I spent a weekend in New York City recently—the first time in a bunch of years. My wife Leslie and I were the guests of a very generous client, Lee Garvey, along with his Click2Mail team and their families. Here, in case you haven’t been to NYC (or haven’t been lately), is some of what we saw.
We took the train from Richmond, Virginia (hadn’t been on the Amtrak route to NYC since my buddy Jack and I rode up from Northern Virginia during the summer I graduated from high school. (I recall we went to see a one-hit-wonder band, The Illusion, at the Hunka Munka nightclub in Queens).
The train was clean and comfortable. It didn’t take much longer than it takes to drive with the bonus that you’re dropped off in mid-town Manhattan without a car to worry about (neither do you have to deal with all the hassles of modern day air travel)…
We arrived Friday night, walked around China Town and Little Italy, then had dinner at Despaña Soho…
We arrived at our hotel and, to my surprise, opened the curtain to an unobstructed view of the building I was gushing about in a post here a couple of weeks ago: 56 Leonard tower in Tribeca—small world…
Now that I’ve seen it in person, I like it even more…
Saturday morning our group gathered and walked down Hudson to Bubby’s for breakfast…
Then down the way to the new One World Trade Center and the 9-11 Memorial. One World Trade Center is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.
Among the collection of new buildings near the site of the original World Trade Center buildings is architect Santiago Calatrava’s controversial World Trade Centre Hub…
At the entrance to the Observatory at the top of One World Trade Center is an impressive multimedia wall presentation on the construction of the building that rises at the end to reveal the view…
As you can imagine, the views are dramatic. This is north toward the Empire State Building (center top)…
Just to the right in the foreground, again, is 56 Leonard…
Pull out a bit and, at the very center of the image is the mysterious “Long Lines” Building you may have read about last year…
Continuing around is this view to the northeast…
And one that highlights the Williamsburg (left) and Manhattan Bridges over to Brooklyn…
Full-on to the east you see the construction of 3 World Trade Center (the World Trade Center master plan includes a complex of buildings)…
To the south, just over Leslie’s shoulder is Statue of Liberty…
For your designer’s eye: a skyline border decorates the bottom of the windows around the entire observation area. (I imagine it also effectively deters folks from sitting on the window vents)…
There are lots of fascinating views, including those directly below, like this one to the west…
And, of course, the one to the east showing the footprints of the Twin Towers, now the 9-11 Memorial…
That was our next stop—down to the base of the building to view the 9-11 Memorial.
I was quite struck by the design of it. It consists of two dream-like pits (or nightmare-like if you prefer)—with waterfalls that seem to fall into a bottomless abyss. I did not find it pleasant nor do I assume it was meant to be.
As you see, the names of those who perished in the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001 are engraved in stone around the outside of the building footprints (there is a pit on the site of each building).
My photograph is entirely random, but I will demonstrate that those named are not unknown by doing a search of the name most prominent in my photograph: “Joseph V Maggitti.” It reveals pages dedicated to his memory here… and here… and here… and here….
It was sobering.
A few blocks away we passed the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge…
And then traveled down to the Chambers Street Subway Station (haha… not all of the subway system is picturesque)…
On to lunch at Katz’s Delicatessen…
And back out to the west.
What impressed me was the thought that there are so many stories behind every door and storefront…
Stories with about people, places, and a brand or two…
Back to the subway. The signage, of course, is iconic…
Walking up to the The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue is the Ukrainian Institute housed in the Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion (below, left)…
We were at The Met only briefly. Long enough to walk through the Max Beckmann Exhibition and get lost finding the photography galleries…
Saturday evening we paused to take in Times Square on our way to dinner…
Wild signage…
Dinner at Carmine’s, a family style Italian restaurant in the Theatre District…
Notice the pensive look on everyone’s faces? They’re all trying to recall the name of the familiar-looking guy in the painting below (I asked two waiters and neither knew—it was Vince, end of the table, a musician himself, who came up with the answer.)
Among other things on Sunday we visited bakeries (Leslie is an accomplished baker so we’re always looking for great bakeries). (When she was baking wedding cakes, I remember vividly the horrifying process of delivering a three tier cake in the back of a van).
A few of the high points were Amy’s Bread…
and Pasticceria Rocco…
We also stopped by Eataly…
A 50,000 square foot food paradise…
Eatay is just off the plaza in front of the Flatiron Building…
And across from Madison Square Park…
We, of course, walked by the Empire State Building…
And the Chrysler Building…
Wish we had time to do more than take a picture of the New York Public Library…
And Grand Central Station…
Having not visited the city in decades, I had developed a sense that, somehow, New York City was a place that had some type of singular identity. A look and feel that brewed it into something that could be sipped and swallowed to produce an easily identifiable taste.
As usual, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
New York City, like any megalopolis, is of course, good and bad, warm and cold, dark and light, sweet and bitter. It is what you make it and what it makes of you.
I thought it (painting in restaurant) was Mario Lanza.
Or Super Mario.
Thanks for taking the time to share a wonderful overview of a fabulous city.
Very nice tour of NY. I enjoyed your photos and your comments.