Our Fifth Honeymoon

It was our fifth annual "nano-honeymoon," our nickname for our getaway weekend without the kids, since we never had an official honeymoon (though, you could say our first 8 years--without kids--were one, I suppose.)  We've been to the same hotel near Union Square four times and then Block Island once.  We love the alone time, the break in routine, the relaxation and restoration, exploring both the familiar and the new.

The kids spent the very rainy weekend with their NYC grandparents, devouring a ton of Chinese food (both in restaurants and at home), visiting the beach when they could, and going to the movies.  They also spent some time playing computer games with their uncle, Goo, introducing him to Dragonvale.  They had a great time and were sad when we showed up.

We were a little sad to show up, too!  Re-entry into the world of chores, work, bills, and discipline can be rather harsh, but at least there were no hairballs all around the house when we got home.  We have a wonderful cat sitter who takes good care of the cats and house when we're gone.  She even made friends with our new cat, Eris.  And the tree work we had done came out just fine (our tree guy could only squeeze us in this weekend and we weren't changing our reservations.)  See, the electric company is brazenly cutting down many of the town's lovely huge trees because they are caught in the wires.  It's awful (the whole state has been razing trees along highways and state routes--it looks like another storm hit.)  And so, with hopes of saving the giant maple on the side of the house, which is officially a town tree, being on the other side of the sidewalk, we surreptitiously paid to have the tree trimmed and entwined or dead branches removed.  I hope it helps.  The tree looks shorn, but perhaps it won't be cut down, if the electric company ever gets to the secondary roads.

Okay, back to the fun part.

It was, as I mentioned, a wet, humid, hot weekend, which isn't our favorite, but we didn't have any firm plans and we could change activities as needed.  A combination of restaurants, walking, browsing, books, Harry Potter, doodles and Zentangle, flowers, and rainbows--just lovely!

Friday

Our first stop was Craftbar, one of Chef Tom Colicchio's restaurants, where we had reservations for a late lunch as part of NYC Restaurant Week.  Oh, it was so good--celery shrub tonic; my first of many mint ginger lemonades; cold sunchoke soup with a black garlic reduction; a delicious pecorino fonduta with honey, pine nuts, and crostini; a table salad; a perfectly seasoned and roasted Amish chicken breast with kale, fava beans, and pickled eggs; duck hearts with dumplings which Mama liked; a light and creamy vanilla parfait; and a divine chocolate peanut butter tart with peanut brittle and peanut ice cream.  Oh, and cappuccino!  Mmmmmmm!


We walked off the meal at the art supply store, Dick Blick, where I picked up more pens and canvases for Zentangle and Art Rocks; we also got two little books--642 Things to Draw and 642 Things to Write About--which we filled out off and on and a coloring book of Delft tiles which we used a set of blue colored pencils on.  We also made our first meander around the Greenmarket in Union Square.  At the heat of the day, we took a break in our room, a lovely back room in the Inn at Irving Place, in a  jewel-like 19th-century brownstone (a friend, seeing photos of the lobby, asked if we were staying in Downton Abbey!)  I loved the large mirror, grated fireplace and mantle, tall windows, fluffy duvet on the bed, high timbered ceiling, moldings, and wooden floors.  It's like being back in time.  But with air-conditioning, hot running water, electric lamps, wifi, and flush toilets.  (I'd never really make it in the past.)


At dusk, we walked the Highline, which I had never walked before.  It's a perfectly New York kind of garden, on the abandoned elevated rail lines.  I loved the dense plantings of the informal garden--black-eyed susans, the purple spiked gayfeather, and the lovely purple coneflowers--plus the water features (I waded one foot in!), the public art, the exposed rails, and the views of the city and river.  We got some refreshing treats from the People's Pops, blueberry with jasmine and grape with coconut cream.  The most unexpected part of the Highline were the three topless women walking around with a topless little girl and a topless man; and he was photographing the whole thing, particularly people's reactions.  Two of the women--women of color--seemed to relish the nude exotic stereotype of the female "other" by artists like Gauguin--with elaborate necklaces and translucent wraps (and she didn't have on anything underneath); they posed but didn't seem to undermine the historical paradigm at all. The Caucasian woman was voluptuous, the nice way to say overweight--with large sagging breasts that clearly breast fed and a stomach that's held at least one child--but she was subverting the Rubenesque stereotypes of languid, sexed big white women.  Plus she was cursing up a blue streak.  It was all very odd.  Especially because it doesn't seem to be illegal for women to be topless (cops came and went, actually throwing two skateboarders off the Highline.)  All of which is good, i.e. the right to be topless, but honestly I'm not quite sure I understood the point.  It wasn't particularly political or even performative art; if anything, it seemed like exhibitionism intended to shock.  And good ol' NYC barely batted an eyelid.  Everyone noticed but no one seemed particularly shocked or bothered.  I was intrigued but also a little . . . bored by it.


