Using our Metro Pass

     I have a long list of things to do in New York City, so on our second day, June 26, we decided to make a dent in that list! We started the day by buying our 7 day metro pass. It is still a bargain at $16 for seniors and usable on the bus and subway. 

     We headed north on Lexington to 77^th Street. We walked over to 5^th Avenue to find a bookstore I had read about. It was in a beautiful old mansion now being used for the French Cultural Institute. 5^th Avenue is filled with these old mansions converted to hotels, consulates, museums and other utilitarian buildings. The bookstore was closed!

     Our next stop was the Carlyle Hotel on 76^th Street near Park Avenue. This is another venerable old building built in the 1920’s with a very classic bar completely decorated with murals painted by Ludwig Bemelmans, the author of the Madeline children’s books. It was quite delightful to look at.

Wind Sculpture (SG)1

     From there we took the bus on 5^th Avenue alongside Central Park to the Arsenal Building. This was built before the park as a storage place for ammunition. It has always been owned by the city and has had many uses. Now it is surrounded by the zoo and houses the park offices. There is a gallery on the third floor and we looked at a special photography exhibit.

The hostas at Mt. Vernon Hotel & Gardens

     From Central Park we wended our way to the Mt. Vernon Hotel Museum and Garden at 421 E. 61^st Street. It was built in 1799 as a carriage house, converted into a hotel in 1826 for New Yorkers to escape the crowded city below 14^th St, and has been preserved as a museum. We enjoyed the hosta filled gardens, but decided not to take the tour of the hotel. The Queens Bridge now looms over the building – what must it have been like in the 1800’s?

Don, Suzanne, Marion & Hildie at the theatre

     That was it for Tuesday and on Wednesday we spent time with my friend, Hildie and her friend Marion. We met at the Greek restaurant, Dafni on 42^nd Street. From there we walked to the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater to see the play “The Iceman Cometh.” I enjoyed the intricacies of the story and the characters, Don wasn’t so thrilled! Before we met Hildie we had looked for the New York Genealogical Society (they moved), visited the Art Student's League to see the new paintings for sale, and checked out the Museum of Arts and Design on Columbus Circle (worth a future visit).

First Days in New York City

     On Sunday, June 24 we left from Reagan Airport in DC to fly to Kennedy Airport in New York City. We have taken the train from DC to NYC several times in the past and decided to try the plane for a change. Even though it takes less than an hour on the plane and closer to 4 hours on the train, I still think the train is better. We seemed to have a lot of walking in the airport and then, when we landed, it took a couple of hours to wend our way via the air train and subway to our hotel on 48^th and Lexington.

     We have a large room with king size bed and kitchenette on the 9^th floor of the Marriott Residence Inn. This is the same area called Turtle Bay where we stayed when we first started to come to New York in the 1990’s. By the time we got to the hotel on Sunday we were exhausted and didn’t do much besides settle in and look for a place for dinner.

     So, on our first full day we were ready to look around and see what was available for fun things to do. Don studied the bus routes and planned our itinerary for the day. After carrying the map all day yesterday he decided that putting the app on his phone with all the maps was a wonderful idea and we have suddenly entered the smart phone age!

A floating flower on Fifth Avenue

     We have breakfast included with our hotel, so we started with that. Then we headed off  to Lincoln Center to see what was new. We thought we might try the American Ballet and check out the Asian film Festival later in the week. Across the street is the David Rubenstein Atrium which has air conditioned public seating, rest rooms, and a TKS box office to buy discount tickets. They also have free concerts on Thursday evening. We will be back.

     From there it was a short walk to Columbus Circle to stop in the Shops at Columbus Circle where you can find most of the high end stores. We looked around in Amazon Books – Amazon’s first endeavor into brick and mortar shopping. Whole Foods also has a presence, so we bought some cookies and ate our lunch there.

     After an abortive trip to TKS in Times Square which didn’t open until 3, we decided to head back to the hotel and call it a day.We had dinner around the corner at the Comfort Diner. It turns out we had eaten there in 1997 when we were staying in Don’s cousin Frank’s co-op apartment. We’ve come full circle!

