Solstice Day 2—A Sad Sea Day & Your First Food Report

by | Jun 17, 2026 | Uncategorized

For years, I have been telling people that you are much better off taking an Alaskan cruise from Vancouver rather than Seattle. One of the main reasons is the Canadian Inside Passage. This is our 13th Alaska cruise and our eighth (I think) from Vancouver, and it is the first time we have not taken the Canadian Inside Passage.

If you have never sailed the Canadian Inside Passage, it is one of the most beautiful places we have ever sailed. Think of a river cruise on a very big river. Sloping mountains of evergreens come right down to the water’s edge. Eagles fly overhead, and you can sometimes see bears and deer drinking at the shore below the trees. Because this area is protected by islands on the outside and the Canadian mainland on the inside, the temperatures are warmer, and the sun is often out. At the top of this page is a map showing the area I am talking about.

Well, we were very sad to wake up to almost an open ocean. You could see land, but it was quite far to our east. This was not the Alaska cruise I had hoped for. My buddy Bob (who is a strong believer in the Canadian Inside Passage) thought it might have something to do with the size of the ship, but we sailed this way on Infinity a number of times, and that ship isn’t that much smaller than this one.

Otherwise, it was a pretty uneventful sea day yesterday. We had breakfast. Bob, Judy, and I went to trivia at 10:30, and then we met everyone for lunch. After lunch, I worked on a few photos, then did four miles on the jogging/running/walking track on deck 14. A major rant from me about walking on the walking track. This is a two-fold complaint. One small complaint I can deal with, but I will mention it so that maybe someone reading this can stop doing it.

Stop walking three people across a path built for three people. You are blocking everyone from going in any direction, whether they are walking for exercise or just getting from one end of deck 14 to the other. It is just plain rude. If you see someone coming your way and there is no place for them to go, walk single file for a minute or two until they pass. And while we are on the subject, maybe the real thing I need to say is this: BE SELF-AWARE! I can’t tell you how many people have just walked in front of me. Most of them were either talking to the person they were walking with, looking at the scenery, or looking at their phones. WAKE UP! You are not the only person on the ship or in the world.

My other quibble about the walking track is with Celebrity. And this happens on all the Solstice-class ships. Why is it that people walking, jogging, or running to stay healthy have to pass through one of the only smoking areas on the ship? WTF? Move the smoking area or shut it down. Every time I came around the track to that spot (about 35 times), I choked on the fumes from more than 20 smokers. There is a large smoking area in Sunset Park (one whole side of the aft of the area). That should be enough. Let’s close down the smoking area that coincides with the track. OK, rant over…back to yesterday.

After my walk, it was back to the stateroom to change for dinner (it was chic night). Kathleen says she saw some formal dresses, but I didn’t see any men in tuxedos and very few in ties. All of us had jackets on, so we were looking sharp. There was a pre-dinner reception with the captain and senior officers in The Retreat Lounge, which was very nice. Drinks and nibbles. The captain is a very nice guy who has been with Celebrity since before it became Celebrity.

I thought this might be a good time to talk about the food. So far, we have eaten in three venues on board. We had lunch at the Sunset Bar Cafe on deck 15 during embarkation. The salads and sandwiches were great. I do wish they had a bar there as well, because if you want something to drink besides water, you have to walk to the back of the Sunset area to the Sunset Bar and get your drink either before or after you get food. Now, it isn’t that far, but what was a pain was having to stand in two lines. One for food, one for drinks, and they are far apart.

We had dinner at Trattoria Rossa, and it was wonderful. If you go, have the lasagna or the lamb. That’s what we had. Dessert was also amazing with the made-at-the-table cannoli and tiramisu. It does pass the Steve Test with flying colors.

