Wait a minute….now, WAIT A MINUTE….what’s this coming down from the sky in New Jersey, only 15 minutes from the East Coast shoreline? I drove many, many miles to escape the Minnesota winter blues. Apparently it has followed me?
Yes, as Lynn and I are preparing for a big day in the Big Apple, the snow started flying hard and heavy. Unbelievable.
So, we pack up everything we need for the day. It’s important to plan ahead, since you can’t run back out to your car and get something. Camera, check. Bags for purchases, check, money, tickets, check. Warm clothes, check. Umbrellas, what? We walk 5 blocks to the train station. With umbrellas. Up the stairs. Wait for the Rariton Valley train. It seems so weird to stand there with an umbrella. I close mine up. Off in the distance, a faint glow of a headlight in the heavy snow as the train approaches. We board the train. It’s a long haul down the tracks to New York. With not all of the trains running, we need to take a longer and more time consuming route, so we made a transfer in Newark. Another run across a station to get on another train. We arrive 45 minutes later to New York Penn Station at 34th street. Now we are underground and need to be heading over to the subway to get to 59th street. That’s another jaunt of about 100 yards.
We get on the subway. It’s standing room only. Dozens of people are standing, pushing, bumping. Guess what, we aren’t the only ones with umbrellas. I’m standing there hanging onto the overhead rail and thinking;
“For all the fear people have about crime, guns, and concern about more gun control…..well what the hell about umbrella control? I know I, for one, could do some serious damage with this umbrella, and I’m sure others could too. All it would take is one person having a bad day. We are all armed. Just someone start. Just start…..it’s that first poke….omg.”
Anyway, it’s time to get off the sub way.
We exit the subway, run up a flight of stairs and YES, it is still snowing like mad! Lynn announces we are going to Central Park. Great. My makeup is running down my face, we can’t just go to the car and clean up and go back out. No, we are hearty NY travelers today. This is how they do it. It’ll be just fine.
A walk in Central Park in the snow is actually very pretty. Funny how few people were there. Lynn has a Dentist appointment so she leaves me to find a comfy place to grab a hot drink and wait for her. After much exploring on foot I find The Coliseum Bar and Restaurant on West 58th Street. What a great little Irish establishment! Top of the noon to ya! I belly up to the bar in all my dampness and streaked face. A Guinness Stout and some wings, and a couple from Connecticut up for some conversation. I was set for hours.
By 4:00 Lynn was finally done and ready to meet me at the bar, her crown repaired. After more visiting with my new CT friends, we were ready to brave the weather once more. Now its just sleeting, but the streets are 2 inches deep with slush snow and water. We walked over to 5th, Rockefeller Center, looked at all the storefronts like Macys and Tiffanies, checked on the progress of the big Christmas tree lighting and submerged ourselves into the notorious Times Square. Talk about Christmas on steroids! The lights are so overwhelming that eventually it’s simply visual overload. How many pictures can a girl take of the M-n-M’s in a gi-nor-mous billboard? Quite a few. Everything is bigger than life. Too bad we are too early for the big tree, it’s clear that is the biggest of the big events in the city. We walked and walked, and I got my fill of the amazement of it all, and then we decided we were wet and tired and it was time for dinner.
We were encouraged to try Dafni Greek Taverna, which turned out to be an amazing greek venue. Our waiter was fun, flirty, and brought us fabulous food. We started with an order of Spanakopita that I could have kept eating all night long. Our waiter suggested a Greek wine, Dimitra, a Cab/Merlot blend that was melt in your mouth delicious. My Pastichio, (layers of pasta and ground sirloin with béchamel sauce) was simply to die for. Lynn’s Moussaka was equally fabulous. The Dimitra wine was the perfect paring for this scratch cooked heavy ethnic meal.
Thank goodness we were right across the street from the Port Authority. Our clothes were dry, our eyes heavy, our tummies full, and our feet killing us. It’s a long day to run around New York City in the snow and sleet, and now it’s 10 pm. How people do it every day I’ll never know. We completed our dinner and took a bus back to Lynn’s, another 45 minutes. Going home by bus was not the same kind of ride as into NY by train. But the bus is less expensive.
The night skies are clear. It’ll be 50 or more degrees tomorrow. I imagined having to do this type of travel every day. Quite a different lifestyle. Not my lifestyle. But indeed an exciting one to experience for a day!
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