A week in Washington DC

     I will try to cover our week in Washington DC with this blog. We were there to attend the 127^th DAR Continental Congress. It is held in Constitution Hall, which is in the neoclassical building owned and maintained by the National Society DAR. There are business meetings, workshops, luncheons, evening award ceremonies, and lots of socializing.

The All American DAR Chorus

     I sang with the All American DAR Chorus. My goddaughter, Samantha, joined me and it was a lot of fun sharing the trials and joys of singing together with 100 other voices during the Thursday evening ceremony.

     We attended one special luncheon called Units Overseas luncheon and shopping bazaar. DAR has about 15 units headquartered in various other countries and we are encouraged to join them as Associate Members. This luncheon was sponsored by them. They all brought merchandise representative of their country and we had an hour or so to shop and support them. It was fun to see all the different items they brought and spend some money!

Newly refurbished Constitution Hall

     My favorite activity is spending time in the magnificent DAR Library doing genealogy research. I was lucky this year and found quite a bit of information. They have installed 2 scanners and 2 copiers for saving information you want to keep. I learned the difference between copying and scanning and decided I still liked copying best!

     My husband and Holly’s husband got to spend the time bonding over household repairs, fixing computers, visiting the Cryptology Museum at Ft. Mead, and the Smithsonian complex in DC. We enjoyed several good meals including Pho, pizza, crab cakes, liver and onions, and Reuben sandwiches.

Philadelphia

     It has been over a week since we left home on Friday, June 14, 2018, so it is about time for me to start telling you about our trip!  It has developed into a 3-parter. For the first part we went to Philadelphia, the second part was in Washington DC, the third part is in New York City.

     For Philadelphia – we flew into Washington DC and our friends, the Shaffers, picked us up at the airport. We stayed at their daughter’s house in Alexandria and drove to Philadelphia on Saturday. Holly grew up here, so she was happy to give us a tour of her former haunts!

Washington Crossing the Delaware

     Our main stop was the new Museum of the American Revolution. I am not much for museums, so I did not really know what to expect. We had a tour guide who made history come alive for us and made the whole museum come alive. I learned so much about the Revolution and wish I could tell you everything. We learned that the Stamp Act was one of the first things to happen. Great Britain felt they needed some financial help from the colonies to help cover the debts from the French and Indian War. The Americans felt they had done enough! So, it was grounds for conflict no matter what. The stamp was made by a metal stamp which made an impression on the items to be taxed (not a postage stamp!).

     The first real battle was Lexington – Concord and the conflict went on from there. There were many battles and situations that helped the colonists defeat the British who were much better prepared for fighting. There were videos and displays showing these battles.

     One of my favorite things was the diorama of the Statue of King George which was pulled down after the Declaration of Independence. It was made of gilt paint over lead and they used the lead to make muskets balls to fight the British. Just recently they found a musket ball with some gold paint – one of the few left known to be made from the statue!

     Many artifacts are stored in the museum, but not normally on public view. One of these is Washington’s tent that he lived in for most of the time of the War. He believed in being where his soldiers were. We saw a video about this and then a scrim opened to show the actual tent set up on the stage. What a moving sight – the lighting and the changing background made you believe you were seeing it just as Washington would have when he was living in the tent. They only do this two times a year, so we were lucky to see the actual tent.

     After visiting the museum we had dinner at the City Tavern where Thomas Jefferson and other famous Philadelphians ate.

     

Samantha, Bob, Holly & Suzanne at Brandywine River Museum

On Sunday we headed back to Washington DC. We stopped at the Brandywine River Museum of Art. It is located along the beautiful Brandywine River (another Revolutionary War site). The museum features paintings by N.C. Wyeth and his son Andrew. There were many paintings by other members of his family and by painters whom he taught in his studio, which was located not too far away.

We're home!

Here it is Monday, October 23, 2017 and our last day on the road. We plan to be home early tomorrow morning.

Silver City was a beautiful spot at about 5200 feet. The town was founded when silver was discovered in these mountains. Then copper was found and it is still being mined. We saw a huge area of open pit mines and hills of tailings as we drove into Silver City. Later we walked around in the historic part of town which was filled with art galleries and other shops. We also looked at the "Ditch," which is a deep canyon through the middle of town. It was formed over the years by successive flooding which kept washing away the main street of town. By the time the town people figured out how to stop the flooding it was too late, main street was gone and the whole business area had to be reconfigured alongside the ditch. Eventually they decided to make the ditch into a park and it is a lovely place to stroll – either along the top or climbing down and walking along the creek at the bottom.

