One problem - it starts to rain as we walk, not hard, but enough to require an umbrella, and ours, of course, are in the car! The clerk at the front desk tells us not to worry about having the car brought around - they will lend us two umbrellas. But we're already checked out? No problem. No way! This has got to be the anti-Gotham from another dimension.
Last night we saw a cute little diner on the corner that serves breakfast all day. It seems that to be a waitress at this diner you must be a blond born in the former Soviet Union, and to eat there you must speak only Spanish. The food and the service are both very good. Here is Pam with our waitress.
We decide to walk the neighborhood again because we saw some great architecture that we couldn't get good pictures of at night. In particular there is this church that is absolutely gorgeous. We have no idea what it is, but its Gothic spires juxtaposed against the modern highrises is an astonishing sight. It's only a couple of blocks from our hotel.
When we get to the church we start looking for signs and can't find one. At one of the doors Pam asks a lady the name of the church - St. Patrick's Cathedral. All this time we've been drooling! No wonder!
We go inside and there is a mass being said. There are hundreds of visitors taking pictures anyway. The guard says, "Just don't interfere with mass."
I guess if it happens every day it ceases to be strange.
The outside is beautiful, but the inside of the cathedral is exquisite. Every nook and cranny is filled with majestic statues and soaring arches. It is enough to make me weep just thinking about it. Absolutely breathtaking!
From the sublime to the limelight - our next destination is Time Square to see if we can get tickets to a show. Eileen was the first to tell us about TKTS and the half price tickets sold the day of the show. But like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz no one seemed to know in which direction we would find the booth.
Finally a clerk at Starbucks gave us good directions. Yeah Starbucks clerks!
We made it to the booth at about 1:30 PM and there was no sign of life whatsoever. Drat! I thought they must not have any tickets today. WRONG. They open at 3. How did we find out? A reporter for FOX News was doing interviews and in exchange Pam demanded information.
At 2 a line started to form and we jumped in. We both wanted to see Mary Poppins, but being Monday not all theaters are open and there's no guarantee that show will have tickets available. What should we do if we couldn't get into that show? We discussed several options, but none of them made us happy, because every day's a holiday with Mary. At 2:30 they put the shows that had tickets available on the screen about a block away from us. Pam went to see.
MARY's on the list!!!! Hee hee! Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious!
We decided to grab lunch at a restaurant suggested by John and Mary Jo and Eileen, Ollie's Chinese. We sat next to a table of eclectic theater types discussing their upcoming project. One of them kept starring at Pamela. He said he thought he knew her from somewhere. WELL HIRE HER AND YOU WILL!!
On the other side of our table a lady of about our age was sitting by herself. As Pam and I talked about what we still needed to see in the city she joined our conversation and we all began chatting like old chums. She had some great suggestions, and I can't help but feel we made her day a little brighter.
After lunch we did a little bit of shopping and grabbed our things from the Marriott. We drove to the New Amsterdam theater and parked the car in a lot that was close by. I was amazed that so many of the people filing into the theater weren't English speaking. Our seats were in the orchestra section about 10 rows back and 2 seats from the outside aisle - perfect. The couple next to us was a gay couple from DC that had come in on an weekend AMTRAK special. The couple on the other side was European - Scandinavian I think - and spoke almost no English. In front of us was a group from South America speaking Spanish and broken English. One of them was constantly looking at a screen that we thought was her phone - texting?! But it turned out they tried to film the first half of the show. The house manager came by at intermission and made them erase it all.
This is a view of the stage pre-show with the curtains drawn.
The play was FAB! Great dancing, singing, acting, and stage craft. I knew what to expect from the reviews, but when she took off over the audience at the end of Act 1 my jaw hit the floor. Pam said it instantly reminded her of reaching for Tinkerbell at Disneyland. The play is a lot darker than the movie, which we understand pleased the author. We enjoyed it so much we didn't want to leave.
Pam Flying with Mary!
Stealing a kiss!
We finished the day off with a drive back to the B&B in Brooklyn. The GPS - affectionately named Shirley - wanted us to take the Brooklyn Bridge, but it was closed and we could not find a way across the @#$$% river. This made for a very late night, and although I was more than a little mad at the time, looking back I only remember Mary!
Tomorrow Delmonico's and Central Park!
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