DAR Continental Congress

We have been in Washington DC since Monday and we are enjoying a fairly low key time. We took the train from NYC to DC. The Shaffers picked us up in their rental car and we proceeded to their daughter’s house in Alexandria to stay with them there.

The next 4 days were spent attending DAR activities at their 108^th Continental Congress. We spent time in their extensive research library working on our genealogy. We visited the shops set up in the hallways of Continental Hall and bought items made by the students at our DAR schools. The Museum Shop and other DAR groups also had items for sale.

A packed hall for opening night at Continental Congress

Each evening there is a special program showcasing DAR programs and activities. The first evening we heard “George Washington” telling us about the period before the Revolutionary Was from his point of view.  The second evening we heard from the winners of the various DAR essay competitions. What well spoken children they were. It gives you hope for our next generation.  The All American DAR Chorus also performed. Samantha and I sang in it and it was a joy to join our voices with over one hundred women to sing Patriotic songs.

Don and Bob visited Fredericksburg VA to see George Washington’s boyhood home.

They also toured the Spy Museum. We have helped Samantha in projects around her new home and enjoyed some nice meals here and in restaurants.

Our last two days in New York

The view from our hotel room!

Our last two days in New York City and we are winding down. Our bucket list is getting depleted along with our energy!

On Saturday, June 22, we visited the Turtle Bay Festival. The city closed Lexington Avenue from 42^nd Street to 54^th and vendors set up food stalls, craft booths, and information carts. There was all kinds of food – corn on the cob, turkey legs, ethnic dishes, bakery items, etc. Too bad we had just eaten our usual buffet breakfast at the hotel. There were lots of jewelry vendors, clothing, leather goods, hats, gadgets for all kinds of use – on and on. It reminded me a lot of going to the swap meet in Quartzsite AZ. It was a beautiful day for shopping – the rain had stopped and the sun was out.

Times Square from the top of the TKTS Booth

In the afternoon we went to TKTS in Times Square and got tickets for a musical “The Prom.” It was a cute show, very good dancing, great singers and actors, but not so memorable music.

On Sunday we went to mass at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle near Columbus Circle. It is the mother church of the Paulists, so it felt like home. After mass we spent some time looking around the shops at Columbus Circle and visited the Museum of Arts and Design. This was another museum with 6 floors of exhibits. Two of the floors were dedicated to punk graphics – art work celebrating bands, writers, and artists from 1976 to 1986. Unfortunately, our lives had gone in different directions at that time, so none of the items resonated with us.  I thought I might like the floor with futuristic jewelry, but that was a little outlandish and unwearable. Even the gift shop was way out of my price range. I did enjoy looking at the works by Roger Brown.

Suzanne in front of a Roger Brown installation

He does still lives using the many objects he collected over the years. He does a painting and incorporates the objects into the painting via a shelf that he places them on. I thought his juxtaposition of the objects and the colors in the paintings was lovely and his style was clean and simplistic. He died in California, but this is the first I had heard of him.

We decided to call it a day and came back to the hotel to get ready to leave tomorrow.

Visiting places in New York City

An exquisite embroidery at the Rubin

Friday, June 21 – the summer solstice! Our friends left for their next adventure and we set off to do some things from our bucket list of New York activities.

Since it was still drizzling we jumped right on the bus to head to Grand Central Station. We found the shuttle to Times Square where we transferred to the #1 Subway. We got off at 18^th Street to visit the Rubin Museum of Art. This is a 6 floor building dedicated to explore Himalayan art and the power of objects and intentions. The exhibits were really about the history of Buddhism and Hinduism in Tibet and China.

Suzanne at the Monument

Then it was back on the subway to visit Stonewall National Monument. I thought maybe I could get a stamp for my National Park passport – but there is no visitor center there yet. There is a small park on Sheridan Square at Christopher Street. It has been fifty years since the Stonewall Inn was the center of riots for gay rights. The Inn is still open, and there were lots of people around celebrating Gay Pride Month and the day of the Summer Solstice.

In this same area we found the New York City AIDS Memorial. It was a beautiful park with a huge white screen covering a black circle water feature with a floor inscribed with a Walt Whitman poem. I found it very moving and restful.

