Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Some things I spotted on our bus tour of New York City today:

Interesting how the US Postal Service’s Manhattan Maintenance Facility doesn’t maintain their own sign!

This is really the name of the business. And in case you didn’t see it the first time, it was on several different windows on the 2nd floor.

Seriously? An eyelash ‘hairdresser’?

And some things from our ‘free’ day:

Banner on the deli: We cure our own corned beef; our chicken soup cures everything else

Baby Fiat as a traffic police car

We started our Sunday tour of New York City with a stop at Grand Central Station. Matthew was our tour guide (http://www.citywalksny.com), and he gave us a lot of history of the place, its architecture etc. — stuff we would never know just by looking at it.

We then wended our way in our chartered bus from mid-town to lower Manhattan, with Matthew pointing out places of interest, various neighbourhoods, and some of the history and stories associated with them. Our final destination was the 9/11 memorial area, where we stopped and walked around for quite some time. Again, Matthew gave us insights into some of the personal stories. If you’ve been, you know that this is a place that you can’t talk about too much.

Our next stop was Pier 61 at the Chelsea Piers for our 2-hour champagne brunch/lunch cruise on the Bateaux ‘Celestial’. The weather was just perfect, as you can see from the photos, and the cruise took us as close as we were allowed to get to the Statue of Liberty. However, the food and the seating arrangements left a lot to be desired. Let’s just say that if you’re on a buffet cruise with a bunch of hungry Americans, ask for seating that gets you to the buffet earlier rather than later, and check that the staff replenish the dishes often and with hot food, and have put out CLEAN plates with no food residue from previous use… I have no doubt our tour leader will be having words with the Bateaux people as I KNOW she had booked this more than 12 months ago and had asked for window seating for our group, which we didn’t get.

After lunch we spent the afternoon on the tour bus with our guide Matthew. Our only stop was Strawberry Field in Central Park, the memorial to John Lennon, who was shot at the nearby Dakota building in Dec 1980.

We had a most magnificent day — both for the weather we experienced (about 22C), and for the great tour given by Matthew.

Oh, one final thing — Matthew pointed out the hot dog stands and mentioned that a stand outside The Met would cost the stand owner some $250,000 to $300,000 a year, to be paid to the City!!!

I took well over 100 photos today — just a few are here.

After a 3-hour drive from Lancaster, PA, we crossed into New Jersey, and then into New York City! As expected, the last hour of our trip was the shortest but took the longest — getting through the Lincoln Tunnel and then to our hotel near Times Square. But we arrived safe and sound.

The hotel couldn’t check us in at that time, so we walked to our first stop — Top of the Rock at the Rockefeller Center. What a rigmarole to get in! I reckon we were checked, counted off, or security checked by at least 15 different people. The elevator ride to the 67th floor is not for everyone — first they pack you in like sardines, then the lights go out, and everyone looks up the lit elevator shaft. Everyone except me, that is. I started to get all clammy and put my head down and shut my eyes. By the time we stopped, my palms were dripping with sweat. I was OK at the top as I felt pretty secure with the thick glass, solid flooring, and the fact you couldn’t see directly down. But the elevator ride down sure wasn’t a thrill for me. The views are amazing, even on a hazy day like today.

My feet were pretty sore by the time I walked back to the hotel, so once I was checked in and unpacked, I put them up for a bit before our early dinner at The View revolving restaurant in the Marriott Marquis. We had a wonderful meal, with great service (no doubt it cost a heap, but it was part of our tour experience!), and left to walk to the St James Theater on W 44th St where we had tickets to see ‘Something Rotten’. The whole Broadway/Times Square pedestrian experience is madness, but we all made it in the end — and on time too.

‘Something Rotten’ is very clever and very funny, with some amazing costumes and sets. The Will Shakespeare character (played by Eric Sciotto) reminded me a lot of Keith Urban in looks, hair flicking, and general demeanour 😉 But why oh why did the theatre have to be SOOO hot?! We were cooking in there, and it was very uncomfortable because of the heat — my mini hand fan from Bali came in handy!

Some photos from today:

View over Central Park from the Rockefeller Center

Stacking car park

Art deco even surrounds the trees

Rockefeller Center

Empire State Building (foreground); Statue of Liberty (background)

A long day on the road today, broken up by a stop at a tiny town (Pine Bush, NY) to visit their local quilt store and inject some dollars into their community. The store owners opened up early for us, we were done in 45 mins, and probably added several hundred or thousand dollars to their coffers for the day! I spent $30 and many spent much more.

