Just how far did we walk?
It was a beautiful day for a walk. With lots of walking before lunch. And more walking after. My teenage daughter didn’t like it. Oh well. She was warned…in February.
One of the few things we bought timed tickets for was to get into the Central Park Zoo. We left ourselves plenty of time to walk to Journal Square Path, then walk the block to Penn Station to get on the subway to Central Park. As we were walking the sidewalk on the south edge of the park we passed the Plaza Hotel, where I had stayed courtesy of WIOT in 1985.
Well, my brother and sister-in-law were right. It wouldn’t take more than a half hour to enjoy all that the Central Park Zoo has to offer. But it was different.
We rested a bit before watching the Delacorte clock chime in the top of the hour. It does more than the Westminster Chimes, it also plays a nursery rhyme song while the figures revolve around the clock tower.
Then it was time to meander through Central Park itself. And meander we did until just after we found the Strawberry Fields, a memorial for John Lennon, when we broke off that plan because somebody’s feet were tired…I think you know who.
But we were on a mission to eat at a special place and we still had a couple more miles to walk. So we took a more direct route and walked BY the park to our right. But we saw some really cool buildings on the way by.
For you Seinfeld fans, our lunch destination was the diner you see the gang eating at in the show. Its real name is Tom’s Restaurant, but you don’t often see the Tom in the show’s shots of the building. The inside looks nothing like the set where the actors eat. Just as Cheers in Boston does not look like the set of that famous TV show.
Karen said the beef brisket was wonderful and I really like the pastrami. Sofia seemed satisfied with her lunch. I think she was more satisfied that she was sitting down.
During lunch we witnessed an interesting fight between two guys who were screaming at each other in Chinese. One guy kept spitting in the face of the other. They would walk away from each other, then a moment later they would start going at it again. Good thing it was a crowded intersection as many people had their eye on the situation.
One of the other things we noticed is that the pedestrian wait and walk sounds are exactly like the ones we heard in Vegas. “Wait” for stop and a machine gun sound for go. Not sure who thought that sound was a good idea.
We still had a couple of addresses to check out while in that part of town, including Will & Grace’s and Liz Lemon’s apartments along Riverside Drive, but eventually needed to call an Uber to get us to 33rd Street PATH station so we could get back to the hotel to change for the show.
The show was Aladdin. There’s just something different about seeing a show on Broadway in New York City compared to shows in other cities. This is not taking away from the wonderful shows we’ve seen in Cleveland. This show was just superbly done from the actors, the costumes, the staging, and the special effects.
The genie first appeared through a rotating hole in the stage floor and often exited the same way. When Al and Jasmine started singing A Whole New World, you really believed they were flying around the stage on a magic carpet. I’m glad Karen and Sofia got to see such a wonderful show for their first Broadway experience. I had seen A Chorus Line at the Shubert in 1979 with my high school symphonic band.
Since we had a late lunch and the burger joint across the street from the motel where we had planned on eating was closed, we ended up skipping dinner since we had to be up early on Wednesday to catch a ferry.
We walked over 15 miles today. OK, maybe Sofia had a little bit of a point.