After listening to some rather dull music in Sheridan Square, we headed out to find our way to Madison Square Park to see what was new there. I love this park. It is so beautiful with lots of flowers, greenery and squirrels! There is always a new art exhibit for the summer. This year there wasn’t much art, but they seemed to have a lot more flowers in flower boxes.

Don enjoys the colorful balloons in Madison Square Park

We finished up the day with dinner at the Pure Thai Cook House on 9^th Avenue at 51^st Street.

Around the peninsula of Manhattan

Thursday was the last day we had to spend together. The Shaffers leave tomorrow for Washington DC and we will stay on in NYC for three more days.

We took the Circle Line boat tour around the island of Manhattan. Unfortunately, today it was only a peninsula tour as the tide was in and we could not go under the bridges that crossed the Harlem River. We only got to go north as far as 95^th Street on the East River and about the same distance on the Hudson River. But, it was fun seeing the buildings of the City from a new prospective. I learned that the structure I was trying to describe yesterday in Hudson Yards is called The Vessel. It’s design was inspired by the Stepwells in India. These are wells dug down to the ground water level. Then the sides of the well are lined with steps so people could actually walk down into the well to collect their water. So the Vessel is actually an above ground stepwell with people walking up from the bottom of the well as far as they want to.

After the boat trip we decided to have an iconic New York meal and go to a deli for dinner. There are many delis to choose from, although considerably fewer delis have survived over the years. We went to Ben’s Deli on 45^th and 3rd Avenue. It was quite satisfactory for our last New York meal together. We also got to experience our last time traveling through the congested streets of New York on the crowded buses. Luckily it only rained when we were inside, so we did not have to wait for buses in the rain!

Keeping dry in NYC

Our next two days in NYC were spent trying to schedule activities to stay out of the rain. Luckily the heaviest rain seems to have occurred while we were inside and we only had a few sprinkles to deal with otherwise.

We visited the Museum of the City of New York which is the best place to go if you want to learn about the early history of the city and all the changes it has gone through. This is a very information dense museum and well worth a visit.

Hildie and the film maker, Christian

We saw a documentary film about the Pennsylvania Dutch. It was made by the cousin of my friend, Hildie. So, we met up with her, had a German dinner, and went to the German embassy near the United Nations building to see the film. Hopefully, it will come to a theater near you some day!

We went to look at all the construction in the Hudson Yards. This is a totally brand new area taking over the former train tracks and delivery area on the Hudson River. There are skyscrapers, shopping malls, and gardens being built. They have a huge sculpture made of steel pallets interwoven to form a tall oval shape. People can climb up and have a great view of the city. A picture is worth a thousand words!

Holly, Suzanne, and Bob 

We saw another play, “Ink.” It is the story of Rupert Murdoch when he started the tabloid newspaper, the “Sun” in competition with the “Mirror” on Fleet Street in London. The staging was spectacular and the acting top notch. We all enjoyed it. We also enjoyed shopping in the M & M store on Times Square afterwards.

Public art works in New York City

Suzanne trapped in an untitled sculpture

Sunday we were threatened with rain, which never materialized. We started the day visiting Rockefeller Center to look at the art exhibit –the Frieze Sculptures. It consisted of a variety of sculptures in front of the Comcast Building (originally known as 30 Rockefeller Plaza).  They were all pretty modern and untitled. We were more interested in going inside the building to see about the Diego Rivera mural, which has long since been destroyed and replaced by murals by Jose Maria Sert in shades of brown!

Then it was on to mass at the iconic St. Patrick Cathedral and over to Times Square to buy tickets for a play. We saw “The Ferryman,” an award winning play which took place in 1981. It was about an Irish family living through the time of “the troubles” in Ireland.

On Monday the Shaffers went off on a seven hour bus trip to visit four of the boroughs. Don and I took a bus up Broadway, getting off at stops to look at the Birds on Broadway exhibit. It seems that every year the city picks an artist to do a series of sculptures and sets them up on the Broadway Malls – the green space down the center of Broadway. We had seen the first one on Saturday by Lincoln Center. Today we saw the ones on 79^th, 86^th, 96^th, 105^th, and 117^th.

Don and the bittern sculpture

By that time we were tired of getting on and off the bus, so we decided to give it up! We came home via a lovely bus ride on the #5 bus. It goes on Riverside Drive which runs along the park by the Hudson River.