The rest of our meals (so far, 2 breakfasts, 1 lunch, and 1 dinner) have been at the suites’ restaurant, Luminae. The food has been just fine. Nothing amazing to write home to mom about, but fine. So far, Luminae does NOT pass the Steve Test. For those of you who are new readers, this is what the Steve Test is all about:

The Steve Test

After our disastrous Celebrity Millennium cruise in May 2022 (the food was horrible), my brother Steve came up with a way to rate food and restaurants while traveling, which I have found to be more effective and easier to understand than any other method I have encountered. From then on, I have called this the “Steve Test”.

Here's the test: If you eat at a food venue during your travels, either on a ship (main dining room, buffet, grille, or a specialty restaurant) or on land (hotel, restaurant, street food, etc.), and that restaurant was near you once you returned home, would you go there again? Would you become a regular? Would you go there for special occasions?

That’s pretty simple. I think it's the best way I've ever heard of to rate food on vacation, and I will rate each place I eat while traveling using the “Steve Test”.

I have high hopes that they will improve. My personal feeling is that they are trying too hard to make the food look cool. It takes nice photos, but at the expense of taste, and things that could be great are just OK. My hope is that this will improve as the week goes on. I have included some photos of the food below, with comments to show what I mean.

Breaking news! It’s Tuesday (our day in Icy Strait Point, which I will report on tomorrow), and we had lunch at Luminae. We had a sandwich that not only passed the Steve Test but also made me want to drive across town to get this particular sandwich. More about that tomorrow.

We also want to thank two new friends we have made, Richard and Randy, who told us a secret about Luminae—you can order off the Main Dining Room menu if you just ask to see it. Thanks, guys.

Here are some food pics for you. Enjoy. Don't forget: if you click the first shot, you can scroll through using your arrow keys or by swiping to read the captions and see what you are looking at. And feel free to look at these on your phones. I took them with mine.

"Do you remember when you were younger, and you used to take photos of your food, send them out to be developed, get back prints and then send them to your friends? Neither do we." —Popular internet meme

Solstice Day 1—Embarkation

by | Jun 15, 2026 | Uncategorized

Good day to all of you! It’s a sea day (haven’t had one of those in a while), and we are sailing up the Canadian Inside Passage (which is usually like glass) on a cloudy day. After the 80+ degree temps in Vancouver yesterday, this is welcome weather to me.

First, I have to make a quick correction to my last post. Mike and Cathy's flight was canceled, and United Airlines didn't even tell them. Thank goodness Mike checked. If he hadn't, they would have arrived at the gate and been told, "Sorry, no flight for you." But this meant I didn't have to make the trip from Chilliwack to YVR (Vancouver International Airport—all Canadian airports start with Y) and back again.

But that was only the start of their woes. Their original flight was from FLL to SFO, then SFO to YVR. Their new flight was SUPPOSED to be from FLL to ORD (Chicago), then ORD to YVR. But when they got to ORD, they were told their flight to YVR had been canceled. In case you are keeping track, that is two canceled United flights. So they rebooked them on a flight to Toronto. Which sounds crazy because they had flown west and were heading west, but now they were flying east. Once in Toronto, they would switch to Air Canada and fly west to YVR. A totally miserable flying experience. They did make it to YVR and out to Chilliwack…eventually, but the original plan was for all of us to go to dinner before they went back to their hotel for the night. They had been scheduled to arrive at YVR by 2:00 pm. That would have put us back in Chilliwack around 5:00, just in time for dinner. They actually wound up arriving at their Chilliwack hotel around 11:30. That’s a long day when you get up around 5:00 am in the EDT. It would have killed us.

That gets you up to date on everything before yesterday. And that brings us to one of the smoothest embarkations on a cruise ship we have ever had, from Canada Place (Vancouver’s cruise ship terminal) or maybe from anywhere. The last time we had embarked from Canada Place was two years ago. It had been the absolute worst embarkation experience of our cruising lives, worse than most airports. It had taken us 3+ hours to go from luggage drop-off to being on board. We totally missed lunch, and by the time we had finished all the safety stuff and unpacked, it was time for dinner.

