New York City Part Three

Last night, Dorey and I went to see Cal Shakes' production of "Romeo and Juliet." It was one of the greatest productions of the play that I have seen. This production was dressed in modern day--Romeo and Juliet go to the O.C. This worked because Romeo and Juliet come from wealthy important families in Verona, just as Newport Beach has wealthy, important familes. The kids from this type of family are often kids filled with ennui--everything is available and still they have nothing to do. These families also have older hanger ons--guys such as Mercutio and Tybalt can't seen to live town and away from their teenage days. The evening scene where Romeo and Juliet meet was a wonderful dance scene--teenagers playing with adult emotions of sex and longing. The problem with the play is how to make Juliet become an adult while at the same time making her remain a 13 year old girl. This Juliet hit this tension exactly right. I never forgot her age. Terrific stuff.

First the stats, and then New York City, Part Three

Stats: Yesterday, I walked 12,767 steps. As of this moment, 1:04 p.m. on Saturday, June 13, 2009, I have walked 862,025 steps in 78 days.

New York Part Three (and finally we get there):

At about 6:00 a.m., Eastern Daylight Time, I woke up, pulled up the shade, and looked out the window. I saw daylight. I thought that we would be over the Great Plains, because the trip was supposed to take about 5 ½ hours. However, looking down, it became clear that we were getting close to New York City, as there were a lot of houses. About 15 minutes later, the pilot came on to wake us up to tell us that we were beginning our initial descent into JFK,, and that he expected to land in about a half an hour. He explained that we had a strong tail wind pushing across country, taking about 45 minutes off of the trip. No one seemed heartbroken.

Because we were going for only two days, we packed only backpacks for this trip. We stopped in the restrooms at JFK, and brushed teeth, etc. Dorey gave me a leftover instant tooth brush from our last trip to England. It’s much better when it’s fresher, but still, it did the trick.

We worked our way over to the Air Train, which goes from the Airport to Jamica Station. We were tired, and confused, and sort of fuzted around, getting on and off the train, trying to find the right one. A woman from San Francisco was also trying to find the station. She was going to lower Manhattan. She had flown all night as well. During the last week, she had purchased a small house in Marin County. On and on she went. I stopped listening after a while, and was not sad to see her go when she hopped off a stop before us. Once we arrived at the Jamicia Station terminal, we found our way into the City.

We were headed toward the Union Square station, where we were going to pick up a tour of Brooklyn. We arrived at Union Square at about 9:00, two hours after we had left the plane. So we did a lot of futzing around in the subway.

As we rode up the elevator, we came upon a great farmers market. Lots of beautiful flowers were out–I thought they were for Mother’s Day, but someone later told me that the Farmers Market in Union Square always had flowers. It was too early for fruit, but many vegetables were available. Several farmers also brought honey from upstate New York. If we were not hoofing it out of town the next day, I would have bought some stuff. But I didn’t because we were.

After a quick tour around the square, we decided to eat some breakfast. We walked around, trying to locate the spot where the bus would pick us up. In so doing, we ran across a Blimpies ran by some Puerto Ricans. We had an terrible egg sandwich for breakfast. But the place had a restroom, so what did I care. We ate, and still had an hour to go before our tour began, so we returned to Union Square, and walked some more.

Just outside of Union Square, several blocks had been shut down for a market. We walked down the street, viewing the wares and taking pictures. One booth was selling scarfs, and we bought one for Dorey for $5.00. I became intrigued with the dresses being displayed in the air, and tried to obtain a good photograph of these dresses. I didn’t succeed.

It was Falun Gong day on the Square. I was able to get the above picture of the group out on the Square.