Sunday, April 27, 2008

I Love New York- Mariah Carey, not so much.

After lunch on Thursday, I just roamed around Manhattan, through a section called "East Village". The weather was spectacular, sunny and mid 70s. I met Sheila in Madison Park at 5:30 PM, we took the train back to her place in Queens. We drove to Little Bay Park for a short jog, then we dropped by a Greek restaurant (Sheila knows the owners) for dinner to go.

On Friday, I slept in, got ready to go, had a leisurely breakfast near the train station. Got on the train, headed to Manhattan again. Manhattan blows my mind, its so huge, tall and crowded. Fascinating to me. I walked around Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick's Catholic Church, then met up with Sheila at the Empire State Building. We went up, and we really enjoyed the view. But, we got kinda stuck on the observation deck. Why? Maria Carey was up on the observation deck doing an interview or something, and they decided to shut down all the elevators. There were a lot of upset folks up there! At least I got a picture of her (since we were stuck there anyhow). Afterwards, we headed down to the Battery Park area. We walked around a little, walked by "ground zero", and took the passenger ferry over to Hoboken New Jersey. I will now refer to Hoboken as "Hobroken" since the old (1920s?) ferry terminal there was literally falling down : ) We had a nice dinner at a Malayan restaurant, then roamed the waterfront, then we took the "PATH" train back to Penn Station, where we caught the RIRR train back to Queens. When folks got on at Shea Stadium got on the train, there was grumbling about the Mets losing.

Slept in again on Saturday (seeing a pattern?), Sheila went off to run errands, so I went for breakfast/coffee on my own. Met back at the house at Noon, we headed out in Sheila's car to pick up Julie, a friend of Sheila's. We then we drove out to the vineyards of Long Island on the South Fork on the eastern end of the island. We stopped at a beautiful looking diner that had decidedly so-so food. Can't win 'em all I guess! We visited two wineries for tasting: Duck Walk and The Channing Daughters. East coast wines taste very mellow to me, I liked the taste, but I'm not a connoisseur. We got back to town around 8:00 PM, and were tired so just ordered a pizza for dinner.

This morning Sheila and I went to her church (1st Presbyterian of Whitestone in Queens)  at 10:30, it was a cute little building, about 100 years old. The congregation is very small, but full of love and spirit. After the service they had a little celebration for the birthday of the Pastor and a congregant. After that, they had a healing service. We left about 12:30, went food shopping and had coffee. We got back to the house at 2:00 PM, and here I am blogging!

I plan on leaving NYC tomorrow for Boston. New York has been great, and Sheila has been a wonderful host. We're having a lamb dinner tonight in honor of Orthodox Easter, with several of Sheila's friends. NYC is such a huge, interesting megalopolis you could spend years here to explore it all.

Until the next post,
Greg

PS No comments on the pics??

2 comments:

mmmoon said...

Greg,

Read most of your blogs today. It sounds like you are having a good time. When you get to Mark's give me a call. I have a family history job for you to do in Belmond, Iowa. Hopefully, you will have time to do it.

Marty

Jennifer said...

uh...lose your razor? How's that for a comment on the pics. Oh, and "undisclosed location" my eye.