The Bronx is called Arson City because apartment buildings kept mysteriously getting set on fire. Lots of apartments. The type with needle-shooting, 5-minute whoring occupants. "Weird" is not the operative word here; over 80% of the Bronx qualifies as an urban war zone. Also as a white girl, you're dead meat. Harlem, on the other hand, is being re-gentrified although the process is ongoing and definitely not done; however, not near anything else you'll be going to.

NY Chinatown I think is bigger than the one in SF. Great place to eat. Chinatown, Little Italy, Greenwich Village and Soho are all within walking distance of each other, if you like to walk. Otherwise you can hop a subway. If you have the time (and I was planning your itinerary) I'd do Statue of Liberty/ Ellis Island one day with dinner in Chinatown; Soho, Greenwich Village and Midtown (Rockefeller center, etc.) another day; and the big museums are a full day unto themselves. Most mid-to- uptown museums border Central Park. Shopping is everywhere.

Kate, I'm back and in action. I'll get my hubby on this and correspond via email. I'm also going to email Tonia and Garrie becasue they can also give you some helpful hints.

Dots~ I absolutely, absolutely canNOT wait for my next trip back to New York.......!

I didn't get to do anywhere near enough but I did manage to get to the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia that a friend at work told me about and we spent hours there.

And I got to look, fondly, at the murals in the city as we passed out of town and smashed my face against the van window as we passed the ncredible architecture downtown - how magnificent! Philadelphia sold me on returning even before we hit New York.

So, I got to do these things, not necessarily in this order - strolled down Bleeker Street and went into a bunch of shops; went to Magnolia Bakery which is supposed to be famous for their cupcakes; ate at John's Pizzeria, also on Bleeker Street and my friend Pat and I consumed a whole pizza by ourselves……OMG it was GREAT.

Four of us had dinner outside in Little Italy at Lunella's, they had a section of the street enclosed as their personal patio and the breeze and the Italian music wafting through it was just perfect. The sense of history and the lives of the immigrants was thick in the air. We walked til it looked a little weird and then caught a cab to the cupcake place at 11 at night, where there was a line coming out the door, of people putting cupcakes in their pink boxes……Then we strolled in the direction of our hotel and looked inside the storefronts and walked as far as we could toward our hotel on 7th and 33rd....until the guy-on-guy action got to be a little weird. Then we hailed a taxi.

We went to ground zero on the subway at 12 a.m. (three of us) and saw the lights in the sky that will shine no more. We did the statue of Liberty and Ellis Island trip which took the whole day. I don't know that I would do Ellis Island again necessarily but it was interesting.

We went to the top of the Empire State Building and we did the little helicopter (simulated) ride that Kevin Bacon narrates but for $10, I could have foregone that.

We had lunch at The Boathouse in Central Park, a wonderful oasis in the middle of such a firecracker city, it was a nice respit. We walked to Strawberry Fields and across the street to the Dakota building and I am so NOT a groupie that I was going to skip that little “moment” but decided not to after all.... and when we went back across the street and wandered through the park I stood looking at the "Imagine" mosaic and was consumed, all at once, by the enormity of John Lennon's artistry and I got a different perspective on Yoko Ono (I get a lot in these 'moments' I have) and her encouragement of John to continue to think outside the box and her dedication of a portion of the park in his memory. I thought how interesting it was that the subway entrance was also right on that corner and how he could very easily slip in and out of his building undetected at times, to go anywhere in the city or right across the street.

So, as I'm standing there taking this all in, there are some homeless people in the bushes 50 feet or so behind me to my left, a couple on the bench, some tourists passing by, a couple of modern dance performance artists 50 feet or so in front of me and the day is beautiful and a woman comes up the path, just to my right and heads straight for me. I'm just looking around and basking in all this and as she passes, never missing a beat, she says, very conspiratorially, "...and that is how we change the world..." She never missed a beat, never slowed down.... and she was gone. A moment, just for me.

I got to go to the American Museum of Folk Art and saw an exhibit of the late Sister Gertrude Morgan, a black preacher, evangelist, artist, musician who was great in her honesty and simplicity. Went to Times Square, drank margaritas in an Irish pub (VERY loud). The pub, not the drinking. Mmmm......and I went to the Cupcake Cafe.... trying to see the difference in the bakeries that Andrea told me about.......but I think I've got them.
Oh, and we made it to Serendipity for supper and dessert......what a sin and we'd all gladly live it again! And some art galleries but only as we were walking by.......and a few other things that seem to escape me at the moment. And we saw 42nd Street and it was terrific but honestly, it paled in comparison after we saw the production of "Noah" at Sight and Sound, in PA.

Lancaster, PA was a whole different story and just as rich for me but another time. Personally, I think I got more out of it than all six of us.

I love hearing Kate tell stories. Her and Meredith take you there, do they not? I've never had a desire to visit NY but now I do. I've been to parts of PA and loved every minute of it, even though I was there on business.

JJ

queen, you are so right. Great story tellers!

Kate, what a blessing for you to get away with all those girlfriends and have a full week to yourself. I'm sure it was a dream come true. It would be for me.

You really got around to see all sides of the city. Sounds like you were as free as birds. No itinerary, doing what you wanted to do. What fun.

Where did you end up staying? Where will you be heading for you next Girl's Get-a-way?

