The drive home.

The long drive home starts with a good breakfast, yogurt and granola and fruit juice from the nearby Walmart which we kept in our fridge in our room. It usually starts with cups of coffee too, plus dragging the last bags from the room to the car, and checking out of the hotel.

The drive home is punctuated by all the rain that we magically avoided during our three days of wandering through the city. It comes down hard and fast, drenching the highways and landscapes we drive by. Lightning crossed the sky once or twice, and the weather network we were watching this morning may have mentioned flash flooding. I will gladly take all the rain now, as we sit comfortably in the car, mostly immune to its effects.

The drive involves checking the route once or twice, especially since this time, we don't have the ease of wifi, so the course needs to be laid in before we leave, and we have a few stops to make. First at the Westfield Mall for the allbirds store and new pairs of shoes, and then at the outlet mall in Harriman for our go-to Shake Shack burgers. We HAVE to stop there once every trip. It's become a tradition of our NYC trips.

The drive home involves a lot of hours, so we don't linger too long anywhere. The allbirds stop is a surgical strike. The lunch break lasts 20 minutes, but you don't need longer than that to devour a small burger, even if it does contain a cheese-stuffed breaded mushroom. We also stop in New Baltimore to empty and fill our tanks, and find out the coffee is just okay. We are two DAYS too early for the opening of the new service centre that has been under construction since last year.

The drive also involves a couple more chapters of that excellent Hobbit audiobook, a TON of blogging, and a lot of talking about all manners of things, because what else do you do when driving for a long time? Sit in silence? We laugh a lot, especially when I drop popcorn in Mario's lap instead of his mouth, or accidentally stick a cube of that delicious mango on his cheek when we hit a bump. The perils of feeding someone while driving, right? 

The drive home involves a smooth border crossing, and very few questions before we are waved through and are back in our country, driving the last half hour to home. Travel is always a wonderful thing - so much to see and do, places to go, things to taste and experience. We pack as much as we can in to really benefit from our time, but whoa, does it feel good to pull into our own driveway again, and truly relax. 

At least until we do it all again.


Until next time.

Walking the Hudson Riverfront

What's the best thing about a long weekend? An extra day to see and do so many more things! This morning's activities include a decent grocery store breakfast in the hotel room, and no running for the bus, which is always a good way to start the day. It also includes an express bus ride into New York, because it's Monday, so we get in to the city with plenty of time to wander before our morning's planned activity - more on that later.

Again, we return to Chinatown, this time by way of the City Hall subway station, and take a walk around the majestic gothic archways and facades of the Woolworth building. We can't go in, as it is private residences now, but it is just as impressive out here. The rain, which has been threatening all weekend, finally begins to fall, and we pull out umbrellas to make our way to some random pastry shop, and custard buns. You can't beat custard buns for a mid-morning snack. Plus, as we exit the shop, a whole tour group enters, so clearly we chose the right place!

Around 11, we head to the old Immigrant Savings Bank, now turned into the Hall des Lumières, a multimedia space  being used for artistic exhibitions. We are attending their inaugural exhibition on the art of Gustav Klimt, known for his expressionism painting style and generous use of gold tones. But this is not just any art exhibit - the art is being splayed across every surface of the interior of the old bank halls, projected on the walls, the teller booths, the floors, in a show of colour and light and movement, and all set to a powerful classical soundtrack. You can sit on comfortable benches, or on the floor, you can walk through the space and observe how the art curves over ever surface, you can even move to a lower level where the experience is even more immersive, with mirrored columns and ceiling. In this space, the music is much louder, so you feel completely submerged into the experience, almost becoming a part of it. It is a new and very different way to see art. I believe there have been shows similar to this, with Van Gogh or Picasso's art, but the fact that the space it is set in is a veritable work of art itself, make the show that much more interesting. 

Inside the vault	Full immersion basement
Full immersion basement	Full immersion basement
Upstairs mezzanine	Upstairs bank hall
Upstairs bank hall	Upstairs mezzanine

Though the show lasts about an hour, we stay put for a second set, looking at the art from different angles, attempting to find comfortable positions on the giant bean bags in the basement. We visit the vault, which is open, and the whole inside is covered in mirrors. We sit on the lone bench and are surrounded by projections of a black metallic world coming to life. It's really trippy.  

