Trip to New York City

Duke and I got back Wednesday night from a week in New York City. The catalyst for the trip was our niece's wedding on January 3rd. Here are a few highlights from the trip.

• The wedding was beautiful and wonderful. The ceremony, the bride and groom, the wedding party, the reception were all perfect. A lot of family and friends flew in from all over the country. It was held in the chapel at Riverside Church on the upper East side of New York City. What a stunning church. It reminded me of the most beautiful European cathedrals.

To top it all off, sitting across from me at the reception was  a lady who looked very familiar. It turns out she is the wife of a good friend of the groom's family. I worked with her at Sun about 20 years ago and haven't seen her or talked to her since then. Small world!

• We ate at some wonderful restaurants while we were in New York. Around the corner from our hotel we happened upon a little Italian restaurant that we liked so much that we ate there twice. Mario's Trattoria bills itself as having "New York's best Brick oven pizza and pasta from Napoli" Both times that we ate there we had pizza. Oh was it good! I had never had an egg as an ingredient on my pizza but it added a rich flavor to the pizza. The restaurant was tiny but the service was great and the ambiance was cozy and warm.

The bride and groom sent out a list of some of their favorite restaurants and we tried two of them. The Chow Bar in the West Village serves Asian influenced food. Kathy and Wes recommended the calamari salad and the spring rolls. We tried both. My mouth was very happy.

The Hummus Place was on a narrow little street also in the village. We went there for dinner after jazz at the Blue Note. It was raining out. We sat at a table in the window and ate a sampler of appetizers. It was our last dinner in New York and it was perfect.

• Most people already have a mental picture of the New York sites so I didn't lug my camera around. Instead I just made my own mental pictures. The highlights include the view from the Empire State building at night. The lines during the day were terrible but at night they weren't so bad and the view at night was stupendous.

The tour of Rockefeller Center. The buildings themselves are works of art and the history and interiors are fascinating. There is a mural on the ceiling of the lobby of the main building that gives you an optical illusion. From one side of the lobby he is standing on his left foot and looking down. From the other side of the lobby he is standing on his right foot and looking down. It is not at all subtle and is very impressive.

We got half price tickets to see the play Speed The Plow on Broadway. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was also fun to see an actress I really like, Elizabeth Moss who plays the female lead. I love her as Peggy Olson in one of my favorite television shows, Mad Men. I didn't realize it until I read the credits but she also played Zoey Bartlett on West Wing.

We walked everywhere and it was really cold. Luckily it only rained on us as we were walking to Penn Station to get the train to the airport. It was a wonderful packed week. I'm really glad we went and I am really glad to be home.