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Okay… so I will admit to the world that I am now officially old… I can’t even pretend anymore… and to “celebrate” Geetha and I traveled to NYC for a long weekend… Geetha did a fantastic job helping to pull all the little details together to make this a most incredible weekend…

Getting there and Staying

We decided that although it would be a bit more expensive and take 3x as long that it would much more relaxing to take the train into New York… So we booked ourselves on the Amtrak Acela Express, which departs Boston’s South Station several times per day and arrives at Penn Station a little over 3 hours later. Travel was pretty uneventful, and it was nice to be able to relax, and plan the attack for the weekend… After arriving at Penn Station, and waiting for about 30 minutes at the official taxi dispatcher in a line that was not moving… we were approached by an industrious young man who asked what hotel we were going to… come to find out the reason the line was so long was because he was heading the cabs off a few yards up from the “official” dispatcher… it was a $5 dollar tip well spent… After an uneventful cab ride, we arrived at our hotel: The Iroquois New York which is located on 44th Street between 5th and 6th. The link to the right actually takes you to a sub page showing the actual room that we stayed at… you can’t see it in the pictures, but we had a view of they Chrysler Building right out our window… What you also won’t find in that picture are the lovely roses that Geetha had had sent to the room for our arrival… I’m a very lucky man…

A note on hotels, while the Iroquois may look pricy, and the accommodations were top notch, it was actually cheaper then several of the “chain” hotels that we looked into in the same mid-town area. Do some research before you depart, the boutique hotels have that something special that the chains don’t and by-and-large can be comparably priced, if not less expensive as we found…

Friday Night

Okay… Friday we arrived at the hotel around 2, and spent a bit of time running around Times Square, and getting the lay of the land, so to speak (we walked down to the Eugene O’Neill Theatre to just to see if it was walkable)… we grabbed a quick lunch just off Broadway at an incredibly bad, inauthentic Irish “Pub.” (sorry Sean, we needed another day to be able to do the real “testing” of the pubs featured in the NYTimes article…)

That night was the pinnacle of the trip for me… Being a bit of a foodie, I had done some research on chowhound.com, and in reading through the forums there tracked down a restaurant which seemed to be at the top of every-one’s recommendations: 11 Madison Park. I don’t even know where to begin explaining how wonderfully humbling this dining experience was… I outright have always considered myself a food snob, but the experience at 11 Madison; service, food quality, ambiance… the works, was an eye opener for me and what is really meant by “fine” dining… They were nice enough to modify their “Tasting Menu” (an 11 course affair, which optionally can be paired with wine) to meet Geetha’s vegetarian requirements… It was a marathon of gastronomic delight, and I really can’t say much more beyond, if you’re in NYC try 11 MADISON PARK. Oh… I should also point out, that if you go for the “tasting menu” WITH the wine parings… Fore-go the highly “recommended” cocktail to whet your appetite… :-)

Saturday

Saturday morning came a bit early given the experience of the previous night, but we dragged ourselves out of bed to head over to the the American Museum of Natural History. Having never been to a natural history museum of this size, I was a bit overwhelmed… And however intellectually gauche, I have to admit that after about 2.5 hours my brain was on sensory overload, and the visit became more of a walk. What I found interesting, is that I think I had seen several of these exhibits before… likely online or in encyclopedias… not sure, but it there was an overwhelming sense of deja-vu for me throughout our visit. I eventually confessed my brain-numbing to Geetha, who perhaps kindly, agreed that she was on overload as well… So leaving at least 1 floor, and a couple of wings unexplored, we headed for the exit.

The fresh air felt great, and it was sunny, so we meandered around Central Park for about an hour, just strolling… Geetha took some pics of the great yard looking back into mid-town, and before we knew it we realized that we’d better get headed back to the hotel…

Saturday night was to be the second highlight of the trip… We had booked tickets to go see Spring Awakening.

I have to admit, to those of you who didn’t know, that I spent the better part of two years in the late 80’s studying theatre at the University of Southern Maine, but I have not stepped foot inside a theatre since I was 19, and I have never seen a “Broadway” show.

Our experience was good, we had great tickets, the crowd was not obnoxious, and by and large it was a really entertaining show… I’ll leave the full on reviews to those more qualified, but “second lead” character “Moritz” played by Blake Bashoff, (pictured to the left in the blatantly “borrowed” image) was a true stand out… intentional or not, the sub-plots surrounding this character wound up being my primary focal point… to say he stole the show would be too much, but to say he was perhaps the most dynamic actor on the stage would not.

The following is a legal flash video of one of the numbers from the show, just in case your curious:

I’m going to wrap this long overdue post for now, and come back to it later… To come: Sunday: Visiting B&H Photo, and Babbo…