Tuesday, April 3

It's a Small Big Village

Hello from New York City - it's a village on America's east coast.

It's Madeline's spring break, and this year Kate, Madeline and I decided to make our way to NYC, with a couple of stops along the way. Our trip is relatively unstructured. But before we came we reserved tickets to a couple of shows. I'm told that's what you do when you come to "The City." Kate and Madeline took the lead in planning this endeavor. We'll be going to see Wicked on Thursday night. This afternoon we're going to a matinee of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. I knew a bit about Wicked, but before we came I thought I should learn a bit about Priscilla. When I went to the website, I discovered that the fourth person in the cast list is a man named Adam LeFevre, a guy I knew very casually many years ago when I was in law school in Iowa City.

I thought that was a big coincidence, but I was wrong. Yesterday we returned our car to the Newark airport and were on the AirTram making our way from Enterprise to the train station to catch a train into Manhattan. It's an unusual setup. Each car in the Tram is divided into several sections - each holding a maximum of six people or so. At the first stop two people who were jammed into the space with us got off and a handsome young man got on. In case you don't know this, the NYC metro area is supposedly pretty big. Imagine our collective surprise when the handsome young man turned out to be our friend Andy Buck, a member of our "Train Party family."

Incredible. A wonderful start to the NYC portion of our visit. Before that we got to spend an lovely evening with our friends Myra and Rob Doughty (Myra and Kate have been friends since their childhoods in York, PA) and a couple of days with Kitty and Bob in York. We clearly haven't lost our dynamism. Just a few short hours after our arrival we had reduced Kitty and Bob to this state -

Last night we enjoyed a great evening with Kate's step-brother Fred and his wife Alexandra and Kate's step-cousin (if that is a category) Connie. It was fun for Kate to catch up, and fun for Madeline and me to meet wonderful and unmet friends (is there such a thing as a step-brother and sister-in-law?? If so, Fred and Alexandra are mine). The trip to this village has started on a wonderful note!

Let the fun continue. We're off to see the wizards! I understand many people here think they are one.

Each morning we drank a great cup of coffee in Madison Square Park, checking out the Flatiron Building. We saw some stuff. Like this Russian guy on the Lower East Side with a his laptop.

We saw lots of amazing art. Monet. Chagall. Some Chuck Close - Madeline' favorite.

But my favorite was this one - titled "The Innocent Eye Test."

Had some great meals - including one at the Union Square Cafe, where we had the crow's nest table in the background.

The food was amazing almost everywhere. We loved Otto - a restaurant near NYU that Andy recommended. This pizza with fried egg was controversial. But the meal was amazing and the controversy lots of fun.

Just a great trip. Lots of fun.