Farewell to New York

Our last walk home to our apartment at dusk took us through Brower Park, which borders the cross street nearest our Apartment.

 

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NY trip part 7 : two special restaurants

From home we identified and booked online dinner at Juni, which was named by New York magazine Esquire as the new restaurant of the year 2013. Their flexible menu system is 4 or 6 course chosen from 5 groups- cold and hot entrée, main fish and meat, dessert- chef's tasting menu, or even à la carte. We took the recommended 6 item- 3 entrée, fish and meat, dessert. In addition there was bread and a series of amazing amuses-bouche to start. Every item, especially the amuses-bouche- was a work of art in the food, the tiny dishes being presented on the most complicated plates, for example a large porous rock formation. We accepted the sommelier's recommendation of a West Coast red wine ( based on our description of our preferred style) and were delighted.
Their photo gallery and sample menus can be found on their website, which for artistry is worth a look: www.juninyc.com
Jeremy strongly recommended we sample Yasuda, a low profile sashimi-sushi place, so we had our penultimate lunch there. The restaurant had no external identification, so you have to know it's there. We sat at a bar with the multiple chefs on the other side, and asked ours to make the choices for us. There followed a remarkable hour of watching the cutting of fish, rolling of rice and careful handing of the product to us. We were presented with series of fish slices from around the world, sometimes 3 on our plate- eg three different kinds of salmon. There were also clams, scallop, sea urchin, eel, and oyster. The restaurant forbids tipping. We thought it was unique- at least in our experience- and a travellers' highlight.
www.sushiyasuda.com

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New York Trip (part 6) Montauk

Last weekend we took a two day trip to Montauk which is at the tip of Long Island. It is a three hour train journey from Brooklyn and very tedious for small children but they travel remarkably well probably because they do a fair bit of it. The weekend was sunny but not warm although we did manage a couple of trips to the beach where it was quite sheltered enough to be pleasant so a happy time was spent building sand castles and burying small feet and hands.

Here -from Google- is a romantic image of the lighthouse on the Atlantic (the first in New York State, commissioned by George Washington) a few miles out of town: we were not there at dawn, but in town the sunsets were even redder.

 

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Our stay in New York (NY trip part 5)

This fortnight has gone very quickly. We've spent it mostly with very busy grandchildren. X has had 11 days holiday for the spring break although I would say that it feels more like winter for us despite the beautiful flowering cherries which adorn lots of the streets around Prospect Heights, not to mention the magnolias which are truly stunning and daffodils and tulips in the gardens.
We seem to have discovered every playground in Brooklyn and a few elsewhere. The favoured one, however is the Underhill Playground near to home and therefore familiar and easy to get to. X still needs some supervision in the playground as stuff happens. J, recently two years old, likes using the plastic rolling stock, especially a noisy lawn mower/vacuum cleaner and is prone to applying a bit of juvenile thuggery to bigger children in order to hijack it if he thinks it's time for his turn. It is a very friendly place to go. Everyone looks out for everyone else's children and are also quite happy to chat a bit but are not invasive in any way. We have greatly enjoyed the friendliness we have encountered here.

Reading is another favourite pastime and as with all children the same stories are read repeatedly. One book being enjoyed by X is called 'A Wrinkle in Time' by Madeleine L'Engle. The school also requires half an hours reading per night which needs to be documented but of course is occasionally missed depending on the tiredness factor.
Yesterday morning we accompanied younger child to a music lesson which coincidentally is run by an Aussie from Manly. This being the case, he picked on us a bit for being Aussie as well but it was all in good fun. The children really enjoyed the singing, dancing and music although most of them took a few minutes to thaw maybe because there had been a two week break and it was also held at a different venue. The class was well geared to small children with plenty of percussion activity of different kinds, repetition of songs, short items and varied activity and helping put away instruments and help carry containers to their allotted spot, for which our little one was a volunteer every time. Later we observed a subway song being sung on the train as we travelled to dinner.
In the afternoon, we took X to the planetarium in the Museum of Natural history where we saw a movie called Dark Universe which is about dark matter but this proved a bit complicated although she enjoyed watching the stars on the ceiling screen. Afterwards we went into Central Park where much fun was had playing on a large rock amongst other children before we joined the rest of the family in the lobby of father's workplace before heading up to Queens for dinner at a Thai café.

Photo from Google images

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NY Trip part 4: some general scene impressions

We sometimes take the subway from Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. The Grand Army is that which defended the Union in 1860.

(Temporary photo as iPad was being moody about uploading mine, I'm not smoking or a nun. Now mine has popped up.)

We like the view of Manhattan from Brooklyn Heights waterfront

The Opera auditorium chandelier

My main personal feeling of New York this time is of lack of space time, pressure, rush to the subway, and fast walk to grandchildren (one and a bit miles) and rush to the next thing. Maybe I have caught the New Yorkers no-nonsense bug.

