Ninth Visitor

Last weekend we had our first visitor from Lawrence, Kansas. Cheryl Burns worked at Village Records in the late nineties and she was there when we closed the store to go completely over to mail order. We had kind of lost touch with her until Facebook and we have been trying to get together since then. She is a big fan of New York City so it probably made more sense for us to reconnect here.

We spent most of Friday running around Midtown. We met up at our place and headed over to the MoMA and covered the 5th Floor thoroughly. Unfortunately the 4th Floor, with the Warhols and Pollacks, was closed for some reason that day. From there we continued down 53rd and grabbed box lunches at a take-out place. We ate our meals in an odd little setting in the middle of the block. There is a patio/garden area, known as a pocket park, between buildings with tables and chairs and a large waterfall all along the length of the back wall. It is shady and cool and totally removed from the city noises. It is named Paley Park and was built on the former site of the famous and notorious Stork Club where celebrities rubbed shoulders for thirty years.

Cheryl and me at Paley Park

From there it was down 5th Avenue to the huge main branch of the New York Public Library for a quick tour and email check. This place has to be seen to be believed. The early 20th Century building has incredible details throughout. So much so that it took nine years to build. The main reading rooms look like the big hall in Harry Potter. It is two city blocks long and backs up to Bryant Park, which was our next stop. There we saw people playing outdoor ping pong and an outdoor reading room where there is a large cart of books to read within this one section of the park.

One the great reading rooms

Old wooden phone booths at the library

Then over to Hell’s Kitchen where we tried out a new place, Rachel’s, which we have now added to our ‘best of’ list. Their specialty is comfort food and they serve up healthy size portions, their single serving of meatloaf looked like it was half a loaf to me. This is near the theater district and we got there about 30 minutes before the starting time for the shows. This is a bad time to arrive as all the restaurants are packed with theater goers and everyone with a table lingers until the last minute even if they are finished dining. We had no schedule so we just went to the bar and ordered wine. Other potential customers came but left when they saw the wait. We were finally called over for our table and literally within seconds the entire restaurant emptied. We later found out that our round at the bar was complimentary for our patience.

We will be back.

We got to spend Sunday evening with Cheryl again and took the bus down to the Village for drinks and dinner at a couple of the funky places there. The bus route home went right by her hotel and there were four more stops to our street so we said our final (for now) goodbyes on the fly. Cheryl has vowed to be back before we leave New York. We had a great time and will be looking forward to that next visit.