are probably not what I talked about when I got back.

So how should I make sense of a jam-packed five days in New York City?  Should I list all the touristy things I did?  Recount late night conversations? Reflect on travel and life?  Maybe a little from each--but I mostly have pictures of touristy things, so they will be interspersed no matter what I'm actually writing about.

Because Brynn is still a full time graduate student, I had substantial to time loose myself in all the wonderful variety of New York City.  I got lost in Chinatown, I got lost in Soho, I got lost in Central Park and in Brooklyn.  I got lost at the Met and The American Museum of Natural History.  Some of this getting lost was intentional.  Some of it was not.  I thoroughly enjoyed all of it (except maybe getting lost on the subway).

One of Brynn's favorite places in the city is the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), and on her recommendation I went.  I took the long way, walking across central park.  Giant dinosaurs and early 20th century murals greeted me as I entered the stately AMNH. Only after I found myself inside did I realize that I had in fact been there ten years earlier.  It didn't matter, there was plenty to do and see.

My first stop was the Hayden Planetarium, where Neil De Grass Tyson did his best to explain dark matter to the audience in their movie Dark Universe.

From there I wandered through the Hall of Biodiversity, the Hall of Ocean Life, North American Mammals and African Mammals.  An immense cross section of a redwood rekindled my interest to see the redwoods that still stand.

In the Hall of Planet Earth, I found all sorts of plate tectonics that would have made a perfect field trip to go along with our globe making project back home (I have been making globes with the older kids and some of their friends).

At the Rose Center for Earth and Space, I learned about extrasolar planets.  Their exhibit on relative size of the cosmos was mind blowing.

The dinosaur exhibit had been redone to reflect up to date paleontology.  It turns out one of the dinosaur skeletons had been sporting the wrong head for a century.  The collection now includes the archeopteryx fossil showing feathers (below).

In the evening Brynn and I met up for dinner.  Smart phones seem indispensable in NYC these days--for directions, for communication, for change of plans.  I caught a surreptitious picture of Brynn on hers.  We were figuring out where to meet up with a friend of hers who had seen her show that night.  Due to the magic of technology, meet up we did.  We talked about her show, about life, travel, and work, having a good time until sometime around two in the morning.  The conversation ranged from the zen of a clean desk to culture shock when traveling between countries.

The weather was exceptionally cold, so I scrapped most outdoor plans (sorry Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building) and went for nice warm museums.

The Met was next on my list.  I wandered through the Egyptian Temple of Dendur; it turns out graffiti is an old problem.

 

Charlotte and I could have played 'I Spy' with this one display case for a VERY long time.  

Here's one of those 'proof I was there' photos.  I am old fashioned and pestered a stranger to take a picture of me.  

I found a statue of Hatshepsut, the only known female Pharaoh.  I'd learned about her only a few years ago when the kids and I were studying ancient history.  Though there had been some debate in the literature about whether or not her contemporaries knew her gender, I think this statue clearly answers the question.

I felt like a time traveler wandering through, going from ancient Egypt to Medieval Europe and on to a Frank Lloyd Wright house taken from--surprise--20th century Minnesota!  As I was leaving the museum music floated up the marble stairs and filled the enormous atrium.  A group of string players and a pianist were playing on the balcony that rimmed the grand entrance hall.  It was a magically perfect end to a wonderful afternoon. Turns out, there's free live music at the Met every Friday!


               
It being New York, and Brynn being in theater, we also got to see some theater.

A surprise favorite was a reading of Gilgamesh: A Musical Epic.  This one is a work in progress at the moment, so it was not fully staged.  But it was fully sung.  The ancient Sumerian epic set to music worked surprisingly well.  I'd read about half the original epic on the plane heading to New York, but had not yet reached the end.  (Assuming the musical is more or less true to the original) The main question it tackled was about mortality, and how to make the best use of the time we have.  Still surprisingly relevant.  And the music was catchy.  I found I had one song 'Beautiful Enkidu' stuck in my head the week after my trip.  I called Brynn and it was stuck in her head too.  A couple days later it was stuck in my husband's head, just from me humming it.  That's one good hook.

