Day 5–Theater Talk Breakfast, Fire & Harbor Cruise

by | May 8, 2026 | Uncategorized

This would be a good day for most of us. But not for the theater where Book of Mormon was playing on Broadway. Keep reading.

I didn’t go out for a pre-tour walk, so there were no photos from that. Our day actually started with a quick walk up the street to The Brooklyn Deli, where Alex had rented out the entire place for 90 minutes so we could hear from Tim Dolan. We had been with Tim for a separate theater talk two days earlier, when he and Cassie Silva from “& Juliet” spent an hour explaining how Broadway works. This time, we heard Tim talk during breakfast. We walked up the street, grabbed food, and then heard from Tim.

We would also hear from Tim on our last morning in NYC, and I can say that after being in his presence three times and touring Broadway with him, he is by far the best guide I have ever had the chance to tour with. There is no one like him. His encyclopedic knowledge of Broadway's history and lore is unmatched. More about him on the day we do the Hudson tour. So much of his talks are just us asking questions and him answering them in great depth. I know our tour to London next year will be a bit worse without Tim.

Sadly, you can’t tour with Tim personally unless you travel with Break-Away Tours. Tim owns Broadway Up Close, a business that provides tour guides for many parts of Broadway. He told us he has about ten guides working for him and that he seldom leads tours himself anymore, except for Break-Away. He alone is a reason to tour with Break-Away. Tim also owns a souvenir shop right on Times Square. If you are ever there, it is just south of 45th Street in Times Square. It’s a really cool, bright green booth.

After our outstanding theater talk, we walked back to the hotel. On the way, the streets were jammed, and there was a constant wave of fire truck sirens. When we got back to the hotel, we must have passed at least 20 of them. No exaggeration. After I got Kathleen back to our room, I headed out to buy postcard stamps (yes, I am still that guy) and took my camera in case I saw anything to photograph. As it turns out, I did. The fire was only three blocks away from our hotel. It was at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, where “The Book of Mormon” is currently playing. At least it should be by now, as they had a lot of water damage to fix. Happily, it wasn’t much of a fire, and we heard later that it started in a top-floor lighting rig. The NYFD had it out in no time, but in the meantime, they sent just about 20 trucks. I saw numerous engines, ladders, and ambulances. I got pretty close and shot some street photos of the whole incident. I asked Tim about it later in the week, and he said that they take no chances with the old theaters because so many of them have a bunch of flammables inside.

After that, it was back to the room to get ready for our afternoon trip, when we would take a guided harbor cruise around most of Manhattan, including a close-up view of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the Brooklyn Bridge. We had a great guide on board the boat, and we spent a lot of time with him. I didn’t take many photos because the sky was very flat that day, but what I did get is below, along with the rest of my pics.

After the harbor tour, it was back to the hotel to get ready for our third group dinner at Bond 45. This was the worst of the three group dinners, and it did not pass the Steve Test. See the quote below if you don’t know what the Steve Test is. There was some pretty decent pizza for an appetizer, along with a make-your-own Caesar. I just wish they would cut up the lettuce. These wedge salads are a pain. But the real pain was the entrée choices: Atlantic salmon (YUCK!), pasta (pretty blah), and what they called chicken parm, which was chicken breasts smashed as flat as a thin pizza crust, covered in tomato sauce and cheese, and then topped with a literal half pound of pepperoni. Just what you give old people battling cholesterol.

I forgot to mention that while I was out taking photos of firefighters, the rest of the group (minus Kathleen and me) were visiting the 911 museum. We had just been there a few years ago, so Kathleen took a nap, and I took photos of firefighters.

My photos are below. Don't forget: if you click the first shot, you can scroll through using your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE... don't look at my photography on a phone. Please...

The Steve Test: I call this the Steve Test because my brother Steve came up with it. I think it’s brilliant. (If you eat in a restaurant while traveling, and if that restaurant is near you once you get home, would you go there again?) If it were in your hometown, would we eat there regularly?

Day 4-Carnegie Hall, Maybe Happy Ending

by | May 6, 2026 | Uncategorized

I realized after I posted yesterday that the headline said we went to see the play “Oh, Mary,” but I had not written about it. As you may remember, we are seeing four plays, and as I write this, we have been to all four. I would have to say that most of the folks on the tour were very nice when they said that “Oh, Mary” “was not my favorite.” Others were downright critical and said it was one of the worst plays they had ever seen.

