By Layla
Our Christmas and New Year were foiled by Roz's mum's death, so after a tough and uncelebratory 2014, we decided to re-set with cheery optimism for the start of a new year. And so, instead of accepting a grim new year on the 31st December, we decided to postpone and celebrate in style mid-January. And thus, we stepped on the train to New York at an ungodly hour on Saturday morning with a little thrill in our hearts for the long weekend ahead. We arrived in time to drop off our bags at The Lex and head for a lovely Chelsea neighborhood brunch in the Sullivan Street bakery.
Our Christmas and New Year were foiled by Roz's mum's death, so after a tough and uncelebratory 2014, we decided to re-set with cheery optimism for the start of a new year. And so, instead of accepting a grim new year on the 31st December, we decided to postpone and celebrate in style mid-January. And thus, we stepped on the train to New York at an ungodly hour on Saturday morning with a little thrill in our hearts for the long weekend ahead. We arrived in time to drop off our bags at The Lex and head for a lovely Chelsea neighborhood brunch in the Sullivan Street bakery.
After brunch, we climbed up to the delightful High Line Park, which always makes us feel happy as it opened not long before our NY honeymoon, when we first explored it. With great views out to the Statue of Liberty, and surrounded by trees, high-up street art, and bright blue sky, we started to feel very holiday-ish. Our next stop was to a LGBT art tour of the Chelsea galleries. Out of Chelsea's 300 or so galleries, these art tours (this is our third), pick out some of the most interesting exhibitions on that week, and tell us a bit about what we're seeing. Since this one happened to be LGBT-themed, we saw some work by gay and lesbian artists, plus others, and met two of the artists. Wandering around these galleries was a lovely, cool way to spend the afternoon.
Then, after it finished, we decided to do what I hadn't done since I was 14, and Roz had never done: we went up the Empire State Building! Tourist-tastic! We thought we'd bought express tickets, allowing up to jump the queue. Alas we'd bough Skyride add-ons instead, so first we were treated to a simulator ride through New York which was quite good and made us both feel queasy. We'd rather have had the express tickets, we mused bitterly, as we watched others going straight to the front of the giant line... But eventually we got to the front, zoomed up to the 80th floor, ran up 6 final flights of stairs, at there we were at the top (ish) of the Empire State Building! We muttered how all these romcom movies where people meet at the top are unrealistic, given the cost and waiting time involved... But when we looked out over the city at sunset, we had to admit it was romantic and cooler than we'd imagined. After gazing at New York in a 360 degree splendour of twinkling lights, we got into more queues and eventually got out onto the street, far later than we'd hoped.
After a mad dash back to the hotel to change for the evening, and allowed a full 90 seconds for the transformation from day-clothes-brrr-it's-freezing to new-year's-eve-glamour. Then a leap into a cab and out at the Grey Dog, a casual eatery we'd fallen in love with on our honeymoon. Salad and wine - a perfect quick meal, before a dash round the corner to New York Live Arts Theatre to see... Taylor Mac! This performance artist is a favourite of ours and though we had misgivings about his show (a three-hour review of music from the 1900s-1920s without an intermission), it was brilliant, telling the story of America from the perspective of the outsider through the music. We adored it, even when it ended up overrunning and we had to grab another cab to our final destination of the night: the delightful cocktail bar, Dear Irving. We got there just in time for our reservation and were seated in a cool part of the bar, where some really quite excellent cocktails were produced in time for the clock to strike midnight, ringing in our belated but happy new year celebration.
The next day was forecast 100% likelihood of rain, varying between heavy rain and freezing rain, and the reality didn't disappoint. We cancelled our street art walking tour and instead grabbed our umbrellas and walked down to Greenwich Village for breakfast in another branch of Grey Dog, followed by seeing a beautiful animated Japanese film at the IFC (along with a full-ish house of kids, people like us, and Japanese people of all ages - Roz and a small girl were the two weeping loudest at the end, though), then a tasty lunch in our beloved Cornelia Street Cafe. Then it was onto the metro and over to Brooklyn where we sloshed through puddles til we found the NYC Transit Museum. What a cool museum! It's inside an old subway station, giving it an apt ambience, and features all sorts of old subway cars, complete with old advertisements in the cars. We went through them all, chuckling at the women named "Miss Subway" over the years. There were various other interesting exhibits, like the history of how the subway was built, and all sorts of things to play with, like how to make electricity to power the trains. When we were ready to leave we couldn't believe how much time had passed! We had coffee in a cool little hipster cafe, then hopped back onto the subway to return to Manhattan - and to Hell's Kitchen for a pre-theatre dinner. Yelp helped us find an incongruously cute (for the area) little Italian restaurant, Riposo 46. We enjoyed some very nice pizza, salad and wine before strolling round the corner to the Shubert Theatre. We'd lost track of the number of people who had told us how fantastic the musical Matilda was. This was our big moment! Sure enough, it was indeed very good, though by no means winning a place as one of my top musicals. We had a lovely time though, and then we and our umbrellas walked back to our hotel, stopping at a cool bar en route for wine (Roz) and a big cake (me).
On our final day, we started off by taking our suitcase to the luggage place at Penn Station. Suitably unencumbered, we grabbed breakfast, then set off to Bryant Park ice rink for our traditional skate/homage to the realisation of a dream. Five years ago, on the Bryant Park ice rink, we first thought up the idea of moving to America. So despite the million tumbling children cramming the rink, here we were. It was lovely.
Afterwards, we hopped on the subway and headed to Queens, destination: Museum of the Moving Image. At first the neighbourhood seemed unlikely, but then remnants of the old Astoria movie studios became apparent... And then the museum appeared. Humble from the outside, inside this turned out to be one of the most delightful museums we've visited in New York. Cool architecture, bright, well-designed, interesting exhibits about filmmaking, lots of old films to watch, and some interactive fun including a free PacMan machine I practically had to drag Roz away from, and a sound studio mock-up where you could record your voice saying lines in famous movies. We chose Wizard of Oz. I don't know whether Dorothy sounded funnier in my Scottish accent, or Roz's English one: "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore!"
We had lunch in the museum cafe, then headed into town to a museum that was three thousand times busier, the Museum of Modern Art. Our plan was to see the much-lauded exhibition of Matisse paper cut-outs. But first we had to fight through a mass of others with the same intention. We saw a very nice little Lautrec exhibition (and enjoyed his penchant for lesbians), an interesting between-the-wars photo exhibition, and of course the Matisse exhibition, which was hard to appreciate due to the crowds, but was interesting and impressive, and definitely worth a look.
After all that crowdsurfing we were exhausted, so a walk through Central Park proved welcome, attractive relief. Then we went to a cool little Japanese coffeeshop for a bit of a read and some pre-train banana bread... Then walked down to Penn Station. What a good, fun, busy, and altogether delightful New Year weekend. Hooray for 2015.
