Kimberly won a sales contest with her new magazine, Global Trade, and they wanted to send us on a vacation to Cabo. Kimberly, being the negotiator that she is, suggested they send us to New York instead, so we got free airfare and hotel and went on a theater junket. We took a red eye out Thursday night and got there early Friday morning. After a three hour snooze in the hotel, we got up and split a Reuben at a deli, then went out to collect the rest of our tickets. We had already bought some online, and were playing the rest by ear, but the TKTS made it too hard on us and we ended up paying regular price for most. Online they wanted $35-40 fees, so we still saved some money.
Buying tickets for The Best Man. You would think this would be a great cast: Candice Bergen, James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury, John Larroquette. You would be wrong.
Some shots of Times Square as we are walking around getting tickets.
Who knew there was a Steak 'n' Shake in New York?
Wandering around, we head up toward Central Park.
And end up going to the Natural History Museum.
Of course, in honor of Kimberly, they were having a butterfly display.
You could actually walk through the display with butterflies all over the place.
I tried to get a shot of them flying all around, but it didn't come out. You will have to make do with them landed.
The butterflies are brought in from butterfly farms in coccoon form. They hatch and live out their short lives in the display.
You have to check when you leave to make sure you aren't bringing any of them with you.
Friday night, we head out to the DB Bistro Moderne (Daniel Boulud) for dinner.
It's bistro style, but the food is excellent.
Times Square at night. Full of Elmo, Woody from Toy Story, and other critters. Too cold for the Naked Cowboy, I guess.
Friday night show: Memphis.
Of course we can't show you pictures of the show, but it was a great musical to kick off the tour.
Kimberly trying to keep her ears warm in the breeze. The weather was generally very nice, and averaged 10-20 degrees warmer than normal, but it was windy.
Saturday afternoon: Other Desert Cities.
A very heavy drama about a dysfunctional family dealing with their secrets coming out. Extremely well-written and well-acted.
Our special treat dinner: a price fixe special at Dovetail. It was marvelous. They brought a grapefruit gel topped with caviar as a starter. Then a piece of trout in horseradish creme sauce. Then gnudi (think gnocchi but made with cheese instead of potato). The entree was a two-way duck with a breast, plus a confit wrapped into a pasta roll with a marvelous earthy sauce. Kimberly had a chocolate praline mousse dessert with banana ice cream, and Wade had a gingerbread cake with ice cream.
That evening we saw The Best Man, a play about behind-the-scenes political wrangling for the presidential nomination.
The stage area was set up as the floor of the nominating convention.
They set up the monitors, cameras, etc. to look 1950's to 1960's style, but then they cast James Earl Jones as the incumbant president? He's getting a little long in the tooth, and went up on his lines several times. John Larroquette played one of the candidates, and Candice Bergen played his somewhat-estranged-but-still-putting-on-a-good-face wife. Angela Lansbury played the grande dame representing the women's vote. They all got standing ovations, but you could tell Candice Bergen was embarrassed to get one.
Sundy morning we got up and went to the Religious Science church that was founded by Raymond Charles Barker. Look, the current pastor is a fellow Wade.
We walked right under this sign and missed it, and had to come back to it.
The sanctuary was smaller than we would have hoped; there was only one service of about 40-50 people. Probably because my fellow Wade is very old school, and speaks like he was trained in a Lutheran church. He had good things to say, but could have been better on the delivery.
Us in the lobby.
We went to Las Halles for lunch, and chatted up the people at the next table. We took their picture, and they took ours in return. They are both doctors and retiring to Florida, but both very proud of their fine city.
Sunday afternoon we saw Freud's Last Session, a two-person play about a meeting between Sigmund Freud at the end of days, and C.S. Lewis as a young author. It was very well written and quite balanced: anyone that came in as an atheist would think that Freud scored all of the correct points, and anyone coming in as a Christian would have thought Lewis scored all his points.
Me with Sigmund Freud after the show.
That night the big treat: The Book of Mormon.
Here is the staging, complete with the Angel Moroni. Can't say enough good things about it: the singing, acting, dancing, script, songs, are all fantastic.
We weren't flying out until Monday afternoon, so Monday morning we decided to go down to see if we could get into the 9/11 memorial. Here's us on the subway.
With our new subway tourist friend and photobomber.
We couldn't get into the memorial, because you have to get your tickets online. We could have gone to another building and gotten them that day, but we didn't have time to go get there and back and wait in the line to get into the memorial, so we just walked around some more. Here's Kimberly with the lion in front of the New York Public Library.
And Wade in front of the Wall Street bull.