Not this time! Bob had hired a van and driver to take us into Vancouver. He picked us up right at 9:00, and we were on our way. After a totally uneventful ride, we arrived at Canada Place at almost exactly 10:30, drove down into the parking garage, unloaded our luggage, got Kathleen and Judy into their wheelchairs, went through Customs and security, and then checked in. By 11:05, we were standing on the ship. That may be a record.

I do need to add (though I don’t think it made THAT much difference) that we were in a suite, which did get us through even quicker. The wheelchairs helped as well, since you can pretty much go to the head of many of the lines.

Once we were onboard, we were invited to leave our carry-on bags in our suite (it’s not really a suite, as you will see in the photos. For something to be a real suite, it has to have more than one room—not counting the bathroom). I have included stateroom photos below in the gallery. This was just a bigger stateroom. Then the six of us met up in the new Sunset Park on deck 15 for lunch (see photo at top). It was a glorious day, and we really wanted to eat outdoors, so that kind of made our choice for us. On past Celebrity cruises, when we boarded, we could pretty much eat at the buffet, and that was it. This worked out so much better. They had a variety of salads and sandwiches, and the nearby Sunset Bar provided the Aperol Spritz (for you cruisers out there, when you get a suite, you get a Premium Beverage Package). And the roast beef sandwich I had was delicious. There’s a picture in the gallery of the selection we had.

At this point, people were just getting on board, so the ship was still kind of empty. Which brings us to the only thing we don’t like about this cruise so far—TMP (TOO MANY PEOPLE). It has been at least two years since we were on a ship this big, and we had forgotten how many people were on board. And we try to forget that cruise two years ago, so it has really been four. When all beds are occupied, Solstice can accommodate more than 3,100 guests. My guess is that we are pretty close to that on this voyage. Another thing we aren’t used to is kids. This is the first full week off from school in many places, and there are a TON of children on board. That’s another thing we just aren’t used to. Most of our recent cruises have been on Viking (either ocean or river), and they have a rule: no humans under 18. So seeing this many kids (an estimated 200-300) is just crazy for us. To be honest, I never understand why anyone brings kids on Celebrity. If you have kids, take them on Royal Caribbean. It’s a nice cruise line owned by the same people, with about 1,000 times more activities for kids. Here, there is a kids' club, but that’s about it. And it certainly can’t handle all the kids on board at one time. It’s much too small for that. It’s supposed to serve every kid, from toddlers to teens. Not sure that is going to happen. So if you haven’t cruised before, take my advice—when you cruise with your kids or grandkids, choose RCL or Disney; ships that cater to kids.

Speaking of first-time cruisers, there are a lot of them on board, including a lot of first-time Celebrity cruisers. We ran into a couple while we were checking in at our muster station. She was happy to be on a cruise, and he just wanted to know where the nearest bar was. Seriously, he was thrilled that he could get 25 drinks a day on his Classic alcohol package. We told him he was on the wrong cruise line. That Carnival didn’t sail until Monday. She told us that her mother had bought the cruise, so they wound up on X. OK, if his MIL was on board, maybe that’s why he was drinking so much ?.

After lunch, I walked around the ship taking photos (see gallery) until about 2:30, when Kathleen called to say our bags had arrived. I went back up to the suite to unpack. Kathleen had read online about someone complaining that there wasn’t enough storage in the Sky Suites. We can’t imagine how many clothes she must have brought with her because we have SOOOOO much storage. Two full dressers and two full closets. I have four drawers that are so big and deep that I am using one just for dirty clothes. Usually, I have to put those in a plastic bag. By the time we had unpacked, it was time to meet the gang for sail-away at 4:00.

We had decided to meet at the same table in Sunset Park where we had sat for lunch, but Sunset Park was now JAMMED with people. No chairs, no place to even lean. Cathy finally snagged us a table and four chairs, and we hung out. Bob and Judy told us they were going to stay on their own veranda. We finally gave up. The crowd kept growing. We headed back to our stateroom, and Bob and Judy joined us on our veranda.