We also saw Sleep No More, an experiential theater piece loosely based on Macbeth.  The theater company did an excellent job setting up the atmosphere.  The production inhabited and entire building.  The top floor was a smokey (looking) crowded speakeasy,  A jazz group played on stage in dinner jackets.  The room was picture perfect, from light fixtures to wallpaper, to clientele.  The hallway was remade into a train platform, complete with a train whose dining cars doubled as...dining cars.  I mentioned the curse of the 'Scottish Play', and these two theater design grad students drew a blank.  They had never heard of the curse of Macbeth!  A short Google session later, they were believers.

Once the play had 'begun', we were ushered into another speakeasy style bar, encouraged to get at drink and enjoy the music (this time a woman crooning in an evening dress a la Rosemary Clooney).  From here, they took us in groups into the 'hotel' where the action took place.  We were all to wear masks and remain silent, but were allowed to go wherever we chose, look in drawers, read diaries, and follow any actors we saw.  And we were separated.  Kris was let off the elevator by himself, just to make a point to the whole group.



Inside we found an apothecary, an insane asylum, a taxidermist workshop, a graveyard, bedrooms, living rooms, a candy shop, a courtyard garden.  It was endless.  And creepy, very creepy.  After a half hour or so, the actors showed up.  They, like us, did not speak a word.  Soon we were following them around in herds, waiting to see what they would do next.  Here and there they would give us the slip, or intentionally take one or two audience members with them, but exclude the rest.  They had very effective ways of herding the audience without making us feel herded.  The play culminated in a dramatic scene including all the actors and (miraculously) viewed by all the audience members.

When it was all over we were back at the bar comparing notes with each other, trying to make sense of it all.  Brynn and Kris had seen it before, but since you wander through the play, you get to see different things every time.

One of the other memorable things I have no pictures for is an amazingly strange and amazingly musical thrumming that ran throughout Brynn's building on the second night I was there.  She and her roommate more or less chalked it up to 'strange city sounds' and claimed I just wasn't used to the city. But I assure you, this was LOUD, and bizarrely MUSICAL.  If I'd had more memory on my phone I would have made and audio recording.  Imagine a flute the size of a building.

There had been an electrical fire under the street earlier that day.  In fact, the fire continued to burn for over a day, with smoke and flames occasionally coming out of a grate in the street kitty corner from the building.  As many as four or five police cars and fire engines would come cordon off the street and just hang around.  But there was really nothing they could do but let it burn itself out, so they would stand around and stare.  (I'm sure this is part of why I got Aria and Charlotte a fire truck and a taxi as gifts.)  Anyway, this electrical fire was on my mind when I heard this strange noise.
 

It being winter in New York, I thought maybe we could go ice skating--maybe at Rockefeller Center? With brilliant white lights covering the trees and the famous statue gleaming gold, I thought it looked enticing.  I used to play hockey, after all.

Brynn wasn't so sure, as you can see by the expression on her face.  Instead, her friend Kris suggested we meet at Chelsea market.  

We had a great time walking around, taking in the ambiance and trying local seafood.

Here Brynn and Kris chat with our colorful Australian chef, debating which shell looks the best.

I think it was the first time I'd had oysters, and possibly lobster as well.  It was certainly the first time I'd had raw clams (turns out I do not like raw clams).  The oysters were my favorite.  Normally I do not take pictures of my food, but this was truly gorgeous.

For some reason, I was stuck on ice skating at Rockefeller Center.  When would I be in New York City in winter again?  Why not?  My last afternoon in New York was free--Brynn had a photo shoot for the play she'd been working on.  So I made my way back.  Here's a Lego version.

And me in front of the real thing, about to go ice skating.

I lasted five minutes before I fell and broke my arm.  I should have paid more attention to Brynn's opinion about the whole idea.  

I met Brynn for dinner as planned, taking the subway with a bag of ice down my coat sleeve. "Couldn't you go ice skating in Minnesota?" she asked.  My flight was in a couple hours.  "You should wear a sling.  People will be more likely to help you." She said. We ordered our food and she ran to a drug store to get me a sling and some ibuprofen.  (Trust a costume designer to know the importance of looking the part--and she was right, lots of people offered to help). After dinner she hailed a cab for me, got my suitcase in the trunk, and hugged me goodbye.  And that was the end of my trip to New York.