I have to admit that I liked it. Kathleen liked it even though she is not a big Maya Rudolph fan (she was playing Mary when we saw the show). It is a VERY broad and dark comedy. If you have not seen it and think that you might, spoiler alert. “Oh, Mary” is about our 16th first lady, Mary Todd Lincoln. It takes place in the last weeks before Lincoln’s assassination. Mary is a drunk, she is bored and wants to be in a cabaret show (is this the start of a great comedy or what?). Maya made her entrance to great applause and proceeded to crack us up with almost five full minutes of over-the-top physical comedy without speaking a single intelligible word. For some, it was all downhill from there. Lincoln is portrayed as gay, and Mary is a horrible person who only wants booze and to perform. She is pretty much nasty to everyone. Her husband hires a man to give her acting lessons, who turns out to be John Wilkes Booth, later revealed to be Abe’s secret gay lover. There is even a scene where Lincoln is sitting at his desk screaming (you think it’s about the war), but when Mary leaves, he is actually having oral sex with a soldier who was under his desk. See what I mean? This play was easy to either love or hate. And I haven’t even (and won’t) told you the biggest twist of all. It ends with Mary's cabaret show.

Enough about that. More about the other plays later. Today’s post is about a kind of short day since it was Sunday. We were up late (we didn’t have to meet until 10:00 am) and off on a tour of Carnegie Hall. It was awesome. We had a great guide, and we learned a lot. The hall is beautiful. I only wish we could have seen a performance there. Photos are both above and below. And I almost forgot to mention that since we did not meet up as early, I had more time to roam around Manhattan and take photos. They are down there as well.

That afternoon, we saw our only matinée, “Sometimes, Happy Ending,” about two robots living in Seoul, Korea, who fall in love. I know, that sounds more absurd than “Oh, Mary.” But this was the play that most of us loved the most. I won’t go into all of it, but it was a beautiful piece with a cast of only five, so much heart, and so much to say about the human condition that we just loved it, no matter how impossible the situation seemed. I also have to mention that the sets were breathtaking, and the way they handled the entire show with sets, lights, and costumes was off the charts. No wonder this show won last year’s Tony for best musical.

That was about it (slow day on Sunday!), except for a group dinner at Marseilles restaurant. You don’t even have to guess that this was a French place and the food was excellent. I like escargot and have them when I can (mostly on ships). Their escargot was the best I have ever had.

After dinner, it was back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep. Monday would be much busier.

Day 3–Theater Talk, Walking Tour, Tapas and Oh, Mary

by | May 4, 2026 | Uncategorized

After our big night out seeing Operation Mincemeat (which everyone generally liked), we were up again the next morning and off to a theater talk. This meant we walked about three blocks to a building that housed some small playhouse-type theaters (that hold about 50-60 people and are used for small plays, rehearsals, and the like) and went up to one of the theaters on the third floor to meet with two fantastic people. The first was Tim Dolan. Tim has been a longtime actor and dancer on Broadway and in touring shows. But a few years back, he decided he'd better find a more regular paycheck (because he now has a family), so he started a tour business giving tours of Broadway and also started one selling Broadway souvenirs. We have had him as our speaker twice so far, and he is an absolute font of Broadway knowledge. And because of his acting experience, he is a JOY to listen to.

This morning, he was moderating a discussion with Cassie Silva, who is a currently working actress that we will see on Tuesday night in the musical & Juliet. In the very short hour we had them talking to us, we learned so many behind-the-scenes facts and heard so many great stories that we wanted the talk to last all day. Sadly, we only had them for about an hour (but we got Tim back two more times later in the week). In the video below, I want to give you a small example of what the talk was like.

After our theater talk, the entire group of 41 had four walking tour options to choose from in the city. Group one headed out to walk the High Line in Midtown and visit the Little Island. I have walked the High Line numerous times, so I skipped that one. Group two would take a tour of the Gilded Age neighborhoods. If you are familiar with the HBO series of that name, you will know that this is the area where the turn-of-the-century new money clashed with the old. It’s a great story, and I highly recommend the show (created and written by Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame). Group three took the subway south to Lower Manhattan and did a tour of Hamilton’s New York.

I chose to join the fourth group for a walking tour of Midtown and Grand Central Terminal with our guide, Bruce Roberts. I would have to call Bruce a mensch. A very interesting one. He used to be a full-time guide, but then he went into producing. He currently has productions running in two or three places around the country and is part of the production team for a West End (London) show coming to Broadway later this year.

