I spent the weekend in NYC, realizing how much I like the place. Most of us in the Midwest read a lot of negatives about NYC, primarily related to crime and urban decay. But there is still much to love.
On Friday I walked to the High Line with my wife to meet our son. Anyone who doesn’t know that area should look it up and take a nice walk there. We walked up to that crazy sculpture at Hudson Yards where, sadly, several people have committed suicide, and then down along the Hudson, stopping occasionally to take in views of Jersey City NJ, which is nothing like I remembered from the 1980’s!
We all eventually turned north and had dinner at a great French place, with mussels, a variety of ‘amuse bouches’, great French bread, hors d’oeuvres, and dishes covered with butter. We eventually walked back up to 7th Ave and 40th street. Nancy’s watch said we covered about 12 miles.
The weather was horrible on Saturday, so we did the Guggenheim even though the circular ramp was closed to create a new exhibit. Then we walked a block up 5th Avenue, along the east side of Central Park, to the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. The museum is housed in a mansion that belonged to Andrew Carnegie, so we took the mansion tour too.
At one point during the mansion tour, standing in one of hundreds of NYC museums, the person standing behind my wife said ‘Nancy!’ A young woman who used to do skating competitions with my youngest daughter was standing there with her husband. I knew the young woman’s mother years ago, and Nancy spent many hours driving the young woman to competitions around the state and country along with my daughter. Nancy hadn’t met that woman in 20 years. But here we stood visiting from Wisconsin, and she visiting from Florida — in the same tour, at the same time.
Saturday night, we ate Mediterranean near the theater where the MJ musical was playing. The show was great, but I overdid things on Friday. I was walking up to about 1.5 miles lately, recovering from last year’s surgery as described elsewhere… and 12 miles was a little much. I managed to dance to the music at the end but needed an Uber to return to the hotel.
Yes, there is too much pot there now. One can hardly walk 20 feet without smelling it in one form or another. Every block has a cannabis store or two. But 8 million people can’t be perfect all of the time. All the languages and all the stories — still a great city.
But because I’m still worn out, I will post a blog I recently sat for. If you like it, please subscribe.
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