NYC, New York – Sure. Blame it on the kids. Why not. Our first choice on travel would likely be kids in Italy with us. Second choice quickly becomes kids or Italy. With one in New York City, one in London and one headed for college at our alma mater of Northwestern in Chicago, it shouldn’t be too surprising that we can’t get to Italy as often as we want. But we are equal opportunity when it comes to where we can enjoy each others’ company. Can’t be in the place you love, love the place you’re in?
So, look out NYC. We found a holiday on the calendar and took the Fung Wah Chinese bus to see son Zak. Are we having Fung Wah yet? I don’t know. These buses are half the price of say, Grayhound, so if you are going Boston/New York, it is a good value. But we’re spoiled bus brats. The only truly good bus is the Concord Trailways paradise-on-wheels bus. We take those Maine to Boston constantly. Anything else cannot compare. So we pout a bit on anything else. Please Concord get a bus to NYC.
But we did like our hotel. We are such slow learners and it is such a big city. Zak has lived there for years and has tried to save us from ourselves. But no. We think of New York and we think Times Square. And stay there. He’d say “Mmmm, why?” And neither of us are 100% interested in staying where he lives in the wilds of Brooklyn. But he keeps saying “Stay down at the tip of the island, near Battery Park and Ground Zero. Financial district.” Having done it, I would have to say I would recommend that.
WHAT I DID NOT KNOW ABOUT THE CITY
And trust me, this list could be miles long, these are just tips of the iceberg floating by on on my sea of ignorance about New York City.
The first thing I did not realize is that Ground Zero is very finite. Very concentrated. Almost completely confined to one square block. Huge impact on the city and the world but incredibly the damage was mostly to those two gigantic towers. Our hotel, The Millenium Hilton is all glass and our room looks straight down into the hole. Which is just on the other side of a normal street. On the opposite side of the blast site is the all-glass atrium building full of palm trees, etc., and then the harbor beyond that.
To see an example of just how contained and concentrated the damage was, we had only to look beside our hotel. Right next door is a colonial church. And eerily, a colonial graveyard with old stones and ancient trees. George Washington prayed here. So they say. This is across the street from Ground Zero, this historic church over 200 years old. They lost one tree to the blasts. Not a single pane of its ancient glass broken was broken. Seems incredible, hard to comprehend.
SEND US YOUR TIRED, YOUR WEARY, YOUR HUDDLED MASSES
From our window, as I said, you could look straight down into the hole left by the tragedy. And wonder how massive buildings could just evaporate. People, desks, iron girders, paper, staplers, water coolers, vent pipes. All gone.
And then we could look to our left and see the Statue of Liberty welcoming the world to this very place. It took being there in person to see the proximity of welcome to disaster and be reeled over by that.
NEW YORK TIMES INDEED
Another thing we did not know was that the New York Times is not as easy to find as I expected. I think I could have found it easier in Gray, Maine or Panicale, Italy than in New York’s financial district on a Saturday. Pretty much missing in action. Why they would not have had it outside our door or at least in the gift shop/newsstand in the lobby I do not know. But overall, we did like the Millenium. No, strangely for once I am not misspelling something. I can’t tell the difference, but our two kids are all particular about spelling and to have this hotel’s branded name one letter off in big letters on a big building made their teeth itch a bit. And it made it tricky to find, because there are plenty of “correctly” spelled hotels by this name. But this is the one that is right here where we wanted to be.
Not having the paper close to hand gave me a chance to wander aimlessly in a pre-caffine haze through the area and eventually get my bearings. Parks, fountains, delis, newsstands, good stuff. Starbucks every few feet and one of them eventually coughed up a paper so I could go back to the room and wait for the kids to wake up and come in from Brooklyn and find us.
LETS TALK ABOUT BIG FUN IN THE BIG APPLE
The first night we were in town we spent in the Brew District of the Financial District. Hopefully all these young beergarden brokers had handled all your finances before they hit the beer tents. Acres of beer under tents on old cobbled streets. I guess it has always been this way. Our son says our Dutch ancestors all had breweries and taverns in this part of town, and he showed us where they would have been located. Some were pubs today. We had to sit and sample their wares, as you can imagine. Just to be historically correct, I think was our rationale at the time.