Bruce had been brought in by Alex of Break-Away at the last minute. It seems we originally had only three tours scheduled: Hamilton’s NY, Midtown, and GCT and the High Line. I was excited to do the Midtown tour because I had never really been to Grand Central Terminal to take photos. But a group of ladies on the tour (unbeknownst to me) corresponded with Alex and asked about a Gilded Age tour. When we got here, I was fine with that and thanked Alex for setting it up for them, but he had worked it out by canceling the GCT/Midtown tour I wanted to do. I told him that and said, “It’s OK. I can walk over on my own.” Lo and behold, the next morning when we met up, Michael, our head guide, said, “We now have four tours and the Midtown/GCT tour was back on.” Alex really goes the extra mile for his groups.

Bruce got into all this because he has worked with all the guys who have been touring us around, and they called him to ask if he wanted to spend his weather-perfect Saturday walking a bunch of old people from Washington State around midtown. He said yes, and we got lucky. Our tour went from the theater where we had heard Cassie and Tim speak, through the theater district, to Rockefeller Center, around the Chrysler Building and St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and we finished up at Grand Central Terminal. Photos are below. Remember to click to enlarge them. Again, we learned all kinds of trivia and heard many background stories about the city.

After that tour, it was a quick (I mean, really QUICK–3 minutes on the train from GCT to our hotel) ride, and it was time to dress for dinner. I had picked out what turned out to be an outstanding Spanish tapas place called Boqueria. The food was superb, the service excellent, the company better, and the Sangria the best I have ever had. We had a wonderful time.

After dinner, we headed to our second Broadway show. Tonight, we were seeing Oh, Mary, a complete farce about our 16th First Lady. Suffice it to say, they threw out the history books on this one. Mr. Lincoln was black… and gay. John Wilkes Booth was his gay lover. Mary Todd was a drunken, delusional want-to-be cabaret star. OK, are you totally mixed up? So were we, and we saw the play. There were mixed reactions within our party the day after this show. But with that kind of story, there have to be. Most of the folks were nice and said it was “Not my favorite.” I appreciated that. It’s not a play for everyone. Even with Maya Rudolf as Mary (she was hilarious, though in a very broad, physical comedic portrayal).

On Broadway, there is no censoring, just self-censorship and doing what makes sense.  —Robert Lopez

Day 2–Getting Lost, The Met, Lincoln and Mincemeat

by | May 3, 2026 | Uncategorized

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.

The fact that I even get in Broadway shows is, to me, still amazing, but then to win a Tony was just incredible.  —Jane Krakouski

We Make It To Broadway

by | May 2, 2026 | Uncategorized

Editor's Note: This will not be my best post ever due to some really ugly tech support problems that took more than an hour to fix. I want to get it online before we head out to breakfast. I promise to do better.

Micheal directing us to our "luxury motor coach"

This is going to be tough. Or as I told Kathleen last night, “I need a sea day.” We’ve had only one full day, and I’m exhausted. I don’t have a lot of time to write and process photos to get this out to all of you. I would give you the entire schedule for yesterday, but that’s for the next post. This one is just to tell you the story of getting there: our bus pickup, our flight, our “luxury motor coach” into Manhattan, and an amazing dinner at Tony’s DiNapoli with some great friends.

Thursday morning at 4:30 am, we gave Keeley her final kisses and pets (she is staying at home with Kathleen’s daughter Michelle), and we set off for Trilogy’s clubhouse, where we would be met by two 14-passenger Sprinter vans I had arranged. They would whisk 21 of us off to SeaTac International Airport. (A quick note for regular readers: I know I promised Kathleen that after arranging all those buses in Scotland pre-pandemic, I would never do that again… but these were vans, not buses ??).

To get this all to work out, we had to find a way to get to the Clubhouse (about half a mile away for us, but 3-4 miles for others—Trilogy is a big place) and not leave our car in Trilogy’s woefully inadequate parking lot for an entire week. Some people actually had friends who liked them enough to get up out of bed and drive them there at that ungodly hour. Others were going to leave our car in the lot, and friends would pick it up later in the day. We had planned to do this, but our friends who were going to do our pick up got called away, and we got really lucky when a friend who is on the trip with us and lives just five houses away from the clubhouse let us park our car in her garage. Her son had her car, so there was room in her immaculate and well-organized garage for our car. We can’t thank her enough.

