Euro Vacation 2017 Part One - But First a Brief Visit in New York

Brooklyn Bridge, photo by author (that's me).

It was just a few steps from JFK to the air-conditioned taxi cab Friday night, but it was time enough to feel the wall of heat. From the cab to the hotel there were a few more steps and more of the New York city heat wave. No thanks. To me anything over 70 degrees is just showing off, to be in the 80s AT NIGHT with a good bit of humidity mixed in is just ridiculous. But it was only for a few days. Today the temperature was in the upper 70s and thus manageable.

Weather conditions aside the weekend has been marvelous. The main point of the layover was to visit youngest daughter who lives on the Queens/Brooklyn border. We had a grand time with her, including a leisurely brunch on Saturday and chit chatting in her apartment afterwards. Last night the missus and I saw A Doll's House Part 2 starring Laurie Metcalf in her Tony Award winning performance. Chris Cooper was also in the four person cast. This was one of the top three theater productions I've ever seen. The standing ovation at the end was not at all perfunctory.

Before and after the play we had to manage Times Square -- my least favorite part of New York and indeed one of my least favorite places anywhere. Gaudy, crowded, commercial and a symbol of capitalistic excess. What a blight on a great city. Wish I'd seen Times Square when it was just a special part of Manhattan and not a nightmare television commercial on steroids.

We've been navigating New York on the subway and via Uber and of course on foot. New York is feast for the eyes. The people you see alone are an endless source of entertainment. Beautiful women aplenty but also the bizarre, misshapen, the angry, the sullen, the screaming, the pathetic, the brawny and in all sizes, shapes and colors. Yarmulkes here, hijabs there, priests, buddhists, Hare Krishnas, guys in Yankee caps, Italians, Somalis, and oh so many tourists.

We had delicious New York bagels Saturday.

We visited The Brooklyn Bridge this morning, one of those iconic sites that's far more impressive in person. Youngest daughter took me to the Gangster Museum on the Lower East Side this afternoon. We both have a fondness for gangster lore and films, as does oldest daughter. The museum itself was small and the displays looked slapped together by an 8th grader but there was some impressive stuff including bullets from the St. Valentine's Day massacre, a mobster's safe and John Dillinger's death mask. There were two guides who each gave us long spiels on gangster history, especially regarding the building we were in which was a gangster hangout in the 20s and 30s and was attached to what was then a speakeasy. It was fun.

From there we re-connected with my wife and later had a terrific pizza dinner in Brooklyn. I could hang around New York for days, weeks, months, years, as long as someone did something about the heat waves. But tomorrow morning the missus and I continue our journey with an early morning flight across the Atlantic. We'll have a one night stay in London....well, you'll be reading about all this later -- or not, your choice. I was sad to have just sad goodbye to youngest daughter knowing we'll not see her again until Christmas, but I'm excited for her and her life here and for us and this journey which is just beginning.