So, the next day, there we were. Wandering around Soho looking, not for a paper this time, but for a place to eat. We had to keep our strength up to go see a play on Broadway later. Tourists. You can plan on them wanting to eat out and see a show. We had tickets to see Ave Q, which is a highly twisted musical version of the Muppets that should not be played to the preschool crowd. It was fun and we got tickets that day by phone.
Oh, too many places to chose from. Let’s just go, I don’t know, over there! The place on the corner with Brazilian flags hanging from all sides named Félix. Just like the hurricane that by the same name that was, unbeknownst to us, getting ready to sweep in. We heard about that in the cab radio on our way back to the hotel after the show. We sat down by the wide-open-to-the-world full-length doors and just drank it in. Midge pointed at the menu and said “Brazilian, my foot.” Sure enough, it says Félix in big letters on the menu and just under that in the mice type it says “French Bistro.” Huh. And look at that. The menu is in all French. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck. OK, it must be French. Has to be a story there somewhere. With soccer on the tube over the bar and France and Brazil usually natural enemies atop the ranking (both lorded over by Italy, finally) I can’t imagine the connection. Regardless, it is a party looking for a place to happen. On this link about the Félix you will find good pictures and one irate who panned the place. Wasn’t French enough for him. Oh, my. And the review is from 2005. Pay not a bit of attention to that. Did he SEE the Brazilian flags? Chee. We were bowled over. Fun, fast, fabulous. We ate like darned kings and people-watching was a royal treat too. The lank, white-shirted waiters with tiny pony tails, say, you know, they do sort of look French. Except, so polite, so engaging and fast like snakes, here came our drinks. Then our food. They look all slinky and languid but they were taking good care of us and got us in and out to our show in plenty of time. I could have skipped the show and hung here all night. So easily amused, n’est-ce pas? But what about that silver-maned owner looking guy by the door? Velvet white and gray paisley pants. Loose white peasant blouse shirt. That is a look I could so not pull off, but he is one happy camper. And what about the very tan and very blonde fortish fox in white halter dress made of clingy what, tshirt material? That’s right, the one looking for someone to samba with up by the bar? I LOVE this place. The food is righteous. We had four picky eaters including two hyper-picky vegetarians just raving. Ok, allow that we are from out of town, but then factor back in that we have eaten in Italy enough to have some idea of what good food is.
There is laughing going on, hugging, dancing, double kissing. Meets my definition of happy bar. Oh, it just got better. We’re always car-spotting wherever we go and now the big candy apple red 1961 Caddy that we’ve seen cruising around town all day has just slid into the primo parking spot right out front. The top is down. Cool guy in shorts, pretty pregnant girl, white white haired older guy all get out and lean up against the car and accept compliments on their fine ride. And later, they amble in at various times. They look like regulars and like everyone else here, when they come in, they look around, grin, and find someone to hug with one hand and find a glass of wine in their other hand. It’s just a love fest in Soho. Who says you can’t buy happiness?
See you in Italy,
Stew Vreeland
Anyway, I’m getting to a fun part. We’ve had the usual metric ton of daily decisions to make on that new house as we were running out the door to London and Italy. If we could just pick the wallpaper in the front hall my sister said. Then we could play all the colors in all the rooms around it off that or at least not be in conflict with it. We’d been through stacks of those heavy wallpaper books and weeks later we were still thinking about this one photo in a house magazine. It just shimmered off the page. What the heck is that about? So we called the people listed in the back of the magazine and they sent us a lovely sample. Exotic birds and fantasy flowers, hand painted on pea green silk! They are in downtown New York, at a place called 
The next thing we knew it was morning yet again. Isn’t that funny/tragic how fast that rolls around when you have your clock set on Goof Off? Well, it was certainly morning. And you know what that means. Find cappuccino. Find now. We stood on our corner and looked left and looked right and Wait a minute what is that? Another bit of Italy dropped right on our doorstep. A ‘Puglian Pastry Place. Full of Puglians no less. And Pastries. Oh, and what pastries they were. Frutti di Bosco tortes sitting behind glass screaming “Pick Me”, “No! Pick ME!” 
LONDON TIMES 
AND THE SUNDAY TIMES
A Roberto Beninni type was behind me with three, count’em three, girls. One had her arm lolled around his shoulders giving him a happy Isn’t This Fun? squeeze every now and then, but when she would go off for more cigarettes or to “the loo” one of her mates (that blonde ponytailed one) would ever so casually slide her hand into the back pocket of Roberto’s stone washed jeans. And just sort of leave it there till her girl friend would show back up. He’d never bat and eye. And of course, neither did we. There was a mirror over our table and so his act was Must See TV for me. I’d read the paper and glance up and get a bit of RobertoVision and read some more. It was swell watching Roberto smoke and talk and talk and smoke and get hugged and patted, and patted some more, his every word producing tickled responses from all three of his adoring crew. They all needed to get a room already. But they settled for our table when we left.