At lunch, a member of the food staff stopped by our table and offered us a 35% discount if we wanted to eat at a specialty restaurant on our first night. We had previously discussed skipping those, but I secretly (OK, it wasn’t a secret—I told everyone) wanted to try the new Italian place because I had seen they made cannoli at the table. We all thought about skipping it, but then Mike said he was paying, so we had dinner there last night. It was delicious. And it’s a beautiful restaurant (pics below). And the cannolis were amazing. The rest of the dinner, the ambiance, and the service were all top-flight. I would eat there again. It passed the Steve test.

We had decided to meet for pre-dinner cocktails in the Retreat Lounge. The first (and last) time we were on this ship, it was called Michael’s Club. It is now a cocktail lounge for Retreat (suite) guests only. We found it to be just what we were looking for. We had a table for six. There was no loud music, so we could have a nice time conversing. For the first 20 minutes, we were the only people in the place, so we received amazing service from our bartender, Christian.

Speaking of service, that is the one thing Celebrity has ALWAYS done well. The people who work on Celebrity ships are truly amazing. From the woman polishing stair rails who greeted me with a huge smile to the bartenders, waiters, counter staff, and everyone else, they provide some of the best service at sea.

Dinner was excellent. I had a decent octopus appetizer. I had lasagna Bolognese as my entrée. Kathleen had lamb, and of course, we got the cannoli for dessert. All of those were superb. The octopus could have been better. Our server said it was steamed for two hours (to make it more tender) and then thrown on the grill. But the problem with that is that the steaming made the outside kind of mushy.

After dinner, Kathleen went off to bed, and I joined the rest of our crew to see the first night’s main entertainment in the theater, a comedian named AJ Jamal. If you ever get a chance to see him, DON’T! While introducing him, the cruise director told us he had been on HBO. He must have meant he was playing Scrabble and dropped the letters h, b, and o and sat on them, because this guy was horrible. He had no actual set; he just kept trying to make a fool of audience members or find something funny to say about them. When he wasn’t doing that, he made all the usual cruise jokes about booze, food, embarkation, etc. Not a single original and funny line in his 45-minute set. Sad.

That about covers our day. A gallery of photos awaits you below. Don't forget: if you click the first shot, it will fill your screen, and you can scroll through using your arrow keys or by swiping.

"Money doesn't buy happiness... but it buys a cruise ticket, and that's pretty much the same thing."   —Captain Stubing on Love Boat

North to Alaska…one more time

by | Jun 10, 2026 | Uncategorized

We are hitting the road again this weekend, and it will be fun. We have decided to take a Celebrity cruise on the newly refurbished Celebrity Solstice. It’s a round-trip sailing out of Vancouver and includes stops in Icy Strait Point (AKA Hoonah), Juneau and Ketchikan. This will be our 13th Alaska cruise. I know…then why are we going?

This one is about friends. You see…once upon a time (September 2005), a whole bunch of people were going on a cruise on Celebrity’s Infinity from Vancouver to San Francisco. It was just a short, six-day cruise with stops in Nanaimo, Victoria, Astoria, Oregon and finally San Francisco. Prior to this cruise, we had joined a Roll Call on the Cruise Critic website.

For those non-cruisers out there, a Roll Call is a message board set up by Cruise Critic just for people on a single cruise who want to meet some folks before they board. It is also a great place to discuss possible shared shore excursions or specialty dinners. We joined the Roll Call for that cruise, and it literally changed our lives.

Someplace along the line, the folks on that Roll Call started discussing martinis. Not that anyone was a big martini drinker, but Celebrity’s Martini Bar is a well-known ship destination, and for some reason, it was decided that we would become The Martini Mates.

