The first evening we were in town, we got in a little late to make any formal plans, so we took a very pleasant walk from our hotel in Chelsea to RedFarm in the West Village for some modern dim-sum. As per usual, we ate way too much: we shared a deep-fried Katz's pastrami egg roll (complete with pickles and mustard sauce!); an order of their goofy, but surprisingly tasty, "Pac-man" shrimp dumplings (4 little dumplings colored to look vaguely like Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Sue, with a sweet-potato tempura Pac-man); pork and shrimp dumplings; veggie peanut dumplings; crispy duck and crab dumplings with curry sauce; oxtail dumplings; and 3-color veggie dumplings, all with a side of asparagus just to make us feel healthy. (Probably 2 dumpling dishes too many, but ahhhhh, all so good.)
Plus, look how cute this place is! (Yeah, their bar is underneath, below street-level.)
Not a great shot--the lighting in there was pretty tricky--but look at our crispy duck and crab dumplings. They have eyes, hah! (Also, that was a great yellow curry in the middle. Yum.)
Our first full day began with excellent cappuccinos and pastries (mine was this wee, dense little butter cake thing with berries in it--a "friand," or so they called it--gahhhh, so addictive) at Seven Grams Caffe...
...across the street from which was this giant inflatable rat protesting Bank of America's use of non-union labor for something-or-other. The main--and hilarious--point being, though, that the rat was actually parked outside the stuff-for-babies store. Heh.
Next, we headed for the Met Cloisters museum.
Passing, on the way, some fabulous Art Deco...
...and the lush, scenic, and rather tranquil, Fort Tryon Park. (Fall crocuses!)
The Met Cloisters is a collection of medieval art and architecture from Europe--which sounds like a ridiculous thing for us to visit, living in actual Europe and surrounded by these sorts of things quite literally, but Mike was really into it, so off we went. Above, 12th-century arcades from the Sant Miquel de Cuixa abbey near Perpignan, France.
Remarkable stone doorway from the Languedoc, made sometime around 1150.
Dragon fresco from a Spanish monastery ca. 1200. Reminds me of Chinese-style dragons, but there was no reference to or explanation of that anywhere in the signage. (Maybe I'm the only one who noticed...? No?)
Twelfth-century corbels from a church in Aquitaine, depicting acrobats wrestling and pulling each others' beards. (Go figure.)
The remarkable Langon Chapel, with elements from a church in Bordeaux, also 12th-century. Most interesting are the faces on all of the column capitals; those at the front (left) are massive.
The remarkable Merode Altarpiece, from Belgium, painted between 1427 and 1432. (Awesome high-res version of it here.)
This crazy-detailed thing is a carved rosary bead, from Belgium/the Netherlands, made around 1500-1510. For scale, it's about the size of a walnut.
"The Unicorn in Captivity," woven in Belgium or the Netherlands, 1495-1505.
Tombstone from a crusader family, 1248-ish.
Utterly amazing altar cross from about 1150. This thing isn't more than 18 inches tall (46 cm)...
...but it's got 92 figures and 98 inscriptions carved into it.
At the time, the Met Cloisters was hosting part of the "Heavenly Bodies" fashion exhibit, most of which was just weird (to my admittedly lowbrow and fashion-ignorant taste), but this dress I actually liked. No idea who the designer is (...possibly Dior...?) or how old it is.
Post-museum, we traipsed through the park some more, then grabbed some coffee and headed back to our hotel to get cleaned up for dinner. "Dinner already??" I'm sure you're thinking, but it was a special one, and special places usually have an early (i.e., 5:30-ish) seating and a later seating, and, as the owner of one of the world's angriest stomachs, I can't really tolerate late dinners anymore (sigh! makes dining a bit tricky in the Mediterranean countries I so adore!), so it was the early-bird special for us. At Sushi Nakazawa, where we sat at the bar so we could watch the chefs at work, and where we had the sushi experience of my life. The only option at the bar is the 20-course omakase, or chef's-choice tasting menu, but thankfully, each "course" (with one exception) was a single piece of sushi. I didn't really take many photos, seeing as how we were face-to-face with the chefs and it felt a bit invasive/obnoxious, so here's a shot of the absolutely glorious champagne I had...
...along with the chef who laughed at me when one of my pieces of sushi fell over. (Ok, so, I'm not great with chopsticks, but it wasn't my fault. It fell when they put it on my plate. And then I somehow managed to drop it as I was trying to right it, and this gentleman saw the whole thing.) As you might imagine, I did take notes on everything we ate, but I'll save those for the truly interested. Suffice it to say that this was easily the best sushi of my life.
For whatever magical reason, the street our hotel was on was some sort of smallish Flower District, so each morning when we headed out, the sidewalk was filled with trees and bushes and potted and cut flowers and plants, and people hustling all of the above into vans for delivery, and it smelled so good, and was so lovely, that I (obnoxiously) had to stop and take a few photos. Daaaang, these flowers were purty.