In the evening we took our husbands out for a belated Father’s Day dinner at the Toscana 49 restaurant which is just around the corner from the hotel.

First Day in New York City

Friday, June 14 and we are heading off again to New York City and Washington DC. This time we are traveling with our friends, Holly and Bob. After an hour and a half delay we had an uneventful flight from LAX to Newark Airport in New Jersey. We took the bus to New York City and found our way from Grand Central Station to our hotel, The Renaissance Inn by Marriott on 48^th Street between Lexington and 3^rd Avenue. We have a very nice room on the 11^th Floor.

Holly & Suzanne at Lincoln Center

For our first day here, on Saturday, we managed to travel from Lincoln Center near Central Park to Staten Island and walk about 3 ½ miles to do that! We picked up brochures at Lincoln Center, admired the fountain in the central plaza, and got our first glimpse of the outdoor art work sponsored by the City. We saw the Red-Necked Grebe – a huge statue of that bird made from recycled wood and sporting two baby grebes riding on his back. This is the first in a series of 12 statues of endangered species birds placed along Broadway from here to 190^th Street.

Suzanne and the Red-Necked Grebe

Then we led Holly and Bob on a whirlwind subway ride to the end of the line in Battery Park and got on the Staten Island Ferry. We rode it to Staten Island, turned around and came back. It is a lovely way to see the harbor and the Statue of Liberty and appreciate the changing skyline of New York City as you come back.

We spent some time looking at the World Trade Center, the new Subway Station that looks like a huge white bird, and  the 9/11 Memorial before we headed back to the hotel. Day 1 in New York City!

Impressions of Italy

We have been back from Italy since the beginning of May and I am finally feeling caught up and ready to move on. However, several people have asked about my impressions of Venice and Italy, so I thought I would pass on a few thoughts.

My main thought is that there were very few surprises on this trip. Our world has become so small, we see so much on TV and the movies, and hear so much from friends, and have become so multicultural in this country, that sometimes I think we have seen it all. That seemed particularly true in Italy.

Since both California and Italy have Mediterranean climates I noticed that the vegetation was very much like ours. There were lots of vineyards. And, the places we were were close to the ocean so we often saw the sea along with the rivers and lakes. So the countryside really reminded me of California. We saw lots of poppies and yellow flowers – so reminiscent of driving our Pacific Coast Highway.

The food was good, but not better than we get in our own Italian restaurants. Different regions in Italy have their own cuisine and our guide told us that they would never make combinations of certain things. I guess we are not so fussy here, because we do eat different pastas and other ingredients in many combinations. I missed butter on my bread!

We noticed that there are no fat Italians! All the walking and healthy food must be to blame. Our guide told us that Italians do not ascribe to the “eat everything on your plate” syndrome. They were so deprived after WWII that now they want to show their recovery by being overly generous with food. You are not expected to eat it all, just appreciate the fact that it is available and given to you. Almost every meal has a pasta course served first along with a secunda or main course.

We had some beautiful sunny days. But a lot of times it was cold and gloomy. When it rained the wind was so cold and the rain came down in buckets. The toll roads were well maintained and traffic was heavy, but calm. We didn’t see too many trucks in the small towns we visited.

One thing I noticed was there were no homeless to be seen and very few people with their hands out! I did read in one place that Italy, being a socialist country, provided everyone with a place to stay and some welfare money. The streets were basically clean and the people polite and helpful.

We saw lots of dogs and not too many cats. The people walking their dogs often had them off leash, but they followed right along. Even when they went potty, the owners seemed to notice and came back to pick it up.

I loved the canals and riding the vaporetto. It might be hard to live walking and riding in boats, but it was fun to be a tourist and travel by canals and bridges. The lack of cars, scooters, and skate boards was quite refreshing! I loved all of the old buildings and great variety of architectural styles. Can you imagine what it must have been like when they were all new and painted and fresh? However, I still felt like I had “been there, done that” since Venice is so well pictured in our media. I am not so much of a “museum” person, but Italy is certainly the place to get your fill of museums and art. Some say it is the best place in the world for that.

All in all it was a great trip – but I am glad to be home!