I had told everyone the vans would be there at 4:30 and that we would leave without them at 4:50. So I dropped Kathleen off at the clubhouse, where we found a BUNCH of people already there before 4:30, loading the vans. We got our luggage into the van, and I drove the short distance to where we would leave the car, then walked back to check off everyone on my van list and make sure we had everyone who had signed up to go with us. The only problem was that when I got back, one of the vans I had left for the airport was gone, and I had no idea who was in it. At this point, it’s only 4:40, and our driver wanted to leave, but I didn’t want to leave anyone behind since I had said we would wait until 4:50. But he told me that the other van had 10 people and we had 11, so I told him to go ahead, hoping and praying that we were not leaving anyone. Thankfully, everyone had been right on time (or early), and we all got there, WHEW!

The airport was far better than we expected. Kathleen and I hadn’t flown since we went to Africa last July (we drove to our October cruise), and SeaTac had made outstanding improvements to its security lines. We were through and on our way to the Alaska Air FC lounge in no time, where we hung out until we were called (right on time) to board. The flight was smooth, and since we had left early, we arrived at JFK in NYC half an hour early. Of course, that meant there was still a plane at our gate, so we sat on the tarmac for 30 minutes. I wish they would figure this out. Why get us there early just to sit on the plane and wait? Eventually, we got off the plane and headed to baggage claim. Alaska Air had done a great job with all our luggage, and I am pretty sure not a single person in our group lost a suitcase.

JFK is a BIG airport, but when we had our bags, Mike (one of our superb guides from Break-Away tours) was waiting to meet us. He got us out and onto our “luxury motor coach,” and we were off into the city. With the traffic, it took us a little more than an hour to get to our Manhattan hotel, but another one of our excellent guides, Hardy, kept us entertained with outstanding information about our drive and NYC in general. Even though Kathleen and I have been here numerous times before, I learned a lot. He would be our main guide for the week, and we are still (after two days) thrilled to have him.

We are staying at the Westin Times Square. It’s a very nice hotel, just about a block from Times Square. But Break-Away uses it because we can walk just about anywhere. Once we arrived and got settled in, we all met in the lobby to walk to a wonderful Italian restaurant, We walked right through Times Square to get there and Tony’s Di Napoli. This place is an institution and has been around since the fifties (just like us ?). They serve you a LOT OF ITALIAN FOOD, and they serve it family style. They bring it to your table on huge platters, and you pass it around. It was just like grandma used to make. Not gourmet, but delicious. Top that off with a nice Chianti and cannoli for dessert, and it was a perfect way to start the trip.

I only had two tiny quibbles about Tony’s. We were seated in a basement dining room, and the lighting for taking photos was terrible, as you will see in my photos. Thankfully, there are only a few of them. I know I could have taken them with my phone and gotten slightly better results, but I wanted the actual feel of the room. The other thing that was a pain was the noise. This may have been the nosiest restaurant I have ever been in. It was a legacy building, and all the walls, ceilings, and floors were hard materials, which meant that with our party and about 50 other people down there, it was LOUD! You pretty much had to yell to be heard by the person sitting next to you, which only made the room EVEN LOUDER! But it was a delicious dinner, and no one left hungry for want of great food. It is almost sad how much we left on the serving platters. After dinner was over (around 10:30 NYC time), we took a short three-block walk back to the Westin and fell fast asleep.

Here are my photos of our the dinner at Tony's. As you can see, it was kinda dark down there. Don't forget, you can click them to enlarge them.

For our first time traveling with 41 people (we only had 21 in the vans—the rest had flown in early or arranged their own transportation to the airport), things were going very smoothly. More tomorrow about our first full day, which about killed us (in a good way). I should also mention that even though we regularly travel with two or four other people, traveling with 41 is really interesting in one big way. We know these folks from living in the same community, and we are all members of the Travel Club. But that doesn’t mean I know every name (because I am president and have a big mouth, they all know me ?). When we first moved into Trilogy, a neighbor who had known us before told us she had been on a Travel Club trip, and no one remembered her name to say good morning or good evening, or anything to her. I kind of vowed that this trip would not be that way for anyone. So I put together a PDF of photos of the entire group with names so I could remember who was who. Two days in, I am doing pretty well, and thankfully, Break-Away had some really great name tags for us, which really helps as well.

That's it for day 1. Yesterday was our first full day, and I hope I get a chance to write it up tomorrow. I certainly took lots more photos as we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, had dinner at Sardi's and saw an amazing Broadway show—Operation Mincemeat. See you then.

There's nothing that can match Broadway for stature and dignity.   —Sammy Davis, Jr.