It was a gorgeous day and the country vistas and Fall colours were lovely. Many of us sewed hexies or knitted or just chatted on the drive south. We arrived at the Kitchen Kettle Village in Intercourse, PA about 1:30 and had two hours there. During that time, some of us went on a horse and buggy ride with the amiable Amos, others had lunch, others bought goods and produce from the mostly Amish-operated stores, etc.

One of the stores sold cheeses and cured meats in all sorts of varieties, and had tasting trays for almost everything. They also had tasting trays of chili sauces, two of which were labelled ‘Hot’. Well, that was the understatement of the year!!! The first I tried was a ghost pepper chili sauce — wooooeeee! About an hour later I tried the ‘Sphincter Shrinker’, which set the end of my tongue on fire for quite a while. The best cure for the heat was walking over to the jams and preserves shop and tasting many of the goodies for sale there 😉

After our time at the Kitchen Kettle stores, we had enough daylight to visit a local covered bridge, which caused much excitement, especially when we waited for a buggy to pass and a car drove the other way — with a mini horse or Shetland Pony in the back seat!!!!

Out final destination today was Lancaster, PA, where we’ll spend 3 nights.

A few photos from today:

We started the day with a 3-hour visit to the Shelburne Museum, just south of Burlington, Vermont. This is not like a traditional museum — instead, it is a 45-acre plot of land on which are housed about 40 or so buildings, such as a schoolhouse, a couple of barns, a tavern, a worker’s cottage, and so on. Other buildings have been brought in from places around Vermont, and house various functions, such as a printing house, textile gallery, smokehouse, etc. The centrepiece of the buildings is the imposing structure housing reproduction rooms of the NY home of the benefactor and founder who made this museum possible: Electra Havemeyer Webb.

It’s what’s inside the buildings that makes this museum, and a 3-hour visit could never do it justice. Inside the central building, the walls are lined with priceless paintings by Manet, Monet, Degas, Rembrandt, Andrew Wyeth, and many others. There are bronzes by Remington, and in the most modern gallery there were two current exhibitions — one of Grandma Moses’ paintings and the other of old circus posters.

In other buildings we saw amazing quilts from the 1840s onwards, carriages and sleighs, school furniture and implements, apothecary furniture, bottles and implements, a general store with all sorts of old stuff, kitchens and bedrooms of simple houses, woodworking and farm materials, printing presses, etc. etc.

Added to that we were there in Fall, when the colours were at their finest. It was a cold day, but SOOO worth it to stop there and visit a while. However, I’d recommend a day there at least — I believe you can buy 2-day tickets.

After the Shelburne, we hit the road again for the 4-hour drive to Kingston, down a lot of small state roads through Vermont (22A and 4 in particular), before getting on I-87 and heading south.

Some of my many photos from today:

Degas

Quilt made in the 1800s — half-inch squares!

On the road again… This time with a replacement bus (the other one had a door that came open every time we hit a bump). This bus is older, has no power outlets for charging devices (an essential requirement), and has a loud noise coming from the back wheel area. We are likely to get yet ANOTHER bus tomorrow. The organiser of our group is suitably unimpressed…

Today we left Meredith, NH and travelled just a few minutes to Moulton Farm where we saw lots of varieties of pumpkin, squash, gourds, corn, etc. And I saw a chipmunk in one of the hothouses. Their store sells amazingly fresh local produce (from their farm and others close by). I’m not a big fan of apples, but the Honeycrisp one I had was fantastic — fresh, crunchy, juicy, and delicious.

Next stop was Center Harbor, NH, home of Keepsake Quilting, one of the biggest mail order (and now online) quilting stores in the US. This is its ‘bricks and mortar’ store, and is PACKED with fabrics, pre-cut quilting kits, and quilt patterns. I only needed a couple of things, so I didn’t spend a lot here — Houston awaits!

Then it was back on the road to Burlington, VT. We crossed through the Franconia Notch and National Park, where there was snow at the higher elevations, and a little on the roadside in spots. The skies, which had started out blue and sunny this morning, turned a dirty grey, threatening either rain or snow. But fortunately, we got neither before stopping at our hotel for the night. It’s meant to get to 2C overnight with a maximum of 6C tomorrow.

After dinner with the group at the hotel’s restaurant, some of us adjourned to the hotel’s breakfast room to either learn about or work on our ‘hexie’ project (quilting hexagons [English paper piecing] for the uninitiated). I’m not a fan of hand sewing anything, so I think I be all fingers and thumbs doing this, but I’ll give it a try. Tonight I cut out my 94 hexagons, and (with the help of Janice) temporarily glued the hexie papers to them. We have 4 hours on the bus tomorrow, so if the weather is inclement, I’ll start tacking them down. This will be a long project….

Some photos from today: