NYC Extravaganza

Vivian is getting more and more into musical theater, but until this summer, she had never seen a play on Broadway. We have a lot of hotel points saved up, so I thought it would be a fun early birthday present for Vivian and I to take the bus up to NYC on a Wednesday, see a matinee and an evening show, spend the night, wander around, and then take the bus back to Virginia. 

The bus trip went smoothly, and we had just barely enough time to check in at the hotel and drop off our bags before dashing to our 2:00pm show, Wicked!

Vivian absolutely LOVED it. She loved it so much, she cried through most of the second act. After our mad dash to the theater and the emotional catharsis of the show, I needed a drink. Luckily, there was a bar right next door with a drink called a Wickedtini. They also served an excellent Shirley Temple.

Once we had recalibrated, we were ready for our dinner reservation at La Grande Boucherie.

I had picked it because it had a good fixed price menu that included steak frites for Viv and the location was right. The decor was lovely, and our waiter was very nice, but the food was just meh. Still, we got the sustenance we needed. We had some time before our next show, so we went for a walk.

Vivian spotted Wicked themed American Girl dolls, and some of her emotional reactions came back.

Luckily, I had set my sights on a calming (and free!) tourist destination, St. Patrick's Cathedral.

It was a perfect break from the hectic city, and Vivian loved the stained glass.

After walking up and down the aisles, it was time to head back to Broadway for our second show of the day, Funny Girl.

Vivian has never seen the movie, so she didn't know the story, but she knew the famous Barbara Streisand songs. I had forgotten that there was tap dancing in it. Vivian has recently become a tap dancing fan, so she was thrilled by the fantastic tap dancing numbers. There were no tears for this one, but it was another winner of a show.

After the show, we meandered back to the hotel and collapsed.

Even though we were staying at The W, which is generally considered a fancy hotel, there was no breakfast included, so we had to go out and find our own.  We had walked by a bakery called Angelina the night before that looked promising, so we walked back there. I got a delicious coffee, but the pastries were too complicated for Vivian's tastes. Never fear! There is a Krispy Kreme in Times Square that serves freshly made, still warm donuts. Now that's delicious.

Our main activity for the day was a tour of Pace University. Vivian had wanted to see a New York City school, but most of the big ones have to be booked a month in advance. My cousin recommended checking out Pace, and it's in a fun neighborhood to explore anyway, so we headed south.

I wasn't sure how long it was going to take us to get there, so we ended up with about an hour to kill before the tour. That's how we found McNally Jackson Books and passed the time browsing and buying books.

The tour was interesting, but it was a very different vibe from the Georgetown one. There were only a handful of kids, and with the college being IN the city, we had two tour guides, one at the front and one at the back to make sure we didn't get lost crossing the street.  Vivian loved the neighborhood, but it definitely felt like a less academically focused school, and she says that's not what she's looking for.

Our tour guides were very friendly though, and when we asked for a good pizza recommendation, they unanimously recommended Kesté, which did indeed have excellent pizza.

After stuffing ourselves with pizza, we made our way back uptown. We were driving by the big public library building when Vivian asked if we could go check it out. I said sure, and we hopped out of the cab.

This was another perfect, low key activity. The library is free, and they had a cool display room with selections from the collection.

The most checked out book from the library is The Snowy Day, which I thought was a really cool fun fact.

We had a voucher from the hotel for free drinks at the bar, so we went to check it out. We sat at the bar at first, but the bartender asked how old Vivian was. Not 21, so no seat at the bar for her. Still, Vivian was flattered that she asked.

We checked out, and then stopped at Times Square Taco Bell to grab dinner to eat on the bus.

It was a whirlwind of a trip, but Vivian is now completely in love with New York. I'm not sure if that's something to be celebrated or mourned, but she's definitely not the first, nor will she be the last.

D.C. with Vivian

Even though my family has moved farther away from D.C., we were still able to get there fairly easily, so Vivian and I went a couple times. After her first year of high school, she has a lot of questions about college, and she really wanted to do a college tour. I figured if I had to spend an hour walking around a college campus, it might as well be a nice one, so I signed us up for a tour of Georgetown. I'm really glad we ended up doing it, because it was a learning experience for both of us. 

There were about 100 people at the start in one of the lecture rooms. An admissions officer gave us an overview of the undergrad program and the admissions process. Then, they broke us into three groups to walk around the campus. It's a lovely campus, and Vivian and I both enjoyed it. I don't know that this is her dream school, but we both have more information now, and that will help make better decisions as she really gets into the process.

While we were in Virginia, we spent a lot of time with some of our oldest friends, and we love to go to museums together.  There's one in DC called the Hillwood Estate that I've wanted to go to for years, but never got to, so it was a perfect choice for the four of us to go together. It was very much our kind of museum.

We actually started out by walking around the gardens, which are incredible.  There were traditional symmetrical gardens, but also more creative things, like a Japanese style garden.