We depart Gustav Klimt in search of something to eat, finding the solution in the rather large and generous salad bar at the Whole Foods near the World Trade Center. I fill a box with arugula, corn, feta, tomatoes, adding in a white bean and chicken salad, some stuffed vine leaves, grilled asparagus. We head to the cafeteria on the second floor to eat, and watch through the windows as the sky goes black and the clouds open up, dumping their contents all over the city. What timing! We stay at Whole Foods a little bit longer, enjoying the salad, and the dry spot - we almost took our salad to the park to eat! Imagine that! 

Afterwards, we walk the city: We head through the memorial gardens and fountains at the World Trade Center - curiously, one of the great fountains is not running, and we can't figure out why. We ponder, for just a moment, the idea of visiting the top of One World Observatory, but the 50 dollar price tag(US!)for an elevator ride is a pretty good deterrent. We head into the Oculus, a great white winged creature that hides a giant shopping mall hidden in its belly, along with the subway and train station to New Jersey. We debate whether we might have taken a train from our hotel to this station, then get a coffee instead. 

Inside the Oculus

We walk underground, through long white hallways to another mall, and then another one, until the point where, if we keep walking, we will end up in the Hudson River. So we start walking along the riverfront, along boardwalks and walkways that run the length of the long island. Once dotted with piers for industry and boats, there are far fewer now, and many places where the water is dotted with just the tops of rotting wooden piles. The piers that are left have been turned into parks, or gathering spaces and restaurants. One that still looks like a rusty industrial building hides a brand new sporting complex inside. 

Lily Pond in Battery Park	Holland Tunnel Ventilation Shaft
Pier 40 Sports Complex looks like an industrial building
Walking the High Line	Walking the High Line

Past all of these piers we walk, from 25 to 57, reaching the Little Island we picnicked at last year. We head inside to the High Line, and continue our walk there, among the wild flowers and foliage. Plus, we have to stop at our favorite little water feature, the sideway that pour running water from side the the other, to soak our tired feet and cool our toes. It's good to see more people giving this little fountain a chance, and we call out to other walkers watching us, telling them the water's just fine, and that they won't regret it. We convince one or two of the adults to join in the fun. All of the children join in.

And just like that, we've walked all the way to Port Authority and find ourselves back at the bus, but not before indulging in one last slice of cheap pizza from our favorite place, 2 Bros. Pizza, at the back of the bus station. The place is empty, but like Mario says, a crowd draws a crowd, and so at the sight of us at one of the outside tables eating the big floppy, foldy pieces of cheese pizza, people begin to stop and go inside, and order their own, and soon the whole place is full. 

Back in New Jersey, it's a little to early for dinner, so we relax in our room for a bit, and the rain comes down hard and fast, the sky flashing with lightning and the ground rumbling with thunder, like a subway passing underneath. We have a coffee and I blog. Eventually the storm passed and we go for a walk.

Like I said yesterday, of course we went back to Natoli's, this time opting to eat in, though missing out on trying out their hidden backyard dining tables. Mario is offered the option of trying the Chicken Parm sandwich, a real winner according to some of their regulars. I stick with the idea of a plate of fried calamari, adding in a plate of the delicious broccoli rabe, because we always need our veg, and Mario will not be finding it in his giant sandwich! The food is good, but I preferred the homeliness of our takeout meal yesterday to this one. I might be a little swayed by the fact that the dining room was frigid, and the overhead fan cooled off my meal way too quickly, but the service was fun and friendly, and Mario insisted on repeating that it was a good thing we did not live nearby, as we would likely be there all this time! We will definitely keep Natoli's in mind for future trips!

We finished the night with full bellies, splayed out on the bed in the hotel room like anacondas after a big meal, trying to digest a week's worth of food. We pack our bags and clean up. Tomorrow, we have a long drive home.

Seeing Hamilton

 A day to go see Hamilton on Broadway. I have been waiting six years to say I went to see Hamilton on Broadway, and today is that day. It starts with a jingle of the alarm, a slow roll out of bed, and then all of the cobwebs are shaken loose as Mario informs me that we have all of 20 minutes to make the bus we planned on taking into the city this morning. That's twenty minutes to wake up, get ready and run out the door, because on top of that, the bus is a 10 minute walk from the hotel. 

Sure. Let's do that.

Needless to say, we have no breakfast, no juice, no coffee, and though Mario can start the day on empty, I cannot. As soon as we arrive at Port Authority Bus Terminal, I head to the nearest Hudson Store for bottles of fruit smoothie. We never got to the grocery store last night since our dinner(our delicious dinner) had us coming back to the hotel too late, so the fridge was empty, and we had nothing quick to grab on the way out. The sweet hit of fruit soothes me, and I can feel my mood changing immediately. We head to the subway.

