On Friday Night after jakobi’s musical rehersal we drove to NYC arrving at the Liberty Harbor Rv Park and Campground at 2AM.
While Colleen and Jakobi slept in I took off into the city at 9am and visited the World Trade Center for the first time in 40 years. I had not been there since a trip while at college in 1984. I loved the World Trade center buildings. They were so iconic and cool looking and I remembered them from the 1976 version of “King Kong”. I took a tour to the top observation deck and took lots of pictures during that trip.
This was my first time back after 9/11 and the memorial was just as spectacular as the buildings even though they reminded me of a shower pan tiles and all.
I then went uptown to the MET walking through Central Park to get there.
Ambiana and her Unicorn
Colleen and Jakobi met me there at noon and Jakobi shared with us her favorite painting. She calls it “Sad Baby”
This is the sad baby, dropped by his mother as she is abducted by the Romans.
I was particularly interested in the paintings of Frederic Edwin Church, this being the 200th anniversaty of his birth. The above is his eulogy for Thomas Cole, his teacher, mentor and friend entitled “Above the Clouds at Sunrise”
I also like this one, “A Gorge in the Mountains” by Sanford Robinson Gifford
Colleen’s favorite is not a painting but a 4,000 year old hippo from Egypt’s 12th Dynasty named “William”
A Walk Through Central Park
After the museum we anbled through Central Park on our way to dinner at the Greek Kitchen.
CHESS
We were in NYC to celebrate my 61st birthday by going to museums and musicals. The first was Saturday Night and we saw “Chess”
Not a great musical, all about the cold war and chess players from the US & USSR playing each other and the lady who loves them both. Written in the 80’s with a music by the ABBA men and lyrics by Tim Rice of “Jesus Christ Superstar” fame.
The draw for us was to see Lea Michele who played Rachel on “Glee”
She was fantastic!
MAY 24th
We were so tired when we got back to our tent and wet as it started raining while we were walking through the park and never stopped. It rained all night and we woke up in a birthday puddle but the campgorund has an awesome laundry hang out room and we dried everything, moved the tent to a puddle free space and heading into the city…
…for birthday breakfast at the diner I went to every morning for 6 months when I lived on W4th & ^th Ave 40 years ago!
It was super yummy food and while we ate the rain finally stopped!
Super Yummy yes and also super expensive but check out this old school bil!
We had two shows to see today and we walked from the Vilage to Broadway stopping on the way for pastry yummies!
The Lost Boys
First up at 3PM was “The Lost Boys”. We watched the movie on Thursday so it would all be fresh!
The show was amazing! So much better than the movie. It added way more depth to all the characters and humanized the vampires. The staging was incredible as were the songs and the performances. We were glad we watched the movie because we got all the references and easter eggs. Awesome show!
Operation Mincemeat
After grabbing some autographs from the cast of “the Lost Boys” and a few slices of pizza we had a quick meet up with some friends of Jakobi who are in the musical she is rehearsing for with her and were in NYC as part of their HS theater trip and then it was off to 45th and 8th for our final musical.
This one is a British show that has won the most awards ever for a musical in England. It is a spy caper/farce with only five actors who play a jillion characters and sing, dance and move frantically about throughout.
The 5 actors were brilliant, the show was madcap and super funny with really good songs and lots of lively and inventive set changes. We all really enjoyed it. It was Colleen’s favorite of the three we saw while Jakobi and I favored “The Lost Boys”.
It was then back to the Jersey side of the Hudson for quick sleep as we got up at 6am (in the rain but not a puddle!!!) to get Jakobi to her musical rehersal at Noon in Montpelier.
Meanwhile in San Francisco
Ambiana was not with us because she was spending the week in San Francisco with her roommate Charlotte who lives there and their friend Stella! We missed her but she is a big girl and can make her own choices.