First stop of day 2 (after our morning cappuccinos, of course): the Museum of Modern Art. I think we've established that I'm really more a fan of very old stuff than of new(er), but MoMA is one of the world's great collections, so off we went. One of the stand-outs for me was this massive Monet; srsly, this thing measures 200 × 1276 cm (or 79 × 502 inches).
Also, this. I know Henri Rousseau's "The Sleeping Gypsy" is a very famous piece in its own right, but for me, it'll always be "The Sleeping Zootsy."*
Oh. My. Heavens. (Quite literally, I suppose.) With the crowd (and its own guard!), it's a little tricky to get up close to this thing, and it's a little smaller than I expected, but absolutely breathtaking in real life.
There was a temporary exhibit on concrete architecture in Yugoslavia between 1948 and 1980, and holy smokes, was it fascinating. Turns out, a whole lot of the Brutalist-style concrete constructions in various places around the former Yugoslavia look very Jetson-esque...just heavier. (Guess who's suddenly a fan of Brutalism?? Well, not all of it, but the especially futuristic stuff?? Yes, it's me. I'm apparently easy to convert.) This rather special example is the National and University Library of Kosovo, in Pristina, built between 1971 and 1982.
Photo of the stunning spomenik at Tjentiste, Bosnia and Herzegovina, built between 1965 and 1971. Spomeniks (Slovenian for "monument") are post-WWII monuments, in various states of disrepair, built during the 1960s through 1980s and dotted throughout the former Yugoslavia.**
There was also this magnificent pen-and-ink drawing, probably 2 meters long, of the skyline of Mostar, a city in Bosnia and Herzegovina famed for its Ottoman-era city center and stone bridge (both rebuilt after the war in 1994). Would totally hang this in my house.
Also stumbled upon the exhibit "City Dreams" by Bodys Isek Kingelez, an artist from the DRC, who creates these whimsical, futuristic, utopian mini-cities out of found objects and nearly every commonplace material you can think of.
They are tiny and detailed and mesmerizing.
Post-MoMA, we grabbed lunch at the nearby Irish pub (we're 2-for-2 on Irish pubs in New York; they're so great!) and headed towards the Brooklyn Bridge. Along with half of the known world.
Ok, ok, I finally get it. The views from here are excellent, and the geometry of the thing itself is remarkable.
Passed at least 2 wedding photoshoots and this modeling shoot on our way to Brooklyn.
Stopped for a really excellent coffee at West Elm, a home-design store inside a nicely renovated factory from the 1880s...with this view out the front. (Oh, Brooklyn. I can see your appeal.)
Then, it was back to the hotel to clean up for yet another early-bird dinner, this one at Per Se, Thomas Keller's hoity-toity New York outpost. And while I have to say the food was excellent--as expected--the service and ambiance left something to be desired, for certain. (And at that price point, friends, it better be the best service of your life.) What can I say? I liked the French Laundry much better.***
They did, however, provide the same extravagant "dessert buffet" that we had at the French Laundry, which, at the end of such a meal, is just excessive (i.e., four full desserts each and two shared, plus some wackily-flavored but insanely tasty house-made chocolates at the end). But fun, and very good.
Walked back to our hotel past Times Square.
Day 3 began with a quick buzz past the site of pilgrimage that eluded me the first time around:
Yesssssss, it's alive! And free from scaffolding! All shiny and polished up!
It's a little pricey for a unique fixer-upper opportunity, that's all.
Dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria! (Hee. So happy to see this.)
...and then it was off to Little Italy for the festival of San Gennaro, the celebration of the patron saint of Naples (woo!), which we had no idea was happening until Google Maps suggested it to us. What timing!
In Chinatown, passed this gorgeous series of painted storefronts.
And then literally across the street, San Gennaro! (This festival is huge, huge, huge.)
Heh...that's a lot of meatballs.
Ohhhhhh, just look at all those veg...
...and all those parmigianas and meatballs and I want everything!!!
Srsly, I think there were more cannoli here than on the entire island of Sicily. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands. And of course we split one. Along with a freaking fabulous serving of eggplant parmesan; a braciole sandwich; a slab of mozzarella grilled between two arepas; and a bowl of extraordinarily awesome cheese ravioli.
Naturally, there were far more things I wanted to try, but we were pretty full at this point, and we had to run off, anyway, to catch my first broadway musical! Given my current addiction to 'RuPaul's Drag race,' "Kinky Boots" was the inevitable choice, and it was glorious. The set was very clever, the theater gorgeous, and all of the characters were very, very well performed...but J. Harrison Ghee, the guy who played Lola, absolutely 100% stole the show for me. (Second place goes to Carrie St. Louis, who played Lauren--so hilarious, and not afraid to be shamelessly goofy in a very public way! One of the qualities I admire most in a person.) And the big drag finale at the end was so joyful and sparkly and--especially against the backdrop of the current horrifying political climate in the US--inclusive and diverse that I actually cried while I was laughing and clapping. Utterly magnificent and fantastic and I can't recommend it highly enough.