Every roll call seems to have one of two kinds of people. Those who are there just for the cruise and those who keep corresponding and traveling together in the years between. This is the core of the group. In our case, from that original cruise, we met two other couples who would become our closest friends in the world. And we (the Martini Mates—yes, we still use that name) have sailed all over the world together. Along the way, we have picked up other like-minded cruisers who became Mates as well. We still have a thread on Cruise Critic (but not in the roll call area—in what they call the “Friends of Cruise Critic”), and as of today, we have almost 5,000 posts and growing. We have members in three countries, and we have traveled with some of the Mates more than 10 times. At one point, we all sailed to Alaska together, and there were 17 of us on board. We have also gone to Hawaii, Alaska numerous times, New Orleans for Mardi Gras and  few other places.

We added more folks, but all along there has been a core of six, including Kathleen and me, Bob and Jude from Chilliwack, BC and Mike and Carol Preisman from Boynton Beach, Florida. That’s us below quite a few years back.

The Martini Mates. In front, Carol, Jude and Kathleen. In the back, Mike, Bob and I.

Sadly, we lost Jude in 2014 and Carol in 2019. Since then, Bob has found another Judy, and Mike has found a Cathy, and we love both of them.  Which is a good thing since we are all going to travel together one more time. Since Bob hates to fly, we are taking a cruise to Alaska. And that’s why Kathleen and I are going to Alaska for the 13th time.

It’s funny that today I was watching a YouTube video about the greatest last lines in any film. Number 12 on their list was Stand By Me. In the final scene, one of the characters is writing about the death of a boyhood friend, and he writes, “Although I hadn’t seen him in more than ten years, I know I’ll miss him forever. I never had any friends later on in life like the ones I had when I was 12.” I found this interesting because I am only friends with two people I knew when I was 12, but the other two Martini Mates going on this cruise (Mike and Bob), whom I didn’t meet until I was almost 60, are the two best friends I have ever had.

One of the many cruises we all took together was back in 2009, when we sailed on the eighth voyage of Celebrity’s brand new ship, the Solstice, in the Caribbean. We sailed on her again in 2017 when 17 of us sailed to Alaska. And now, more than 15 years later, she has undergone a multi-million-dollar refit, and we will be back on board to see the changes and improvements, and I will be blogging all about it over the next week. I will report on everything from the embarkation to the disembarkation.

If you have been following me for a few years, you may remember that the last time we sailed from Canada Place in Vancouver, it was the WORST embarkation of our cruising lives. We were sailing on Holland America’s Konigsdam, and the entire embarkation process took 3.5+ hours. That’s horrid. We shall see what this cruise brings us. I do know that Kathleen (and Judy) cannot stand or walk for 3.5 hours, so both have arranged wheelchairs to get them through Customs, check-in and onto the ship. We are hoping that now that we have arranged for those, embarkation will take less than half an hour, and we will find that we really did not need them.

Once on board, we will probably not get off for any major shore excursions other than when we visit Juneau. Back in 2007, the six of us sailed to Alaska (again), and Mike found an amazing company owned by two guys—Harv and Marv. They took us on a private whale-watching tour where we saw all kinds of wildlife, including whales swimming under the boat. It was such a vast improvement over the whale-watching tours from the ship, which usually have 50 or 60 people on them. On those excursions, everyone sits down, looks out the windows, and listens to the guide’s narration. On a Harv and Marv tour, you are in a smaller boat that can really move, and you are probably with either Harv or Marv, both super guides. Once we had booked this cruise, we decided we needed to do Harv and Marv one more time, so hopefully you will see some great whale shots that day.

The other highlight of any Alaska cruise is a day in front of a massive glacier. It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience (that we have done 12 times already?) and it still blows me away. On this trip, we won’t sail in Glacier Bay, but we will visit Hubbard Glacier. Just wait until you see the photos.

