Day 2–Getting Lost, The Met, Lincoln and Mincemeat
This is my typical walk in NYC. Start one way, figure out it's the wrong way, go another way, no, that's the wrong way, and do it all over again.
Our day started with me walking. And as I write this on the morning of day 4, I can definitely say I have gotten older since the last time we were in NYC. I just can’t get my bearings. We have been here four times, and in the first three, I had no problem finding my way. Now I wander around like a lost child, looking for his mommy. Or my friend Mike and I wandering around Singapore pre-dawn. Yes, I could use a maps app on my phone, but I swear, when it says start route, I NEVER know which way to go. Supposedly, if I look at the little dot on the phone, it shows the direction I am going. But the buildings here seem to mess it up, and I will get half a block away before it tells me I have gone the wrong way. This morning I walked half an Avenue block (the long ones) before I realized I was going uptown instead of downtown, where I wanted to go. I know where I want to go; I just can’t seem to get my head in the right place. Check out this screenshot of my route. It’s nuts. I walk up a half a block, then back, then up the same block another way, then back and then a different block. The truly funny thing is that I get messed up when I go find these places in the morning but when we go out as a large or small group, everyone expects me to be the guide.
At any rate, Friday, after my walk, I went out and brought a small breakfast back to the room. We ate, then met the group for a "luxury motor coach" ride up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On the way, we stopped at the Strawberry Fields section of Central Park for a quick walk and talk led by our excellent guide, Hardy. I need to say here that it would be really nice if Break-Away Tours invested in Whisper devices that let you plug the guide directly into your ear. With 41 of us in a crowded outdoor space, it is sometimes very difficult to hear the guides.
After our stop in Central Park, we continued uptown (I think ?) to the Met. It was PACKED! But we had a private tour arranged that lasted a little more than an hour. Our guide told us that seeing all the exhibits would take about three weeks' worth of 24-hour days, so he gave us a highlights tour of what he thought we might like to see. We saw Tiffany glass, African art, European portraiture, British sculpture, and Greek statuary. I have to say, our guide was very good. He shared things I had not heard before (I never took an art appreciation course) about the paintings. I truly enjoyed it. When he was done, he released us into the wilds of the museum to catch lunch (which we did) and then to wander for about an hour. At this point, Kathleen had walked more than she had in a long while, so I got her an Lyft (thanks for the freebie, Chase) and sent her back to the hotel for a nap while the rest of us moved on to tour Lincoln Center. I told Kathleen later that she made the right choice, as the Lincoln Center tour was the lowlight (so far) of our trip.
Our guide was new and didn’t know much. It was kind of sad. People would ask him questions, and he would say, “I will have to look that up for a future tour,” or “That wasn’t in our training.” Since we had split into three small groups, our group had just picked the short straw. We saw the other groups doing a lot more interesting things, and the reviews from those groups were great, but we just got the wrong guide.
After our tour at LC, we returned to the hotel for a brief rest before heading out to dinner on our own. Kathleen and I had made reservations for six or eight (depending on the night) at nearby restaurants. That night, we were dining with six other Trilogy friends at the famous Sardi’s in the heart of the theater district. This is where cast members (and a lot of famous people) come to have dinner or drinks post-show. Their walls are lined with signed (by the subject) framed caricature portraits. Some are easily recognizable, while others we had to go up to and read the signatures, and depending on how bad their handwriting was, we still don’t know who they are.
The food (like the previous night’s at Tony’s DiNapoli) was fine. I had lasagna because it hadn’t been part of the feast the night before. The menu leaned a little toward Italian cuisine, but there were other options. But you don’t go to Sardi’s for the food. You go for the history. It’s been there for 100 years. And it’s one of those places you need to go once. We did the same thing when we went to The Ivy in London two years ago, before a play in the West End. Good food, but you are there for the history.
After dinner, we walked about half a block to the theater to see Operation Mincemeat. It was quite the show. Five actors, 54 characters, about a thousand costume changes, some great songs (sung way too fast ?), some very poignant songs that brought a tear to my eye, and some hilarious laughs. Not my favorite show I have ever seen, but pretty darn good. And it’s based on a true story. Check out the description in my pre-trip post.
After the show, we were DONE! It was back to the hotel (thankfully only three blocks away) and bed. I was so tired I didn’t even bother to walk the next morning…which was OK since we walked a ton more the next day. More about that in my next post.
Photos are below. If my gallery module works, they will look good and work well. You can click them to enlarge. Hope it does. Sadly I can't figure out how to drop them between my paragraphs so today they are all at the end.
I know we're not supposed to love AIs, but I believe that helping with tech support is one of their best functions. One of the things I dislike most about human tech support via chat or voice is that if you don't understand something on the first try, they start thinking, "This guy must be really dumb." When you ask them for the third or fourth time how to do something, they really seem to think you are a total moron. I don't usually have to ask three times, but sometimes, when learning an entirely new way to do something, it takes that many repetitions. And human tech support, being paid by the hour and the number of people they assist, truly just wants people like me to go away so they can go on with answering calls and helping people with a computer IQ over 10.
