Meanwhile: On the Feast of Stephen, the daughter and I arrived in New York at about 11 AM. There is very good pizza near Penn Station (name and address to be posted later, because I am getting dressed and can't go find the menu). It had a banner proclaiming it to be one of the ten best pizzas in New York, according to "You've heard of Zagat? It's like Zagat, only for pizzerias." This made us wonder what it was like to be a pizza critic for a living. Do you only eat them when you are on the clock? The rest of the time, do you only eat things with a fork and and a nice cloth napkin?
Like everywhere else we ate in New York, the pizzeria was scrupulously clean (I really mean this) and I might as well say from the outset that every single person we spoke to was friendly and helpful and spoke adequate English. I love New York. It is so big.
Our hotel, the Park Savoy, did not want us to check in until 3 pm.
and what holiday is the dinosaur celebrating,anyway? "Five Million Years and Still No Comet"?
We decided to go the American Museum of Natural History, as it was not that far from the hotel as the taxi flies (my mother is deeply into taxis)(everything is far, in New York).
When I lived in greater Boston, I made a thing of never going to a museum during school vacation. Life in rural NH had made me forget this. The AMNH was FULL of people of various heights, mostly behaving quite well. But it was hard to walk. Anywhere. Let alone back and forth through various lines to the check room, and then to the line to the secondary checkroom, which was staffed by nice people whose usual job this was not, being yelled at by unkind patrons. It was also very hot. We managed to check my wheelie, her backpack, our coats, but it was already obvious we were not at the top of our form. Then we waited in the line for the bathroom. I had come down with the Painful Polygons in Stomach disease, which might have been a bug or might have been way too much rich food the two days before. I waited in the line for I believe every Ladies' Room in the AMNH, and they all moved relatively quickly. I felt for my daughter, in a strange city with someone who moaned and occasionally said she thought she might die. I am used more to nauseated stomachs than nauseated with PAIN.
The purpose of the trip was to give Ellie enough time to spend in the Met with someone whom she would not feel her Roman interests imposed upon. We had chosen this museum because it would be acceptable and I could go check out the American Indian cases. These were good purposes but the press of people and the beaten condition of our bodies compelled us to take what we could get relatively easily.
We went to a very fine all about water life, and then to a hall of meteorites, and a very good exhibit of pre-homo sapiens persons. It was very heartening to see how many people there were interested enough to be reading the labels. All of these were good, only our feet hurt and we were toast from Christmas and neither of us does well in crowds. I was in such low shape I did not care to check out the gift shop. I did have the first CocaCola in several years and even without cocaine it's a good stomachic, and I felt less like I was going to die, heave, explode.... but it is a sad thing to be in New York and want to hurl when you see a menu.
We had a cultural divide. She thought the big panoramas of African Veldt or PaleArctic were dull. I had loved them when I was tiny (we lived in New Jersey from the time I was six till I was 13, so I used to go the NYC more often). I thought the Ocean thing was okay but maybe a bit much; she liked the 'something going on where ever you look' aspect. I did like the clouds scudding across the ceiling. And we had one of those milestone mother-daughter talks where she said, "Mom, what's the deal with mangroves?" and I was able to impart to her my knowledge of the red and the black and brackish and to dwell, as we had never had a chance to chat before, on the importance of coastal marshes. It was good.
At last it was late enough to try to spring our possessions and go to the hotel. It was, as we had been warned, small, but it had entirely adequate furniture and a bed and an amazingly clean bathroom--actually, it had a shower. The only time I can recall really wanting a whirlpool bath in a hotel where I was staying for non-amatory reasons, and alas, it was not to be. The hotel is cheap. Only less so the week between Christmas and New Year's.
We slept for three hours.
We went out for food. Even though it was dark, in a Big City, and in fact was doing a nice line in cold driving rain. Angela's Rock Star Delicatessen provided food, a comfortable place to sit, not-loud ambient music. I asked Ellie if she wanted to go clubbing. Oddly, she refused.
I am hoping she will come back to NH tomorrow and I will have access to our photographs.
1 comment:
I just love the way you write about everything. Happy New Year.
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