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NY Trip part 3: A night at the Opera

A cold night left remains of snow outside our apartment.
We took a break from family activities to go to the Lincoln Center to see the Met production of I Puritani by Bellini. This work rarely appears in Australian repertory, and is regarded as the Sicilian short-lived composer's best work, showing off a heroine's role for Elvira as the coloratura soprano. The Met notes said that the role catapulted Maria Callas to fame, and was a good one for Joan Sutherland, who sang it more than once. We heard Olga Peretyatko, the wife of the conductor in her Met debut. The reviews were uniformly good, with this from the NY times:
"Olga Peretyatko’s company debut was highly anticipated, and proved highly rewarding. She possesses a spectacularly nimble voice, and displayed pinpoint coloratura. Her sound is light from low to high, her top is free and secure, and her intonation is about as close to perfect as it comes, once or twice reaching just barely shy of a high note. She threw out her staccati like darts, each one landing with a burst of light. It’s no wonder she was fearless with her ornamentation, climbing the ladder at every opportunity."
The opera was Queen Victoria's favourite, with both Puritans and Roundheads getting a good rap, though the Cavalier rescues the widow Queen from Parliament and gets the girl. We really liked the gentle music, though the sets lacked excitement, and costumes looked borrowed, especially when Roundhead soldiers turned up in Spanish conquistador helmets.

Photo: Olga Peretyatko as Elvira, in the NY times
Getting home from Columbus circle tested our subway skills, as our chosen line had stopped operating, and it took a little while to realise that in the absence of the C one boards the A, which at late night stops all stations instead of express.
Columbus circle seen from inside the Time Warner building:

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NY trip: part2- Dim Sum & Spring Sun

Our family took the subway to Chinatown, Lower Manattan to sample a dim sum brunch. The first choice was found closed for renovations, but a phone consultation with friends with access to Internet quickly yielded the consensus view of next best. The restaurant was upstairs over 3 floors, access obtained by taking a number from smartly attired ladies at the elevators in walkie-talkie communication with authorities aloft. Given the estimate of waiting time we headed for a nearby open space with a statue to a pioneer and war memorial arch.

Up the street was the skirl of bagpipes, but the tune was not Scottish. We could see a hearse topped with a large flower framed photo, and many funeral limos behind, but the pipers were not in sight. The music stopped and the cortège moved down the street. A semi-trailer passing in the opposite direction filled the intersection of the square; the cortège squeezed past, but the rest of the traffic went into gridlock and a taxi dodging narrowly escaped putting its bonnet under the semi. Vehicles disentangled and the stream of the city resumed its flow.
A little more than an hour after receiving our number it was called, and dim sum was duly enjoyed and consumed in approximately the same time as we had been waiting.

We returned to Brooklyn and walked to the Botanic Gardens, which have burst into flower. Although the cherries were still in bud, the magnolias lit the horizon like white fire. We noticed plentiful squirrels, which Jeremy told us are too common to remark, but he said if a raccoon were to be spotted that would be interesting. On leaving the gardens we were thus glad to sight one such, which had just retrieved a banana skin from a trash can and retreated to its lair in a pergola.

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Trip to New York: part 1

The trip across the Pacific with Qantas was, service-wise, good. Two quibbles: the business class carry on baggage size of 7 kg, but allowing 2 bags, looks like a trade union imposed requirement to protect the cabin crew if any lifting is required, even though unlike most other carriers Qantas has a preponderance of males in cabin staff. Emirates-style included transfer from and to home (but not destination), and internet pre-ordering the first meal are touches, (as one on-line only item was available and preferred by one of us). But I was unwise to choose swordfish, since it was vastly over cooked and unpalatable- in retrospect how could it be otherwise? Still, if Bob Carr can whinge about business class food it must be open season.

The trip to LAX was bumpy, inducing discomfort, and 80 minutes take-off delay (not their fault) were offset by good communication and a faster trip with the LAX connection time shaved to minimum, so with tail winds on both legs we actually arrived early. That's it for service review: Qantas wins trans-pacific because Virgin is yet to be explored, and our Qatari European route favourite with impeccable style flies via the middle-east adding many hours to an already tedious journey itinerary.

Local knowledge from Jeremy enabled us to resist all offers of limos in JFK and give crisp directions to our cab on the most efficient route to destination.

Our Brooklyn apartment, the nearest we could find to the family dwelling at 3 months notice in the school holiday period, is a brisk 20 minutes walk west on the same street. It's a well-equipped ground floor of an otherwise owner-occupied brownstone set among similar neighbours in what seems to a district with Jamaican overtones and close to the Children's Museum, with a friendly landlady. The wi-fi upload is a bit slowish for video conversation.

We enjoyed a breakfast of BLT bagel and coffee on Washington Ave, the former a supersize as seems customary over here. (above: Brooklyn ave near Brower Park, and also near our apartment)

Day one was happily spent on a deferred "birthday" party for both grandchildren in Brooklyn Mount Prospect Park with much joy at a bubble making machine, bike riding, and workout in the playground, climaxed by an enormous cake and birthday songs in English and Danish. The guest couples were an eclectic group both internationally and by partner choices.

 

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