That’s it for now. The next report should be on Sunday (when we sail) or Monday. In the meantime, I have a lot of driving to do. Friday, I will take Keeley, our fur baby, south to Olympia for the second year of Camp Keeley (she went there last year while we were in Africa). She will spend the week with my daughter, son-in-law, grandson and granddaughter and have an awesome time. Then, after that 4-hour round trip (about 160 miles), we will spend the night at home before we head north to Bob and Judy’s place in Chilliwack, BC. That’s usually a 3-hour trip, including a stop at the border (133 miles). Once in Chilliwack, I will drop off Kathleen at Bob and Judy’s and then drive to Vancouver International Airport to pick up Mike and Cathy. That’s about a 3-hour round-trip drive (142 miles) and then back to Chilliwack, where we will all spend the night before we head to the ship. So between now and dinner on Saturday, I will drive about 10 hours and 435 miles. Whew, I am already tired thinking about it. See you Monday!

Truly great friends are hard to find, difficult to leave, and impossible to forget. —G. Randolf

Day 7–Our last Day…Hudson Theater Tour and I Sum Up

by | May 11, 2026 | Uncategorized

Wednesday was our last day in NYC, but our flight didn’t leave until almost 7:00 pm, so we had a whole day ahead of us. The only full-group activity on the schedule was a tour of one of Broadway’s oldest theaters, The Hudson. At 9:00 am, we met in the lobby and walked over to the theater, where we were again met by the best guide in Manhattan, Tim Dolan (that's him above, taking the ussie). I think that, as great as our other sessions with Tim were, this was his finest hour. He obviously loves Broadway, but I truly believe he would move into the Hudson if they would let him. Later, he showed us a secret apartment that has not been used since 1992, and I think he would love to live there.

The show currently playing at the Hudson was Every Brilliant Thing, a one-man show starring Daniel Radcliffe, so the theater was decorated for it. To be honest, I wish we had seen this play instead of Oh, Mary. I think everyone would have enjoyed it much more. There isn’t much more I can tell you about the Hudson Theater tour other than that Tim was at his best, telling story after story about the couple who built the theater, sailed on the Titanic, and eventually went broke during the Depression. We got to see videos of the theater’s ups and downs, from being a porno theater to housing the original Tonight Show with Steve Allen. It was the scene of performances from Elvis singing to an actual hound dog to Barbara Streisand’s first television appearance.

After the tour, we headed back to the Westin to check out by noon and then hung out until our bus left for the airport at 2:30. I grabbed a couple of sandwiches for lunch, and we were ready to go. Once the bus was loaded, it took more than 90 minutes to cover the 16 miles from the hotel to the airport. We, of course, made it in plenty of time. Kathleen and I hung out in the Admiral’s Lounge (American Airlines has a deal with Alaska to provide lounge access at JFK). The flight went well. We arrived on time, got our luggage, and joined 26 people headed back to Trilogy. We got home about 11:00 pm and found a very wound-up dog that just wanted to play.

Of course, I have a few photos left from our Hudson tour, so here they are. Remember, if you click them and view the slideshow, the captions explain what is going on.

Let Me Sum It

While doing tech support in our clubhouse here at Trilogy, many of our travelers stopped by to say how much fun they had and how they loved 90% of our time on Broadway. Their biggest complaint was all the walking and all the stairs. I have to admit that this trip far exceeded all my expectations. I had a great time, and about half of the reason was all the great people from Trilogy I got to know. Some I had known or worked with before we left, and others I barely knew.

We loved the shows, especially Maybe, Happy Ending. We (just the two of us) even liked Oh, Mary. I love a good, broad farce, and that’s exactly what it was. We loved about 95% of the food. Nothing incredibly special, but for us, dining was more about the people we were eating with. The best meal was the tapas dinner at Boqueria, and the worst was easily the chicken parm at Bond 45.

The Westin Times Square is an excellent hotel. Nothing special that we haven’t encountered before at hundreds of hotels in our travels, but it is incredibly well situated for attending Broadway performances.

I can’t say enough good things about Alex Tobias, one of the owners of Break-Away Tours, which planned this entire trip. The schedule was excellent. The tour guides at venues all over the city were outstanding, and Alex is a joy to work with during planning. As President of the Travel Club, I have talked, texted, emailed, and visited as we planned this trip. I could not have asked for a more responsive business partner. I look forward to working with him again on our London West End Theater Tour in June of 2027.