So what do you do on a day that you are going to see Hamilton? Nothing can possibly live up to the magnitude of that show, so it's all just a time-filler until the 3 pm matinee, right? Not unless your time-filler happens to be an unauthorized Banksy exhibit. But first, bagel breakfast sandwiches, egg and cheese and bacon, made up fresh at a deli in Tribeca, where we sit on the back side of the salad bar, stuffing our faces and sipping really good coffee, and watching the news on a screen at the back of the shop. We wander the neighborhood a bit, admiring the architecture and analysing the clouds for rain, and then make our way to the gallery on West Broadway street.

Back to Banksy: we managed to find this discreet little show online, organized by some private collectors, and telling of the month he spent in New York in 2013, creating a new artistic installment everyday. Mario and I don't particularly like modern art, but we DO like Banksy - we appreciate an artist whose work is controversial because it questions the system by making fun of the system. You don't need to read the explanation provided by the museum to understand the artist's agenda, you can figure it out by understanding the message in the art, and with Banksy, it's usually as plain as the nose in the middle of your face. It's bold and colourful and straightforward, and also makes great posters and t-shirts - though I'm sure that was never his intention.

Being so close to Chinatown after we exit the Banksy show, we just wander for a bit, because what else do you do when you have tickets to see Hamilton? You pass time until the show starts. We pass through sidewalk markets overflowing with all kinds of fruit, ripe and delicious and begging to be bought. We stop for Vietnamese coffee-flavoured ice cream at one of the oldest shops in the area, and avoid the crowds lining up for cheap Hong Kong cuisine at the place next door. Down one of the pedestrian alleys, we cross through a small neighbourhood festival when some young men are teaching hip-hop steps to the audience. We stop instead in Columbus Park, the heart of Chinatown, to sit down for a bit. We watch an elderly man sit down and carefully remove his musical instrument from a cloth bag, preparing it and the accompanying bow to play for passersby. He sets up a tiny amplifier, a waving cat statue, an open instrument case on the ground, waiting to be fed. Further in the park, the wail of a high-pitched singer floats on the air. Women sitting around a picnic table yell as they slap down playing cards aggressively. This is Sunday in Columbus Park, and we love the atmosphere.

Finally comes time for us to catch a subway uptown, to Times Square and the Richard Rodgers Theatre. Because when you finally get to see Hamilton on Broadway, you DO NOT want to be late! Thought of getting a quick snack, a slice of pizza or something else, cross our mind, but in the end, we still have big chewy chocolate chip cookies we bought last night after dinner and never ate, so we snack on those while we head along Broadway to 46th street. The queue is already gone, and people are heading right in. A quick security check, as is the norm everywhere here, where I begin enumerating the contents of my pack, including 4 fresh ripe mangoes I couldn't pass up in Chinatown. I get a laugh, and the warning, "As long as you don't eat them in the theatre!", and we are in the lobby, and down the hall, and installing ourselves comfortably into tight wooden seats. 

Of course, what other reaction could you possibly have when, seeing Hamilton on Broadway for the first time, than pure amazement? The show was energetic and emotional, the actors brilliant and lively, the music so catchy that I was singing bits of every song all at once. I have gotten into the habit of searching for the seats on the far right or left of the theatre - the view may be slightly obstructed, but we can often gets better seats close to the stage at a cheaper price. This proved the best bet for the Hamilton tickets, we ended up sitting in the first row of the second orchestra section, and were at the same level as the performers' sightlines, so when they were singing to the audience, they were looking right at us. And when we were at last let out the side door into the sun and heat of the city, I had a tear in my eye from the last number. Wiping it away, I dragged Mario down the side of the theatre to the stage door, and the possibility of meeting the actors, and the moment did not disappoint. 

Jacob Guzman (John Laurens/Philip Hamilton)	Trey Curtis (Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson)

Only a small group had gathered; It is Sunday, so some of the roles for the matinee are played by swings or understudies, who are no less fantastic and impressive, but are sometimes not the names or faces being sought out.  At the same time, they are the ones who don't get on stage quite as often, and therefore maybe don't get the thrill of meeting the throng of fans outside...Either way, they are many who exit the yellow door and join us, chatting and signing autographs. We have a good laugh with a couple of them, as a little boy next to us is sporting a rather dapper jacket in a teal blue and gold snake skin print. He gets all the attention, and we all joke together at how amazing he looks and how he is generally showing everyone how to dress dapper. We catch sight of the actors playing James Madison and Thomas Jefferson sneakily run across the street behind us, but later notice Jefferson coming back, and call to him to come join the fun, and he does! It's such a amazing moment to witness such greatness on stage, and then see how down-to-earth and real the people behind the characters are.

