Ending the Trip to New York

Monday, Nov. 1, 2010

I started the day having a cinnamon-raisin bialy--a bagel with a very small hole in the middle--from Kossar's Bialys. It was good--slightly crunchy on the outside and firm and moist on the inside. UMMMM! I also grabbed a prune pastry from a bakery next door to give myself a dessert, since I intended this to be my lunch.

From there, I headed toward the Museum of Modern Art getting there at noon and avoiding the long lines that form at 10:30 when it opens. However, I did not avoid the crowds inside. With many other museums closed on Mondays, it hauls them in!! I chose to go to it for a couple of reasons. 1) I had not been there for a very long time. 2) They completely rebuilt it a few years ago on the same site with a better layout. I wanted to see both the art and the architecture. I spent almost 3 hours there. The sad thing is that any museum gets tiring after a couple of hours. I enjoyed seeing the exhibits, but I was ready to leave when I did. Their main special exhibit was of acquisitions which had never been displayed there before. They were a little too wild for my taste. There was another special exhibit of works by women photographers which was really very nice. And the permanent exhibits have an embarrassing number of paintings by well-known artists such as Picasso, Pollack, Matisse, etc.

Knowing I would be out in the evening, I returned to my room and packed. I also stopped at the subway station and bought a ticket I could use tomorrow morning for getting to the airport without having to worry about lines or time.

I decided to have more pizza for dinner. The New York plain pizzas are so good and so reasonable in price. I went to a place near where I had the bialy in the morning and got two pieces which were large and just out of the oven.

Before going to the theater, I rushed to the kitchen store where I had stopped two days ago to buy a stovetop heat diffuser and bought a doughnut cutter. The one I have has too small of a diameter in the center which causes the doughnuts to close and not cook well in the middle. I arrived at the store at 7:04. They officially close at 7:00, but the door was still unlocked. And since I asked immediately for what I wanted as I opened the door, they let me buy it. I was out by 7:06!!

I returned to NYU to see another play their graduate students were presenting--Tourble in Mind. It is about Black performers in the late 1950s who are faced with playing stereotypical roles written and directed by whites. Again, the performance involved actors switching roles at the intermission to provide them more experience and to show their versatility. The show itself was quite good.

I rushed back to the apartment and was in bed at 11:05. The night would be short!

Tuesday, November 2. 2010

The alarm went off at 6:00. I was cleaned up, dressed, and dropping the key back through the gate from inside the elevator (The apartment took up the whole floor, so the elevator was the front door.) by 6:25. Things have gone smoothly today. I immediately caught a subway train to Queens where I only had to wait about 12 minutes to catch the bus to La Guardia. My flight took off one time and arrived in Denver about 40 minutes early due to high winds. I'm sitting at the gate right now waiting to take the plane to San Antonio. It leaves in 45 minutes and has just arrived, so everything should go smoothly with it, too.

The trip to New York was a good one. The apartment was nice. I found it easy to get around. (Although it remained confusing trying to get my orientation each time I went upstairs to exit the subway.) I did things I enjoyed. I walked a lot. I pushed myself, but I took occasional breaks. It was relatively inexpensive (except for housing) to be there. My wardrobe was fine (although the weather got rather cold and I was the only man in New York wearing khaki pants which are apparently out of style there. Everyone seems to wear worn, dirty dark blue jeans.) I'm not sure if I want to follow through on my plan to spend a month there every year or not. I need to consider it further. It would have to be at a slower pace. And I don't think it would be enjoyable unless I could find an apartment that would be available every year so I would know the neighborhood well and would be able to make friends over the years.