Ceiling inside the Al Hirschfeld theater. No photos allowed during the performance, of course, but the theater itself is a marvel.
So many details! So pretty! (This place was built in 1924. And I feel like an idiot for not getting photos of the Hirschfeld caricatures they had hanging on the walls, but I was just a bit overwhelmed by the surroundings.)
The set, which I thought was crazy-clever, especially since this theater and that stage aren't huge: the brick walls retracted to the sides to reveal the inside of the shoe factory, and they used curtains and different moveable pieces within and in front of that space to change locations.
My final day in the city we headed out to Queens to check out the Maker Faire, which was really heavy on all things 3D-printed, but also full of absolutely fascinating and creative and clever things that make me wish I were much smarter and much more engineering-inclined. (I am very much not.)
I had this very simple Marbleworks toy as a kid--which I still have, in fact, and still love--and these 3D-printed gadgets are like much smaller, far more intricate, battery- and/or solar-powered versions of my beloved childhood toy. Want to collect them all.
These gorgeous, shimmery, 3D-printed objects have magnets embedded in them, and it's just the breeze that's making them spin and wobble.
We didn't see nearly as many of these things in action as I would have liked--there was a whole long racecar-pit-style row of people tinkering with them--but these little power-drill racers were insanely fast, and hilarious to watch go around this track.
Ha, ha, hot dog car. ("Unicorn Kart" is the name of their team.)
It took me a minute to figure out what power-drill racers were, and then I saw this. Amazing.
Crocheted Walker, haaaah!
This huge Transformer-thing costume is made entirely out of those anti-fatigue foam mats.
There was also this 26-foot-tall interactive mechanical hand, which was controlled by a user wearing a glove--it was straight out of Sci-Fi. (That blond kid in the back, sitting on the elevated bench, is the one running it here.)
Indoors, there was a big hall full of interactive "principles of science!"-type activities, and I spent an inordinate amount of time at this bubble exhibit, where the dippers made the most incredible shapes.
Weirdly enough, I think my favorite exhibit in the whole place was this huge "Tapigami" display--that is, origami(-ish) things made from masking tape.
At floor-level.
Granted, this thing was full of beautiful masking-tape flowers and greenery...
...and an amazing Millennium Falcon...
...but for me, the best part was all the weird little creatures. And there were so. many.
Hee. Whoever came up with all of this has an enviable imagination.
After we'd found our way back out of the Maker Faire, we discovered that we were roughly ten minutes away from the miraculous taqueria we'd visited on our Queens food tour, and so we decided to go have lunch before I had to head to the airport. We shared four tacos on homemade tortillas--one each of chorizo, steak, carnitas, and chicken--and a heap of nachos topped with beans, various meats, and Oaxacan cheese, and washed it all down with mandarine (yum) and tamarind Jarritos. Too much food, as always, but it was all divine, and the service and welcome we received could not have been nicer.
And we discovered that the place has a name, despite the entire absence of all signage. People, if you find yourself in Corona and need a good taco, I can vouch for this place. (Although it's in a neighborhood chock-full of taquerias, so I suspect it's not the only gem. But it's the one I've been to, and it's fantastic.)
And with that, we hustled back to Manhattan so I could pack up and return to Zürich. Ahhhhh, New York: we will meet again. (And again and again.)
Next up: a quick trip to Athens to rendezvous with my world-traveling aunt and uncle!
*As far as I know, I was the only person collecting (and as far as I can tell, actually, the only one who even knew of) these packs of Muppets-in-famous-paintings back in the 90s. But they existed--I found some online!!--and I'm fairly certain I still have mine buried in a tub of memorabilia. I hope. Those things were hilarious, and I'm still a fool for the Muppets.
** I have been fascinated by these things for years, and it was deeply moving to get to watch a video, custom-made for this exhibit, about this particular monument. (There was also a plaster model and several additional photographs.) (Also, I'm really not trying to be pretentious here; this book has been on my Wish List since it was literally one-twentieth this price.) Because these monuments were commissioned by the socialist government of the dictator Tito, they are imbued with even more tragedy than "just" the horrors perpetrated here during WWII; even so, earlier in their respective existences, they used to be popular places for visitation, remembrance, or simply for respite from the cities. Nowadays, however, many of them are now crumbling, graffitied, or entirely gone. (Some excellent photography of several of these sites here.)
***Now I am just being pretentious, but it's very, very true. The French Laundry was way more fun; the food was somewhat more impressive (probably 'cause most of their produce came from their garden across the street); the service was far better; and I'd go there again for certain. Per Se, not so much.
As always, I enjoyed hearing of your travels. But how on earth, do you manage to fit in so much! I would need a nap tucked in there somewhere...especially after such marvelous meals!
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