So, how can top a performance of Hamilton? Well, you can't, not really, so we catch the next bus back to New Jersey and the hotel. Almost. When I booked this hotel we are staying at, I did a quick Google street view walk-around, to see what was interesting or noteworthy in the residential neighbourhood surrounding it. I found a small Italian deli called Natoli that seems to be part convenience store, part deli, part restaurant, offering everything from Chicken Parm sandwiches to cold pasta salad to take-away pizza to toilet paper and breakfast cereal. And the reviews are great, so we take a walk, browse the menu and come away with a great dinner to eat back at the hotel. In the little park behind the hotel, tucked away between the two sides of the highway, we tuck into fried broccoli rabe with garlic, tangy grilled vegetables, and super-thick pieces of what they called "Gramma Slices" - cold tomato pizza topped with tons more garlic and fresh basil, and served with a tub of warm tomato sauce for dipping. It's all so good, and homey, and well-made and delicious, and we vow to return again tomorrow, maybe for pizza, maybe for fried calamari that I spotted on the menu. After all, it's only a 10-minute walk from the hotel, and that's the dangerous part. 

Art and Food Appreciation

Bonne Saint-Jean tout le monde! It's a rainy, wet start in Schenectady - maybe the sky is crying because we ran away from all the Québecois festivities, but honestly? It's just not our style. 

The king-sized bed at the Red Roof Inn is comfy, but an early start is necessary for us to enjoy our day to the fullest. So is a good breakfast, which we find at the nearby IHOP - International House of Pancakes. And guess what? We had pancakes - well, Mario does, piled high with cinnamon bun topping, and a mountain of whipped cream that slowly melts its way off the side and onto the plate. I instead opt for a savory burrito bowl, with scrambled egg and hash brown base, and topped with avocado, salsa and sour cream. I think Mario is jealous of my breakfast, so I share my fruit with him, to make him feel more healthy. 

We finish the trek to New York City in the rain. Which is good - we expected rain, we just hoped that it would leave us alone once we started touring, so we cross our fingers while arriving at our new hotel this year, parking the car, packing our day bags, and hiking to the bus stop that will lead to the bus that will lead to Manhattan and all of its skyscrapers. And lo and behold, it does - we disembark, walk up 42nd to Broadway and The Square of Time (our running joke for the weekend), and there is but a drizzle falling now. We head to TKTS to see if we can score some cheap tickets for Broadway. We have some bought for tomorrow, to see Hamilton, but sometimes you can find some good deals at the last minute. Nothing jumps out, so onward we head, up 7th avenue towards Central Park, pausing a moment to grab a slice(or two) at Famous Original Ray's Pizza. We sit under a skinny awning, folded slice in hand, as the rain starts again, but not for more than 5 minutes and we are back out again, entering the park.

The walk through the park is lovely, as usual, following along the dirt paths weaving their way between garden and forests, under tunnels and around playgrounds. We pause in the shade near the Conservatory Water, a little pond that sometimes has little boats floating on it, and examine the Alice in Wonderland Statue, wondering if maybe someone has tucked a hidden message under her toadstool. We exit the park near the museum, where we head inside.

Option 2 for the evening(or maybe 1?) is something called "Date Night" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met). You go to the museum as you normally would, but there is the added bonus of live music, drinks, snacks and gallery chats. We get drawn in by this added bonus, thinking it will maybe be an exclusive, possibly adult-only event, but no such luck - the museum is absolutely teeming with people, even at this late hour of the afternoon. I guess the fact that it is Saturday doesn't help. We try to head in the opposite direction of the flow of traffic, but there is too much traffic to contend with, so we just head as far away from the main attractions as possible. We tour the Greek Statue galleries. We gawk at some bronze jewelry and glass vessels in the Etruscan galleries. We walk through the Medieval galleries, examining intricately carved wooden beads for Christian devotees,  and statues of the virgin Mary with eyes so creepy they could pierce through your soul.