We went to nearby Chelsea Market afterwards, wandering the shops of arts and crafts (including cream-coloredlace in hoops, which I'm inspired to make, with a small crochet hook, a little like my mandalas), books, and food items.  We ate some delicious crepes--a lemon sugar one and a truffled mozzarella one--and some currywurst, plus some Fat Witch brownies and some chocolate orange peel from Li-Lac, which is a shop we had visited in the Village on one of our first city walks together back in 1994.  I liked the architecture--despite reminders of its role as abbatoir--and how it has been converted into a modern-day market.  And there were twinkle lights!  Also, lots of rainbows around town . . . .

We took a cab back to Union Square, grabbed some falafel with fixings (chickpeas, cabbage, beets, carrots, and garlic sauce) and another mint lemonade from Maoz, and headed back to our room for the night.  I just love walking through NYC.  I miss it.  But I know it isn't always easy to live there--so many people, traffic, expense, dirt--which is why we still visit.

Saturday
We slept in, til almost 10, and wandered over to brunch at Friend of a Farmer--toasted quick breads (lemon, banana chocolate chip, cornbread, zucchini bread) with apple butter; pumpkin walnut pancakes; chicken salad; and iced coffee.  Very tasty.  And I love the incongruity of the homey farmhouse decor--even pig and chicken plates! plus ingredients in jars, baskets, etc (looks like some of the cross-stitch patterns I have)--in downtown NYC.  But sitting chair to chair squeezed in together, you never really forget where you are.

After brunch, though not hungry, we wandered Bedford Cheese Market next door, picking up interesting things--buttermilk chocolate bar, orange blossom water candy, little pepperoncini sticks, chewy Haribo candies for Bud.  Our local grocery stores just carry the usual things, for the most part; if we want unusual international or epicurean food, we pretty much have Whole Foods.  I like the little markets of NYC.

Then we went to Forbidden Planet, which looks more and more like Hot Topics every year, with more toys of popular culture staples (Doctor Who, Marvel superheroes, Star Wars) than comic books and alternative culture artifacts than there used to be--but the air conditioning is better!  Strand Books was very crowded, typical Saturday afternoon, I imagine.  We browsed the art books and I picked up a Zentangle title which, according to Amazon, hasn't even been released here yet.  We also got a book about NY architecture.  The shop was clearly getting ready for the Harry Potter launch that night, with HP books and such around, including a "Hermione 2016" t-shirt.  We hadn't chosen where we were spending HP night.

We wandered our little neighborhood--the house where Washington Irving lived, the tavern "O'Henry made famous," and Gramercy Park, the last enclosed private garden in NYC.  I left a tangled Art Rock at the gate (I'd left another in the planter right outside our inn), after gazing at the formal garden inside.  Then we had a delightful walk through the Greenmarket; it was more packed with booths and customers than the evening before.  My favorite maple lemon mint tea, handspun and dyed yarns (picked up two skeins of cream to make some embroidery hoop hangings a la Chelsea market), artisanal garlic, and these gorgeous English garden roses with a dense sphere of petals, a light scent and delicate pink color.  I carried them around the rest of the day, as my own poesy, sniffing them as we went.  We stopped at Gothic Revival Grace Church, with its stained glass windows, faux stone plaster tracery, and a memorial to a parishioner who gave up her seat on a Titanic lifeboat for a woman with children at home.    We sat in Washington Square, looking at the surrounding buildings, the people, and the gathering clouds; Mama always remembers childhood summers there while Ma finished her PhD at NYU.