The Ditch, Silver City AZ

I wanted to do some more mountain driving, but we decided we were tired of that and it was time to make tracks for home. We left Silver City and headed for Phoenix on Sunday. We got there early afternoon and found out we were now on California time (Arizona does not use daylight saving time).

Today, Monday, we continued driving on I-10. We stopped in Palm Desert to spend the night. We have had a lazy day driving around the highly developed cities of Palm Desert, Indian Wells, La Quinta, and Desert Hot Springs being totally surprised at all the development –shopping malls, condos, golf courses and resorts, even a couple of high rise apartment buildings. How things have changed in the fifty or so years that we have been coming here!

Hannibal MO

Museum in Cedar Falls IA

Betsy's house, Mankato MN

More driving!

Friday, October 20 and Saturday, October 21 have been big driving days.  I have discovered the last two days that we are taking almost the same trip that we did when we came home from our last reunion in 2014 (dumb me for not checking my trip journals). So, I have been looking for new places to visit.

Friday we headed for Roswell NM (never stopped there). It is a prosperous looking town which trades on its UFO history and emphasizes its space industry. We discovered the Roswell Museum and Art Center which is well worth the trip (and it is free). The museum has had a long history of sponsoring artists in residence. There were several galleries featuring the work of these artists during its fifty year history of existence. The art works were all very diverse and interesting – from collages, sculptures, oil painting, pastels, lithographs; some realistic – others quite modern. They also had a room of paintings by Peter Hurd and his wife Irene Wyeth (daughter of N.C. Wyeth).

Then we did a circle scenic drive through Lincoln County to see how things looked in the 1800’s when Billy the Kid was rampaging through. It was also interesting learning about him. He was a typical cowboy drifter who got caught up in the Lincoln County War and turned to a life of crime (short though it was) after killing a man or two at that time. The war was started by two factions who wanted to control the trade in Lincoln and started shooting at each other. It took the US Army to finally bring some peace and by then most of the protagonists were dead, so nobody really won! I guess the “good old days” maybe weren’t all that good.

On Saturday we started to head for White Sands before I remembered we had also been there! So, we went through Alamogordo and Las Cruces and then north to Silver City NM. The route was through the mountains and over 8000 foot Embry Pass. It was a strenuous and beautiful drive and we are happy to be quiet for the rest of the night!

Another notch on the Capitol belt

For quite awhile we have been visiting state capitols and getting a stamp for a passport book called “Capitol Collection.” Every state capitol has a specially designed stamp and there is a page for each in the book. I have already written about visiting the capitol in St. Paul MN and this week we visited the state capitol in Little Rock AR.

When we walked up to the building I felt like I had already seen this building. It is built of white marble with a tall dome in the center, a long marble staircase at the entrance (even though you really enter through a tunnel under the stairs), and two wings for the two houses of Congress. There are four floors and a basement which has a cafeteria. The fourth floor was mainly exhibits and paintings. The third floor contained the galleries overlooking the Senate and House of Representatives chambers. On the second floor you could look into these houses and also enter the old Supreme Court chambers, the governor’s reception room, and the state treasurer’s office with its no longer used vault. You could also look up at the dome and the beautiful chandelier. The front doors are made of polished bronze (from Tiffany’s in New York) and have not been opened since 9/11. The first floor is mainly offices, security, gift shop, etc.

So, after viewing all of this I was reading the brochure and discovered that the architect was Cass Gilbert – the same architect who designed and built the Minnesota Capitol! He finished Minnesota in 1905 and started this one in 1909. No wonder they looked so much alike. However, Arkansas does not have all of the beautiful paintings, statues, and other decorative elements that Minnesota has. The house chambers are rather plain and there is no Rathskeller!

Minnesota state Capitol

Arkansas state capitol

Minnesota state capitol

So, now I have 6 more capitals to visit and I will have seen all 50 – hurrah!