But the absolute best thing (at least for me) was all the sessions we had with Tim Dolan. This man is a walking encyclopedia of Broadway and the theater, and his delivery is amazing. After we got back from the trip, I subscribed to his newsletter and found that he writes just like he talks. It is truly awesome to both read it and hear it. He has a fan in me. That’s him in the giant selfie at the top of the page.

There is nothing that can match Broadway for stature and dignity. — Sammy Davis Junior

Day 6– Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, Broadway Museum and “& Juliet”

by | May 10, 2026 | Uncategorized

This was probably the busiest day of the entire trip. I got up early for a quick morning walk to find the theater we were going to that night to see “& Juliet,” a delightful jukebox musical featuring songs from the early 2000s. We heard everything from “Oops, I Did It Again” to “Can’t Stop the Feeling.”

I thought I would just get in about a 30-minute walk, but it did not work out that way because, once again, I got lost. Not sure how I did that this time, since both the theater and the restaurant I was looking for were on the same street. You had to walk by one to get to the other. I got some interesting photos you can see below. The one at the top is, in my opinion, the best shot I got on this trip. It’s a Times Square panorama composed of 11 separate frames stitched together in Photoshop.

After I got back from getting lost, grabbed a takeout breakfast from the diner across the street, and got Kathleen fed (she was not having a good reaction to the chicken parm from last night), I got down to the lobby to join the rest of the group

One thing I have not mentioned so far in our Broadway story is how we took over the hotel’s lobby almost every time we were going somewhere. It was a very comfortable lobby with room for about 50 people to sit. With 41 of us, that pretty much filled it up. It was a great place to meet in the morning to talk about the play from the night before, the tour from the day before, how much our feet hurt, or the aforementioned chicken parm. I have some photos I took this morning in the group below. Don’t forget that if you click them and look at the slideshow, they have captions, so you know what is going on.

After our early-morning lobby roundup, we headed to Rockefeller Center, where we took a short (not really) elevator ride to the Top of the Rock for amazing views of NYC. The views were truly amazing, but the hazy skies kind of ruined the photography. I know I could go into Photoshop and replace the skies, and I did that with a couple of photos, but as an actual photographer, I feel like that’s cheating. I posted both shots below so you could see what I mean. It was pretty darned impressive, though.

After our Top of the Rock experience, we had some free time to walk around the Rockefeller building and the surrounding buildings. I kind of became the tour guide, since I had been to this part of Midtown a few days earlier during our walking tours. A few folks wanted to see the inside of St. Patrick’s, so I walked them over there. Then we took a quick trip to see the site of the greatest art crime of all time (Rockefeller replacing Diego Rivera’s incredible mural with a piece of crap tribute to wealth and industry), and finally grabbed a drink at Starbucks.

We then met up with the rest of the group outside Radio City Music Hall. We got the full tour there as well (told you it was a VERY busy day) from a delightful young lady from California. Lots of photos of that are below as well. We even got to meet a Rockette. Many in the group had their photos taken with her, and she did a great job answering our questions. It was an excellent tour.

After that, we walked back to the hotel, where we could rest for about five minutes (almost not an exaggeration) before heading out for our last tour of the day to The Museum of Broadway. This place was amazing. The exhibits were outstanding, taking you decade by decade through the history of Broadway. The captions on the photos will explain more.

Then we were on our own for dinner (we hit a Greek place called Delos, which served good, basic Greek food), and then it was off to the theater to see “& Juliet.” Then back to the hotel to collapse…or to pack, since we had to have our checked luggage ready to go by 8:45 the next morning. More about our final day in NYC tomorrow.

I remember the old Times Square from when I was younger, and there was a seedy thrill to it. Some of that is gone, which I have a little bit of nostalgia for.  —Janeane Garofalo