Next, lunch at Mario Batali's Otto, one of our favorites--outstanding spinach salad with ricotta salata and honey truffle dressing; roasted beets; crusty bread and thin breadsticks; delicious fusilli with sweet Italian sausage and escarole; pasta putanesca; and amazing desserts--a butterscotch pudding with coffee bourbon glaze and rosemary biscotti and a sweet corn gelato with polenta cake and corn crema.  Mmmmmm.  Mmmmmm.  And iced cappuccino.  We watched it rain outside while we debated our choices for the rest of the day.  We opted for some down time in the room doodling and resting, then another evening out, despite the rain.

I had fun with two new Zentangle books, including The Great Zentangle Book (which, according to Amazon, isn't out yet!) and Zendoodle, which together introduced me to Rubenesque and Geo-flower.  Love these new tangles!

After dark, we headed to Barnes and Noble for the launch party of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, billed as the eighth HP story (though it's a script to a West End play, not a novel, and was only written in partnership with Rowling, not her own original story.  Some fans don't count it as canon, we read in the paper at breakfast--along with reviews of the new Sharknado and the drop in ticket prices for Hamilton--but I'm not that picky, perhaps because it wasn't my childhood obsession (now, I'm much more adamant about who shot first in Star Wars); I look forward to a new installment, with her blessing.  There were a few different groups at the store--kids who are probably just now reading the novels; mid 20s who grew up with HP; and older fans like us.  There were also costumed characters (Snape, Trelawney, Hagrid, Dumbledore) and lots of store staff. We didn't need the wand making or face painting or photo ops--even Sis and Bud would have felt a little old for that.  But we did enjoy the owl show, with a live Ural Owl.  I hadn't seen one before.  We didn't need a copy of the book--ours came via Kindle at midnight, with hardback delivered Monday--but I bought a little snowy owl to carry around by way of a costume.  We popped over to the Book of Wonders party, totally prepared to buy a book for entrance, but it was so packed that we left.  It was too bad the kids couldn't be there, but they had chosen to go to their grandparents instead.  And we still all managed to have the book read in less than 24 hours!  More on that later.

In the driving rain, we stopped to pick up some Belgian food--sausage and stoemp (mashed potatoes and, in this case, carrots) plus mac and cheese, and a sugar waffle--which we ate in our room while we waited for midnight and the release of HP.  We both did some more drawing and some Dragonvale.  I'm on level 20 now.  Not bad for about a week of play.


Sunday
We finished reading HP on Sunday morning, a real page turner.  Nice to be back in that world and to see HP as a father.

We breakfasted downstairs surrounded by the lush decor of the tea room, with gorgeous pink roses leftover from a baby shower the day before.  Almond and chocolate croissants, Earl Grey tea, and the New York Times, with some drizzle outside.  An ideal city Sunday morning.  We popped back to the Bedford Cheese Market to grab sandwiches to go--a baguette with Chandoka Cheddar and Parma Cotta for me, tuna with gruyeter and pickled onions and eggs for Mama--which we snacked on in the car parked next to Gramercy Park.  We could admire the trees and surrounding buildings through our windows and sun roof.

And that was it.  We went to fetch the kiddos, stayed for awhile talking to everyone, and made it home with time for dinner and some down time before bed.  The cats were glad to see us and, though we loved our vacation, it was good to be home.

Meet Me at the Met

We took the kids to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday, a last-minute (well, the night before) decision to so something extra special for the weekend. There were several exhibitions that I had wanted to see with the number of free weekends to do so dwindling rapidly. And so we went first thing in the morning to be sure to catch the children's program before we saw everything else.

We arrived early enough to catch Vermeer's The Milkmaid before the program started, knowing the show would be packed later. And it was already crowded, but only at The Milkmaid. Because savvy New Yorkers and museum-goers knew that all the other paintings were from the Met's permanent collection and usually on view. Even after all these years, I'm just amazed how reproductions, as advanced as they are, fail to capture, to borrow a phrase, the aura of a work of art. The colors are just wrong everywhere I've seen this painting reproduced. And it is glorious in person--the blue of her skirt, the dotted brushstrokes creating the bread and the basket, the clever single nail on the wall referencing the scene as a work of art. Sis liked the milk jug but insisted she was pouring gravy on bread, not milk. We even got to see a 17th-century jug in the Met's collection. Bud was more worried about missing the program and so we headed back to the education center.