I'm kicking myself because I was a little more than an hour away from you when you were seeing Noah. I would have loved to meet you.

Dots~

Darn it, I wish I could have met you too!

In New York we stayed at the Hotel Pennsylvania, very old but it wasn't too expensive and we got two rooms.

We got around the city, probably not terribly efficient with our time though, by bus, subway and taxi. If we had more days I would have gladly figured the subway system out but as it was I felt like a gopher, just popping up at random places in the city in like 10 minutes....it was just weird to me. We did hop on the bus quite a bit so the $20 we paid for the Metro pass was great!

I just loved, in New York, all the buildings, the architecture was just amazing to me, and that I was in this wild bouiliabase (sic) of people. It seemed like everyone I heard had a different kind of accent. We did meet a couple of people from California and the hostess at The Boathouse was a New Yorker who transplanted herself to San Jose (CA) and then back to New York and wanted to go BACK to San Jose. Interesting.

What impressed me so much was the pace. You really do feel like you can do everything, find everything in that city. I loved the noise and that you could have 30 cabs heading your way if you decide to cross the street against the light.
And that they can get beautiful, beautiful produce and fresh flowers in almost every neighborhood and there are little hot food buffets in all kinds of little storefronts so if you are feeding only yourself, you don't really have to cook to get good home cooked food. I love that neighborhood feeling.

And I loved the clothes......such a huge, huge range and then I passed this woman in the crosswalk and she had on a jean jacket, a gauzy wild flowered skirt with some tank top or sweater or something and knee high red cowboy boots - I LOVED THAT OUTFIT!!!

But as I said, PA was wonderful. I loved the simplicity of it. I loved the tall, tall barns and silos, the rolling hills, the pristine condition of the farms and dairys. We stopped and talked to a tobacco farmer whose wife came out to see what we were all about. They had their 14 year old son on a tractor, turning a field under. They had 8 children and they were either Amish or Mennonite but I get the two confused. Anyway, this man had some wood crafts for us to look at and he showed us his shop and his tools and his wife came out and followed us around....they were as curious about us as we were about them. I know if my friends would have just let me talk FIVE More minutes I could have gotten us invited to dinner - darn it.

We stayed in Blue Ball at the Blue Ball Bed and Breakfast which is very nice and our host, Frank, was wonderful. We had the attic rooms which was two big bedrooms, a bath, a tiny kitchen and living room area..... for like $165 a night.

They have a wonderful craft warehouse that we spent way too much time in. We found a few garage sales and of course, I had to bring a log home. (That's my M.O. the last few trips)

We ate at some family style place out on a dairy... it started with an "F" I think ... that was wonderful.

And we went to see the "Noah" production at the Millenium Theatre in Sight and Sound. I'm not kidding here - everyone should see that production. It was magnificent! They did such a wonderful job, it had Broadway beat! When God told Noah to take the animals in, they came down the center aisle with pairs of camels, llamas, sheep, a group of piggies, peacocks, swans......incredible but not quite as incredible as when the house lights came back up and all around (on three sides) the theatre was three levels of the ark, wich live and mechanical animals, supplies and everything that would have sustained Noah and his family for the time they were in it. It was just unbelievable!

What I came away with, from my whole trip, that there is nothing more important in life than to do what God has put before you each day, and to do your best at learning what he wants you to learn; and to be the best person, wife and mother I can be. I think that everything we come across, including adversity, can be used as a tool to help us come into who we are supposed to be as people. I t depends on how we look at things.

Okay, long enough.

Kate

Kate, this sounds like such a fantastic trip!! It seems like your itinerary was rolling 24/7. I can't believe how much you accomplished in so short a time. And glad you'll have all those great memories.

Kate - what a great time you had! Thanks for telling us about your trip. I came into this netversation late but would have suggested a B&B in NYC. Dave has been saying he'd like to go to NYC, neither of us have been in years, and we're thinking of taking the train from Hinton, WV to Grand Central Station. I'm going to use your notes, yours too MB, for fun things to do. I used to live in NYC, upper East side but things have changed so much and now there are wonderfully new, to us at least, things to do and see.

Thanks!

All~ I really can't believe how much I loved it! I keep thinking of things I want to do when I get back there. My new list is this:

-The Museum of Natural History (they're supposed to have fantastic dinosaurs on the fourth or fifth floor)
-The Museum of Modern Art (which I believe right now is housed in Brooklyn because the building is going through renovations)
- Dinner in Little Italy again, just because.
-Definately have dessert at Tavern on the Green.
-Tango lessons, for free on Spring Street either Monday or Tuesday afternoons, I just forgot about them.
- And there's that whole new section Holita or something like that that has all those cool funky clothing and shoe shops, sort of down by Little Chinatown and Little Italy. We walked down there but it was after hours, the windows were really cool though.
-And I'd take the Circle Line cruise around Manhattan and the double decker bus that goes to all the boroughs.
- OH and one thing FOR SURE... I'd make sure I had a really, really long layover at the Minneapolis Airport because they have FANTASTIC shops in there - it's AMAZING!!

Kate

Kate, where would you rather live? Lancaster or New York City? One end of the spectrum to the other!

[ October 01, 2004, 10:39 AM: Message edited by: Dotsie ]