Lots for the Last NY Day

We traveled out on this cold, cold, but clear winter morning to visit the museum at the 9/11 memorial.  It's a very somber, very moving museum.  One of the docents told me that many docents and hired security people are people who worked in the Twin Towers or had connections to it.  She said working there is therapy for many.

I saw one man leave in tears.  There are many exits so that you can leave at any time if the material is too difficult for you to handle.  There are also employees all around and they all seem to be checking that the emotion of it all isn't too much for anyone.

I saw this quilt before when it was hanging in the American Museum of Folk Art.  Their tiny space couldn't do it justice.  Here is where it belongs.

I left Bob and Elizabeth and headed uptown.  The subway car only had three of us in it.  Strange!

I stopped at Grand Central.  Can you spot the bride and groom having their wedding photos done while the rest of us mill around?

I've visited Grand Central several times and I could never find the spot that was left dirty on the ceiling to show how filthy and disrepaired the station was before Jacqueline Kennedy spearheaded an initiative to save it and clean it up.  Finally I found it.  See the little dark rectangle partly on the light and partly on the dark.  That's it!  Yes, I have strange goals in life, and it still makes me happy when I fulfill one.

I had lunch in the iconic Grand Central Station Oyster Bar.

I had clam chowder at one of the counters where you are very, very close to the people next to you.  I was having the delicious $6.95 clam chowder but the man beside me was having the $28.95 bouillabaisse which was loaded with every imaginable type of seafood.  Can you guess which one of us was on a business expense account?  I was so tempted to distract him so that I could slip my soup spoon into his bowl!

I went along Library Way over to the Public Library.  The sidewalk has literary quotes embedded in it.  Here are two I especially like:

We were tracking where the Gorilla Cheese food truck was and today it was right outside our hotel!

I left Elizabeth and Bob today because they had plans to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and then gallivant about Brooklyn.  My back has been acting up and I figured that was the last thing I needed.

They ate at Grimaldi's.

They went to Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus and it looks like they had a fine time.  We're a family who loves circuses.

Tonight is our last show.

If there is justice in the world, shouldn't we have four canceled flights and two more days before we leave here?

Happy Chinese New Year

Here's today's temperature which is about -4C but there is definitely a windchill factor.  Shouldn't all the tall buildings block the wind?  They don't.

We headed over to Chinatown as Chinese New Year's celebrations were supposed to start at 11.  They were delayed until noon and we were much too cold to stay.

I asked these two men in blue if I could take their photo to show how cold it was.  They politely pulled down their scarves which were hiding their whole faces.  Not quite the photo I planned.

Here's what they really looked like.

And here's how everyone else was dressed.  I can't believe the one guy doesn't have his mitts on.

The workers were setting the charges to these firecrackers.

Bob and I went into a Chinatown grocery store ... more to warm up than anything, but there were lots of good items to see.

This seemed like a good price for goose.

But wait ... non eviscerated?  Doesn't that mean all the innards are still in them?  I worked at the Wynyard eviscerating plant summers during university so I definitely know what eviscerated and non-eviscerated mean.

There were pails of live frogs, but I would buy mine like this.

The Westminster Dog Show may be over but some dogs still need to get around like this little subway rider.

 I found this sign in Hell's Kitchen.  In all the times we've been to NYC, we've never seen a rat.  Maybe this is why.

This afternoon's show was "Phantom."  Elizabeth worked its run in Saskatoon but this was the first time she saw it from the audience.

I want this for my steps.

Coffee break number one was at Schmackary's where Elizabeth and I had Kitchen Sink Bars.

Coffee break number two were cookies from Eleni's which were almost

 - but not quite - too pretty to eat.

Tonight's show was "Beautiful" the Carole King story.  We were fortunate to see Jessie Mueller in it.  She won the 2014 Tony for this role and won't be with the show much longer.

We sat beside a man who has acted and directed on and off Broadway since 1987.  We believed most of what he said and found him to be very interesting.