Sunday - January 02, 2005
New York, New York
Getting ready for a four-month trip was extremely stressful, but now we're in New York and loving it. We realized that we're definitely in the Big City when we can have brunch 45 floors up, view a world-class art collection, and dine with Paul McCartney, all in the same day!
First stop, New York. We planned the trip to have two days in the big city before we meet our ship on Monday afternoon, and we are really enjoying our time here. Maybe we're just happy to be free of the stress that has been building for the past two weeks or so, but just checking in at our hotel made us feel a whole lot better. Not that the one-hour flight here was free of problems. We got on the plane in plenty of time, but the one piece of luggage that we checked for this whole trip failed to join us. However, this "luggage irregularity", as Northwest called it, was soon cleared up when it came in on the next flight out of Detroit and we felt much better when the hotel upgraded us to a Junior Suite.
Our first full day here was a Sunday, so we slept in and then booked to have brunch on the 45th floor of the Marriott hotel in their revolving restaurant. I'm sure it was the most money we have ever paid for a brunch, but then it was also the best view we've ever had as well. And the food was really very good. After we waddled out of the hotel, we spent a few hours touring the Frick Museum, which I think is an absolute gem! The collection is just just marvellous, with three Vermeers, two Rembrandts, and at least one work by almost every other major European painter you can think of. And to see the paintings displayed in the space for which they were purchased is a real treat. Mike and I think it compared very favorably to the Wallace Collection in London. The icing on the cake was seeing the Raphael painting of La Fornarina that was on loan from Rome for the very first time ever.
Dinner was another treat. We tried an excellent Italian restaurant, recommended by a friend, called "Ristorante dell'Arte", just a few blocks away from the hotel. We were sitting there discussing the day and enjoying our dinner when who should walk by and be seated just a couple of tables away from us, but Paul McCartney and his wife! Ah, we aren't in Ann Arbor anymore, I thought, and tried not to gawk for the rest of the evening. But we had another, less famous, British couple from Chesterfield seated next to us and enjoyed a very nice conversation with them, which made for a fun evening and a great end to a great day.