We head to one of the cafes meant to be serving these elusive "drinks and lite fare" promised as part of date night, and though we do come away with gourmet chips, prosecco and a brownie, they are not any different than what is served normally. The combination is fantastic, mind you, and certainly makes the experience seem more "fancy". In the nearby European Sculptures hall, a rather energetic singer performs broadway songs, accompanied only by a pianist. A crowd has gathered, and he plays off of their energy, spinning around and gesturing grandly, his light black caplet flying out behind as he does so. We instead head to the Van Gogh special exhibit on his love/obsession of cypresses.

A letter from Van Gogh to his brother

If you know Van Gogh, you likely know his two big paintings: Starry Night and the Sunflowers. He's got plenty of others, and this exhibit covers a 2-year period of his time in Arles, France, when he studied the colours of the countryside and developed a passion for painting its tall, stoic cypress trees. We see various sketches of scenes, along with their follow-up painting done in oil on canvas. We take a close look at his letters to his brother, Theo, speaking of his time in France, his love of the landscape, and his need for more supplies to be mailed his way. We marvel at his work done first in observing a scene before him, and then a second time, more methodically and careful, brushstrokes thought out and placed very deliberately. When you can look at a Van Gogh painting, you can feel the wind moving through the grasses, blowing through the trees, and playing in the clouds in the sky. You can see the movement he was seeing, and that's what makes his paintings so spectacular.

Here, we can see his famous Starry Night, but like any famous painting, there is a crowd with cell phones pointed at the work, snapping away, then walking away and examining the photo instead of the art. And with so many works to examine, Mario and I spend as much time as possible with every other piece instead of Starry Night. When you can get so close, you can see the brushstrokes Van Gogh placed on the canvas - well, that is something else. 

We also visited the Karl Lagerfeld retrospect, the exhibit designed in association with this year's Met Gala, where all the famous stars walk up those magnificent stairs in magnificent dresses and suits?  Yeah, that one. The exhibit, besides showcasing a lot of Lagerfeld's signature pieces of fashion, also offered a glimpse into his creative process, showing his conceptualization of a garment with marker on paper, adding scribbled notes, and then handing off the sketches to his team of premières, seamstresses that could then turn those scribbles into a marvelous dress because they knew exactly what Lagerfeld wanted. It makes me wonder who the true genius is in the whole creative process - Lagerfeld, who comes up with the idea, or the women behind the fabrics and sewing machines, scissors in hand, mouth full of stick pins, who could see the final garment in those sketches?

After a slow walk through a few more galleries, we exited the Met, headed out onto the steamy streets of the Upper West in search of Shake Shack burgers. They are our go-to meal when in NYC, because they are so delicious, and we can't get them at home. But as we walk down Columbus in search of the restaurant, we spot what looks like a Mexican place next door, with outdoor seating and colourful flags hanging overhead, and decide to look at the menu. It took me 2 seconds and one glance to see everything looked delicious on that page, so we took a seat.

Creamy grilled corn with cotija cheese

Covacha, Nuevo York, meaning "hole-in-the-wall", served up beautifully crafted drinks and dishes inspired by the Ranchos of Western Mexico, particularly Jalisco. It is mentioned as a "bib gourmande" in the Michelin Guide, which if you know Michelin stars, this is a close as you can get before those illustrious estrellas. We knew none of this when we sat down. I ordered a cocktail with a hibiscus infusion and tequila blanco, and find out that the hibiscus dust-chile rim on my glass is the result of their "zero-waste" garnishes: the hibiscus flowers are infused, then dried and ground into a powder which is then used to garnish my glass, adding a subtle-yet-deep earthy note to the drink. I carefully nurse it throughout the entirety of the meal, it is so good. 

Unbeknownst to us, we chose perfectly complementary dishes. Mario orders a 8-hour slow-roasted barbacoa beef, that is garnished with radish and avocado and is oh-so-tender and delicious wrapped in its oil-brushed fresh tortillas. I chose a vegan dish, a pumpkin seed mole and assortment of roasted squashes, which I too can scoop up a tuck into my own warm tortillas. We scoop bites from each others' plates, trade tortillas, dipping pieces into the barbacoa pan and then into the pumpkin seed mole. We lick our fingers with delight, and I childishly ask the waiter, when he comes for the dishes, whether it is considered back form to lick my plate. We express our gratitude to everyone for the absolutely incredible meal, and divulge that they just may have saved us from a mediocre meal at Shake Shack, and everyone is happy. And with that, we roll our way down Columbus Street towards Port Authority Bus Terminal and our return to the hotel.