There was also one building in the gardens that had a special display of some of the glass used in the house.  Vivian especially loved the gold tinted glasses.

One of the most impressive buildings was the greenhouse. There were hundreds of orchids in it.

There was also a cutting garden. All the flowers in the house come from the gardens, and we saw several lovely bouquets on a our tour.

The house was designed to be toured. It was owned by Marjorie Merriweather Post, one of the richest women of the 20th century. She was an avid collector, and she wanted to share that with her guests and with future generations of visitors. To that end, she intentionally built in display cabinets for her many dishes.

We started in the kitchen. Then, we looked at the first set of dishes and headed upstairs. It's actually not a huge house. Don't get me wrong, it's big, but compared to some of the gargantuan mansions that millionaires live in now, it's reasonably sized. That doesn't mean that she didn't give in to indulgences. Her entire bedroom was pink, and she had a view of one of the loveliest gardens.

Her bathroom was also all pink.

The reception rooms downstairs were all lovely and elaborately furnished and decorated.

She also spent some time in Russia and collected lots of Russian art, including two Faberge eggs.

The last room on the official tour was the dining room. The table was incredible, and it was on full display because all of the dishes were glass. Our tour guide told us we were very lucky, because the table is usually covered in a table cloth and then laid with patterned porcelain. 

There was also a more subdued eating nook, but it was still decorated with fresh orchids.

We made friends with our guide, so when the tour was done, she took us around to a couple rooms we hadn't gotten to on the official tour and told us more stories. It was a lot of fun.

We stayed and had lunch in the garden, and then headed back home. It was a lovely day out. The weather cooperated, and it wasn't that crowded. I'm sad that we didn't get to more museums, but this one was a perfect fit for us.

Trip Around the World: Phase 1

The girls and I had an ambitious summer planned.  We were going to fly west from KL through Dubai to Virginia, spend time with my family. Then, we would fly to Japan to meet Jeff for vacation, and then finally fly back to KL, completing our trip around the world. Before we left though, we needed to celebrate Father's Day with Jeff. This year he asked to try out the brunch at a place called Havana Club on our favorite restaurant row.

The family favorite was their custom made "bocadillo" (the letter L was pronounced). Whatever you wanted to call it, it was delicious.

That weekend, I also took Jeff to try out the club level at Mandarin Oriental. The view was great, but the best surprise was the club level afternoon tea with legit scones, clotted cream, and strawberry jam, yum!

Sunday afternoon the girls and I headed to the airport to begin our odyssey. They did pretty well on the first flight and arrived at Dubai in good spirits.

It was the middle of the night, but all the restaurants were open (thank you Dubai!), and I found a nice Italian one where the girls could fill up on pasta and pizza. They devoured their food and then collapsed.

That would have been okay, except Elena did NOT want to wake up and proceeded to have a meltdown all the way through security and onto the plane. This wouldn't have been too big a deal, except that she kept complaining that she had to fly economy, and there just wasn't enough space to sleep comfortably in economy. It was a bit much.

Once she got on the plane though, she fell asleep, which meant that Vivian and I could fall asleep, so that by the time we got to Virginia, everyone was more or less rested and ready to enjoy family time.

The new house is beautiful, and we had a lot of fun seeing old familiar things in new places. The best part though was spending time with family, especially the twins who completely stole the show any time they were in the room.

We tried to get a picture with all four of the kids together, but it was quite a challenge. This was the closest we came.

Maybe next time we can get all the kids to look at the camera and smile at the same time, but for now, it's just an occasional lucky catch.

The Goerss grandparents were able to stop by one afternoon on their way north, and the girls gave a little demonstration of their budding skills. Vivian sang, and Elena showed off her karate moves.

We also got a chance to drive up to Maryland and visit with our D&D friends. Elena loved their garden and their dogs.

She really wanted to stay up and watch the game, and our kind DM even let her sit on his side of the table.

But our games go pretty late, and she started to fade. It got the point where everyone was more focused on whether or not she was going to fall out of the chair than on the game, so we decided to take a break and put her to bed.

She did a little better at our other late night outing. My sister got us all tickets to go see Tori Amos. Vivian is already a veteran concert goer at this point, but it was Elena's first one.

She was really into it, right up until she wasn't, at which point she demanded to be taken home.  Mom offered to take her and Vivian (who was also worn out) home, so that Judy and I could stay and enjoy the rest of the concert. It was great to be able to have that sister time for us, and hopefully Elena will do better at her next concert.

We worked down our list of restaurants, and even made it to IHOP twice.  We didn't get to Carlyle, but we went to one of the restaurants that was part of the same group, and they had our favorite bread.

We did get to Shirlington for some Robeks and Thai food, because my family still hasn't found good Thai out where they are now.

But most of our best meals were at home. My mom made all the girls' requests, and my dad grilled us up a 4th of July feast,

followed by an early birthday cake for Vivian.

The time flew by too fast, and we are looking forward to seeing them all again as soon as possible.