New York, Day Two

Sunday, 14 Sept '08

I slept for twelve hours, due in no small part to not getting much sleep the last two days. One strange thing is that I slept like a baby, whereas at home I wake up many times during the day. No doubt that was due in part to not having Max around, but it seems like there is something else involved. Maybe that I actually slept during the night, when people are supposed to sleep?

As soon as we got up Chris and I headed downtown to find a store where he could buy some pants. For some reason he only brought one pair with him. While wandering around looking for a suitable establishment, we stopped for breakfast at McDonalds. It wasn't your typical midwestern McDonalds, that's for sure. It must have been in a not-so-nice neighborhood. I say this because the only way to get behind the counter, which was walled off at both ends, was by going through a security door with a punch code lock.

After we at we continued our meanderings. We walked past Madison Square Garden, where we saw lots of cops. I don't know what, if anything, was up. Nothing obvious anyway. There were a lot of bums around as well, with all their worldly possessions in plastic bags or bulging knapsacks. There were street vedors too, lots of them, selling all kinds of cheap junk: handbags, umbrellas, watched, shoes, pretty much anything you could imagine. I don't remember for sure if Chris got his pants this day or not. If he did I didn't make a note of it in my trip diary. I do remember stopping at a K-Mart, the first multi-story department store I'd been in in a good long while. The menswear area was two floors below street level, and I think there were floors above the ground floor as well.

I was surprised at the number of local markets as well. Every four or five blocks it seemed there was a little grocery store.

We had lunch at Connolly's, an Irish pub. I had bangers and mashed, while Chris had fish and chips. Bangers and mashed is just sausages with mashed potatos and gravy. A simple dish, right? At Connolly's the bangers and mashed comes 'plated', like it was some kind of gourmet meal, complete with garnishing. Continuing the trend of ethnic mismatches, although Connolly's was an Irish pub, there wasn't an Irishman (or woman) in sight. Our server's name was Masha. I thought she was German based on her accent, while Chris guessed she was eastern european.

After lunch it was back to the hotel clean up before heading back downtown to see our Broadway show. That show was 'Wicked' at the Gershwin Theatre on West 51st Street. 'Wicked' is a musical based (rather loosely) on the novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire. I knew very little about the show, other than it existed and was supposed to be very good. We were seated in the mezzanine and had an excellent view of the stage. The seats were a bit farther away than I might have preferred, but considering Chris paid $86.00 apiece for them, I wasn't going to complain.

The set was impressive, with lots of wheels and gears and levers. Quite industrial looking, and topped off by a huge mechanical dragon. Without giving away the story, 'Wicked' tells the tale of Elphaba, who would become the Wicked Witch of the West, and her college friendship with Glinda, who later became the Good Witch of the North. The songs were excellent, and often very moving. The dancing was just as good. I don't remember a single goof, anywhere. In short, a superb performance by a fine cast and crew. It was the fastest three and a half hours of my life, and I gave serious thought to seeing it again before we left. Afterwards, I picked up a copy of the novel, which I read over the course of our stay.

That night we had dinner at a place called 44 SW Ristorante. I had a veal dish that was excellent. The best part, though, was watching the people passing by outside (we were seated by the windows). Typical New York bumper to bumper traffic, and lots of pedestrians. One of them was an odd fellow who seemed a bit off his rocker. He walked past us, then reappeared going the other direction, and then came back on his original heading.

Another interesting item was the deliveries. Square footage was at a premium I guess, for this place took its deliveries curbside and sent them down into the basement through a steel door covering steep, narrow stairs. Based on the number of such doors I saw during the trip (and what I saw down them if they were open), a lot of places in New York have the same problem.
After dinner we strolled around Broadway and Times Square just enjoying the fact that we were in the Big Apple, before heading back to the hotel.