Saturday started with a glorious lunch and very nearly ended in a riot. Lunch at Sushi Nakazawa is a different post, so I didn’t include those photos here.
Since we were in the area, we walked by the Friends apartment.Admiring the Friends building.Merchant marine memorial, which is eerie.Outside Battery Park.We biked a little more than five miles from Battery Park to Hell’s Kitchen on this lovely bike path.World Trade Center memorial.
Enjoying a rest at City Beer, where Bob is convinced Leonardo DiCaprio was serving.
DJ Pizza for a quick dinner, after sunning on our rooftop for a few hours.
We took a cruise around the end of Manhattan and by the Statue of Liberty.
There was lightning flickering all night, and this shot caught some, turning one frame of the long exposure much lighter.
When we were preparing to dock, it began bucketing down and everyone was herded inside. It got sweltering hot, and everyone was annoyed. It quickly got ugly, and when our side wasn’t let off the ship fast enough, people began getting stirred up and making verbal threats. Those people were hustled away very quickly. Eventually we were able to get off the boat, and by luck it had stopped raining. We got home around 1am, with a 6am wake-up. Ah, to be young again!
Bob’s anniversary gift to me this year was lunch at Sushi Nakazawa. Words can’t describe the experience. The entire visit is a curated experience, each bite is perfect and perfectly contained. It’s the best meal I’ve ever had.
Today was a day full of culture. I thought that I slept until noon, but it was actually 9 am. We went to the Met, then wandered the West village, then went to The Book of Mormon. Then had 0.99$ pizza slices and wandered home.
Brekkies at Scotty’s Diner.The Met!Van Gogh’s roses.You really get a sense of motion when you stand in front of these.Bob insisted we go into the Abstract wing, and we were both thrilled to find the Rothkos.This one was my favorite.There was a music exhibit, with instruments, including Ringo Starr’s kit.I insisted we take another selfie outside, for some reason.Central Park love faces.Spicy Margarita (Bob) and the Jagger (me).The Extra Virgin bar.Sant Amboeus.A handsome couple.
Greenwich Village crossing.Bob so annoyed at the sheer volume of photos I intended to take here.I couldn’t wait, in times square. This was before a horse ate my dress.Damn! Lights!This boy ate my shoulder, his blonde bastard brother ate my dress (I love them both).🥰Eugene O’Neill Theatre, row A.Book of Mormon.It gets super disco gay, which is appropriate since we went to the Camp exhibit earlier.Bryant Park / NY Public Library.A handsome man at the park at night.
I can’t fully smile because the other horse was literally eating my fucking dress! So a bunch of tourists got to see my altogether, but whatever. It was for a horse.
Since we went to the Met, we walked through Central Park to catch the C to our restaurant in Greenwich Village. We took a moment to sit on a bench and just enjoy being together.
Important things I overheard today: a man describing the plot of Free Willie in great detail; a woman at the Camp exhibit at the Met who took one look around at all the people, threw up her hands and said “this is literal hell;” and a woman in Central Park who was yelling after a man “you wrote me a love letter in 1965 on yellow…” (then I heard no more).
In the Rochester airport, still not quite believing we don’t have to wrangle any kiddos.The ceiling of Grand Central Terminal.Being serious at the front doors of St. Pat’s.Being pleased to be together, after all: we may not practice any religion, but we were married in a Catholic church 10 years ago!Finally sitting down to eat at Dos Toros.I had a veggie burrito and Corona; Bob had a plato with literally everything and a Negro Modelo. We people-watched out the front window and loved having nowhere to be. We also realized that trouser-length is every man’s personal decision, since no two people who walked by were even remotely similar.MoMA is closed and we are DISAPPOINT.Dancing goat outside the Central Park Zoo cheered us up!This is a great statue.There’s a seal showing off in the background, but mostly this is a photo of us and strangers. Won’t be the last!The clock! I’m glad we happened to be there while it chimed the hour.We are adults with very important things to ponder as we sit by the duck pond.Bob saw uncharted territory in the nature reserve in the park.We found an outcropping that was the start of a little waterfall, where the birds were having a fine time.Look at us, immediately seeking out nature after landing in NYC.I found my look for the Grand Meetup party!I was really enthralled by the wings in the Victoria’s Secret museum. Bob couldn’t get over the intricacy of the costumes, including some of the beading. The work on these runway outfits is really unbelievable. It was super fun to check them out. As Bob said, I can’t resist a museum.I feel these would just be so hard to parade around wearing, while in high heels.We happened by Rockefeller Center.A flag got in the way.Having a little cuddle in our apartment.The view from the rooftop was great, and we loved being able to just sit together and appreciate it. We talked mostly about the kids.The necklace I’m wearing was Bob’s wedding gift to me. I wore it during our wedding, and I try to wear it on our anniversary as well. It’s my all-time favorite piece of jewelry.We posed next to a massive heart-shaped leaf on our walk to dinner.
Ten years ago Bob and I got married. A set of twins (“we’re done having kids”) and a singleton (“we’re done having kids“) later, a lot of laughter and love and we are still thriving.
We are having a long weekend to ourselves in NYC, and we have committed to taking selfies everywhere we go. I’ll share some later, but for now, it’s enough that you know this trip has already lead me to realize that I want a statue of myself (after my death), as a centaur, in Roman armor.
A shameless plug for a post my dear friend Andrea wrote.
There are books that are still taught in schools today where girls and women don’t even exist: they are so inconsequential to the Very Important Ideas going on in the book that nobody thought to include them. (Which also, by the way, ingrains in us at an early age that girls and women don’t matter or have anything to contribute, if they’re not even present in the literature we select).
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This teaches all of us that the male perspective is the default perspective: it’s what’s considered good and right, it explores lofty ideas, it’s the Canon. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that if man is the default in language, then man is the default in everything. Language is the foundation of how we explain and communicate our world, and it represents who we are and how we operate.
I collected Ele from Camp today. Safe to say she had a great time! A few tears on the first night, but as she said, afterwards she slept great. She pointed out that her camp bed was “hard as a rock,” which she said was fine because apparently so is her bed at home.