The children's programs, Start with Art, usually includes a story, discussion of one or more works of art, and a sketching project--a fairly standard structure for children's programs. We had been before and liked the experience, so much so that Sis remembered Georgia O'Keeffe by name, but this particular session was not even mediocre. Basically, the two objects chosen were great but the connections the educator was trying to make--you can count things in these pieces!!--was forced, contrived, and, well, really lame, even for preschoolers. But the kids liked looking at Brueghel's (choose your favorite spelling of his name--the Met has 2 on one page!) Harvesters and finding some of the details, including the birds (count them!) and the moon. Then the were asked to sketch their favorite parts (which is a pretty advanced and daunting task). Bud drew the "teepees" (can you see them?) and Sis focused on the reclining man under the tree; both included the moon. Can you find it? (hint: no it's not dirt on your computer, it's that tiny blue dot in the upper left corner)

Next, as a family, we headed to see American Stories, which examines genre and other paintings about America and Americans. The first room alone was worth the exhibition, full of iconic water images, from Copley's Watson and the Shark to Homer's Gulf Stream plus Eakins and Bingham. Bud was entranced by the sharks, standing in front of the Copley repeatedly asking about the painting for more than 10 minutes. "Why is he in the water? Is the shark going to eat him? Will the people save him?" Good news: the man comes out of it alive, though loses a leg (it's based on a true story). Which I told Bud over and over but something about the painting wouldn't let him go. He even bought the postcard, which now sits in his special treasure box. And Sis's favorite painting in this show? A scene of a bear and hunter in mortal combat. And Mama preferred a Civil War-era image of a husband and wife saying goodbye. Such cheerful images my family likes.

After lunch and a much needed break, we saw the following:

Paintings by Watteau, which for me lost some of their power when grouped altogether;

Chinese musical instruments, including a video of people playing a variety of the unique instruments which enthralled the kids;

and last but not least, an exhibition of the armor of the Samurai, including several

suits of armor, fantastic helmets (though Sis's favorite, of a crouching rabbit, was in the permanent collection display), and those majestic swords. Oddly, they liked watching the video of how the blades are forged and sat through it mesmerized 3 different times. Maybe because they were finally sitting!

But if you asked them what their all-time favorites were, they'd say the two statues at the beginning of this blog: Canova's Perseus and Guidi's Andromeda in Chains. We stood in front of these statues for what seemed like ages. And then went back again later! They were at first fascinated with Andromeda--was she a mermaid? what is that sea creature doing? why is she in chains? And so I told the story, using the nearby Perseus nearby as an illustration. And so we went over there--why is he naked? what's he doing with that head? why does that lady have snake hair? hey, why is he naked? did we talk about why is he naked?

Yep, "privates." Love those private parts in works of art. I gave my little speech again about how artists like to show the human body, how it's something we all have in common, how is often considered the most beautiful thing to depict. And they get that, in their way. But still, it's fascinating to see a bigger-than-life-size penis and some breasts on high. Sis, our budding feminist, though, objected to the different treatment of men and women, wondering when she was ever going to see a woman's vagina just like hers--why did they always cover it up? I'm going to have to make sure that all the privates get equal time on our next visit. I can just see it, "Mommy's 'Private' Tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art!" Ah, the dangers of being a mommy museum educator.

There were other highlights: peering in the scansions to see them setting up the creche and the Christmas tree; wandering around the roof garden with its huge metal sculpture Maelstrom; seeing the mother-in-law of a friend and colleague of mine as she gave a tour at the museum; marveling, again, at the "building inside a building" Temple of Dendur; the arms and armor display. Eating lunch in the cafeteria and also shopping for souvenirs also always rank high. There were only two downsides--a very rude mom in the cafeteria who ran over Bud and then blamed him for almost spilling her lunch (we actually "knew" her from the tour and also our last trip to the museum; she's a piece of work) and then the awful mess they've made of the American Sculpture Court, which now looks like a big train station terminal with art and a huge cafeteria--they must need the space for rental and concessions revenue, otherwise why mess it up? But, in the end, those didn't tarnish our wonderful, full, exhausting, exhilarating day. I'm sure we'll be going again soon--want to come?