Nicole schreibt...

New York 2015

The time felt right to pay my friend in New York and Broadway another visit, especially since I had collected enough airmiles to take up Lufthansa on their offer for Business Class. Except for one surprising upgrade to Air India's fairly shoddy First Class some years ago I have never been able to "turn left" on entering the plane, so the thought of having a proper bed and other luxuries tickled me muchly.
It all began well with access to the Lufthansa Lounge in Cologne for free breakfast and drinks, a short business class flight (and more breakfast!) to Munich and onwards to New York. The comfy seat and bed were great indeed, as was the food (each course served separately on proper china!) and the goody bag but I still failed to sleep properly. And no business class ticket can change the seventh circle of hell that is immigration at JFK Airport, where as usual far too few booths were staffed to deal with the incoming international flights. Two plane loads of Chinese and Italians were in front of me and it took more than 90 minutes until I could finally enter the US of A properly and be on my merry way. Though I only have myself to blame for opting for the cheap but supremely annoying subway with the complicated transfer from AirTrain to Jamaica Station, an endless slog into Manhattan and a walk of several blocks to Grand Central Station where I only just caught the next train out to the sticks to Mamaroneck, where my friend lives. Needless to say I was pretty dead when I finally got there.

It's a lovely little town though, full of leafy quiet street and old-fashioned New England-style houses and even better, it does have a little beach. Nothing to gush about, but enough for a few quiet hours in the sun and a hop into the cool water once in a while. I had purposely planned an early arrival with no Broadway tickets for the first two days just in case Lufthansa was blighted by another of their many strikes, but luckily things were quiet on that front, so the first two days were dedicated to chilling on the beach, having a little barbecue and doing nothing much at all. Which was quite lovely actually and gave me a chance to fully recover from jetlag and adapt to New York's muggy summer heat before finally heading into town on Tuesday. As usual, I've kept my musical reviews separate, so this report is dedicated to the touristy stuff only.

First port of call was the "Museum of the City of New York" which I had hoped would display the history of New York City's amazing development but was more arranged thematically with little exhibitions dedicated to Hip Hop, Folk Music, the "Gilded Age" and so on. Most fascinating was the section on landmark protection that only kicked into being after WWII, when many beautiful historical buildings had already been torn down to make way for shit-ugly modern concrete, though at least it saved Grand Central Station from a similar fate. One wonders what Manhattan would look like now if more historical beauties had been kept through the years.

The museum is part of the "Museum Mile" on 5th Avenue but fairly far up north, so we took the opportunity to explore the much less touristy northern half of Central Park with tempting sights like "The Ravine" and "The Loch". Signage was lousy but even so it was a lovely long walk, giving at least a little idea of what Manhattan must have looked like 200 years ago before everything was buried under concrete.

From there we wanted to take a bus downtown, but after spending an hour in gridlocked traffic before the bus had even reached the southern end of Central Park, we hopped out and took the subway instead. Last touristy destination for the day was the "High Line", the converted old train line in the Meatpacking District. Where once waggons trundled along to bring meat and other goods to the port for shipment, a new park has been arranged following the Parisian example of La Promenade Plantée. It's a nice walk with the old railways visible from time to time, lots of greenery, some works of modern art and benches everywhere to take a break. It was pretty busy, not surprisingly, but I did enjoy the walk and the views towards the Hudson River and into the now mega-trendy Meatpacking District very much. From the northern end of the High Line it was only a short walk to a nice Persian restaurant which we had picked to go with our first Broadway show, Aladdin, that evening.

Next day I went into Manhattan on my own for some shopping, although the weak Euro stopped me from going overboard there. It was still nice though to spend time in these pretty familiar streets, poke around the shops on Fifth Avenue and the HBO Store, have a light lunch in Bryant Park and just enjoy the bustle of Midtown Manhattan before seeing two shows back to back, Finding Neverland and Fun Home.

Thursday was dedicated to sightseeing again, in this case a more themed day following in the footsteps of Alexander Hamilton, one of America's Founding Fathers. His biography has been turned into the biggest hype of the musical season and since I knew very little of the man, I had first read the book and was keen to see some places connected with him. The first was Hamilton Grange, the house he built for himself and his family in Northern Manhattan and in which he only lived for a few years before he got killed in America's most (in-)famous duel. The Grange sits close to City College in what is now Harlem and since we had to get off at the train station in Harlem anyway, we combined it with a walk to some of Harlem's best-known landmarks, including the Apollo Theatre, where so many great black performers started their careers. Finally at the Grange, we were kept waiting for a solid hour without seats even because some huge obnoxious group was clogging up the main waiting room and when they had at last gone, visiting the actual living rooms of Hamilton upstairs (which do not look like they did in his time) took about five minutes. Ah well, at least it was free and quite nice after all.

It was time to grab a quick bite near the subway station (the trains rattling through underneath our feet!) before heading all the way Downtown. A detour I really wanted to make was the WTC Memorial Site which had still been closed off last time I was in New York.
I also needed to take a picture of the completed new "Freedom Tower" after two photos of it in two building stages. The was still plenty of construction going on including some strange structure called Oculus by Santiago Calatrava (that looks like he sliced his design for Liege-Guillemins station in half) that will top off the new transportation hub whenever it's done. But after some complicated detouring we reached the memorial site itself, which I really liked with its somber dignity. The two bases of the old WTC towers have been converted to huge pools with the names of all victims engraved on the sides.

I feel less keen on the museum there and the fact that money is being made on this terrible tragedy, so as long as proceeds from the museums are not going towards the families of the victims and the rescue services, I'm really not willing to spend a single dollar on it.

Instead we headed on towards the next station of the Hamilton Tour, nearby Trinity Church, where the man himself and his wife Eliza are buried in the graveyard:

Last stop on the Hamilton tour after a longer break in Battery Park was Fraunces Tavern, the historical tavern near Wall Street where George Washington and his mates (including Hamilton) hung out several times and where Washington made his famous goodbye speech after winning the war against the English. Today's building does not look like it did in their days of course, but the "Long Room" has been preserved authentically and there was also a nice little museum dedicated to early revolutionary days. Instead of eating in the tavern though we headed on to nearby Stone Street, one of the very few "old" streets that have been kept in the concrete wasteland of Downtown and which has been converted into a small pedestrian zone filled with outdoor eating places, among them an Irish Pub which we chose for dinner. Thoroughly filled up with knowledge, it was then time to head for Broadway and see the "Hamilton" musical, which was really very good indeed.
One last day of sightseeing had been planned to squish in bits that didn't fit into the other tours, though I gave up on the idea of visiting the "Tenement Museum" in the Lower East Side when I learned that the only way to visit is to book a tour for $25. Not gonna happen. Instead we first went to South Street Seaport to queue for half-price tickets for one last evening on Broadway, then walked to Chinatown and Little Italy, those famous heritage areas in the Lower East Side:

Following the old adage "If Mohamed doesn't come to the mountain..." I took my friend to a Colognian beergarden, the "Loreley" in Rivington Street, to introduce him to Kölsch and German food like currywurst, followed by one last evening on Broadway. The final day in New York was then once more dedicated to chilling on the beach and catching my breath before it was time to head home - this time wisely with the Airporter Bus and not the Subway before boarding Lufthansa's shiny new A380 and its Business Class on the upper deck. All in all a wonderful time was had as usual - if only Broadway wasn't so freaking expensive! Thanks for putting up with me for a week and ... until the next time!