BOSTON/LONDON –This was a real flight of fantasy. We wanted to go to London to visit the Queen Wiley on our way to Umbria. To see her, spend a few days enjoying London and to get almost on Italian time. So that let us take the day trip to London. Love, love day flights to Europe. And really loved this flight as the plane was almost empty. The airlines rarely do that empty plane thing anymore. But this flight, on this day, on this AA flight, was less than a quarter full. In Economy. 
We used it as a chaser, a cool down follow up to our time in Umbria. And it is right on our way home. Italy, strangely, was the main reason we were in the Paesi Basi (Olanda) because that was where the Caravaggio Show to end all Caravaggio Shows was this summer. All my Italian friends were mad to go to the show and we did have a lovely Italy trip and then finished it off with the Italian extravaganza in the Rijksmuseum. What a rush. It was technically the Caravaggio and Rembrandt show in honor of Rembrandt’s 400th Birthday. But to me they were just riding on Caravaggio’s coattails and I didn’t care as long as I got to see this once in a lifetime collection of Caravaggio’s work. 
And what if it was written just like that, in Italianspeak, on posters and keychains and such everywhere you looked? In California, America. That would be strange wouldn’t it? Well. I think so. But there is the slogan for Amsterdam and it is a strange word game pun in English. The words “I am Amsterdam” contracted to IAMSTERDAM.
Amsterdam. What is up with the name? You got an Amstel River. You Dam it up, you got you an AmstelDam. Say that fast for a few hundred years and it comes out Amsterdam. Think that is what the guides were implying. Why did I need to be told that? Very nice town, most of it looks like Mayfair in London to me. But with less street flash, very understated. Rolls Royces and Bentleys are a dime a dozen in London. Here, its all decidedly down scale bikes, buses and boats of every stripe.
Ok, the first thing to do is to get tickets for the show. 
Carts out front. Big carts. Truck sized carts. Kids on mom’s bike front and back. Hippies on bikes, bow tied professors, a waiter in a tux. Was he a waiter or a man about town? Can’t tell here. The pedal pushers pour down the streets. In their own major lanes. They may look like sidewalks. But. Do. Not. Step. Out there. These people live for their bikes and on them. And with out pretension. All the bikes look to be old, single speed clunkers. Rusting or hand painted with a brush. Almost all are Model T black. Not about flash. And trust me no one, repeat no one, is wearing spandex. They wear what they are wearing and get on their bikes to get there. At the ferry terminal there is a four level parking garage. For only bikes. Off into infinity sized garage. They seem to be used across all levels of society. Function over Form. Noting how much a part of the fabric of life bikes are there and then reading at the Anne Frank house how the Nazis made the Dutch Jews turn in their bikes made me think again what a cruel, intentionally brutal, dehumanizing mind set was in play there. 
But, let’s talk about something fun: This art show was awesome. We’ve seen some great ones in the last few years. Picasso Matisse, Manet Monet, etc. The Rembrandt Caravaggio one really may have taken the prize. The American judges in our party had the Italian leading 2-1. In my side by side comparison Caravaggio was whupping Rembrandt and had him on the canvas. Grayson backed me up on this, but Midge was slightly leaning toward the Dutchman. Heresy. Or Home Court advantage? 
When you come around one of the many corners they built into this exhibit and come face with one of his blood curling canvases (Judith beheading Holofernes) it about makes you miss a step. Prepare to be baffled when you see one up close. Thinking maybe you could see a brushstroke on that dewy piece of fruit or the bad boy angel’s wings? Think again. I’ve painted. OK, it was art school. In another galaxy, far, far away. But still. No earthly idea how he put the paint on the canvas. And the details in the shadows. I kept leaning closer and closer and seeing more and more. Hands way behind my back, hoping the guards wouldn’t push me away before I drank it all in. But it didn’t help. I got as close as close could be, reading glasses on, and still could not imagine how the deep black shadows on the dark edge of an arm could become warm, tender skin in the highlights of the same arm. 