It’s been a rainy few weeks since we returned from New York, but I’d like to share the highlights of the trip with you.

Louie and I decided to take a spring break trip to New York City. Taking a spring break required a bit of finagling on my part, but I was ready for it: as I mention here quite a bit, I rarely have days off on the weekend or any time, so taking a 7 day trip really just means that I’m finally getting to take some weekends. Sometimes people exclaim over this sort of thing, and frankly, I’m tired of it. And honestly, I’m lucky in that I am able to take some vacations. I work hard, I save, and I deserve it And other than getting sick upon my return, taking breaks really does make me a better teacher and musician.

Okay! So as the trip planning came about, we ended up with three segments of our trip. The first segment would be two days staying with Louie’s aunt and uncle in New York City, then two days with Louie’s dad in Philadelphia, then back to NYC to stay with my sister Carrie for two days. Quite a bit of back and forth, but it made sense when we planned it out.

I bought a new little suitcase for my travels. How cute is this guy?

We flew out on a Sunday morning and got to NY in the afternoon. When you fly into New York, you can really appreciate how populated the area in. Most airports, you’ll have wide open spaces, and then enter the city, and then land. In this case, it’s houses and roads and buildings for miles and miles leading up to it.

We got a cab to Louie’s uncle’s apartment, and enjoyed the ride in. It takes a little while to get used to the pace of everything in New York City. It’s fast, the cars drive quickly, close together, change lanes a lot, and you just have to get used to it, I think. People walk faster too, and people walk much more (which is definitely good.) Louie’s uncle’s apartment was near Washington Square Park and NYU in a really few neighborhood. I’d never met these relatives of his before, so that was great, and they were of course, really nice. Another aunt and uncle came over and we all went to a place in Brooklyn for dinner called Roberta’s. It’s normally not a place that takes reservations but his aunt was able to finagle a reservation, so we got to snootily walk past everybody and avoid the line. The food was fantastic, even though I got given a hard time for trying to avoid meat…sigh. I’m sure it was all in good fun, though.

I didn’t take as many pictures during the first part of the trip, so I apologize. There are several reasons for that, ranging from “too cold” to “didn’t seem cool taking pictures”.  But I took a few!

Our first full day in the city we slept in a bit—I wanted to get up and explore, but I was just so tired. As you know if you’ve been reading my blog, I’ve been pushing myself perhaps a bit too much, and once I hit vacation it was like I hit a wall. But we got up and had lovely cappucinos and pastries around the corner from Louie’s uncle’s place, and then we decided to walk down to the World Trade Center area.

I hadn’t been since before 9/11 so it was nice to see the memorial. Well, not nice exactly, but meaningful, and heartfelt, and sad.

We ate at Eatery (I forgot until we were sitting down the whole sexual harassment thing about Mario Batali, grr it’s hard to keep track!) and then headed back up. We didn’t do terribly exciting things, but it was nice to walk and feel the energy of the city around you. You can just walk and walk!

We met up again with the uncles and aunts for dinner and went to a chinese restaurant on the edge of Chinatown. I don’t recall the name, but it was very delicious. I should also add that we were using the subway fairly proficiently at this point, had a pass to keep adding money too, and generally found google maps useful.

Anyway, the next morning we again slept in, even though again we truly intended to get up earlier. It’s hard to balance vacation as a break and as an activity, isn’t it? I think since we were staying at a relative’s house we didn’t feel the desperate urge to see it all: New York is great, but fairly accessible.

Anyway, we decided to visit the Tenement Museum.

The tour was really interesting, though I had almost more questions after the fact. I highly recommend checking the museum out. It was another rainy day and we were cold, but still enjoyed walking around. We found a little place that served giant tacos (with tofu and chickpeas and all sorts of tasty things) and had a late lunch there, and then meandered back to the apartment. We had to pack up and meet for dinner.

The next step in our vacation was to meet Louie’s dad for dinner at a Greek restaurant near Carnegie Hall and then go see the Philadelphia Orchestra play at Carnegie. As it turned out, the week we chose to visit NYC, the Philly orchestra was playing in Carnegie, so we got to see Louie’s dad play! We also met up with Louie’s brother Eric, who works at Carnegie, and had a great dinner, then went to the show. Our seats were VERY high up and a bit obstructed view, but the sound was fantastic. I’d heard the Philadelphia Orchestra many years ago (while in college) and was very impressed.

I thought the string sound was so lush and vibrant in particular. Afterwards we got to be orchestra groupies and met the bus to take us to the train station, where the orchestra had a private train taking them back to Philly. We got to Penn Station, walked straight onto the train, and then left!

Next stop: Philadelphia! We had a nice train ride with Louie’s dad and chatted with some other people as well, some who Louie had known as a young boy. We split some snacks and a bottle of wine—the perks of a private train (I felt like the queen of england!).

We got in very late, and we were staying at the Doubletree Hotel in Center City. We wouldn’t get much sleep, because the next morning we had plans to meet my brother Jesse, who lives just outside of Philadelphia.

We met up with Jesse, and got some coffee and pastries first. Then we decided to walk around, and go to the Betsy Ross House.

The Betsy Ross House is a long standing family tradition. Back when I was in high school my Uncle Ed started a postcard campaign about the House to garner excitement about an upcoming trip. He sent at least a half dozen cards, each one expressing the amazing-ness that was the BR House and counting down the days until we visited. We went to Philadelphia for the day as a family, and at the end of the day we visited it. It was of course, the highlight of the trip.

Once we got there we had to take a few pictures as well, to share with family!

Jesse and I outside the house.

Betsy’s gravesite.

Louie and I.

We decided to take the tour, so we headed in. We were lucky in that the house was nearly empty of guests—we were told that normally there would be lots of schoolchildren visiting!

One mildly creepy thing was that there was an actual person dressed as and acting like Betsy. A tour guide referred to them as “the Betsy’s” and once we got to the room with the actual Betsy, it got weird. She talked to us as if she really was Betsy, but I wanted to say, look, lady, it’s just the four of us, and we are all adults here, but I’m not totally convinced she didn’t know she wasn’t Betsy Ross!

In any case, as much as the idea of the Betsy Ross House is a bit of a family joke, we enjoyed it and learned a bit. Even if Betsy didn’t make the original flag (it’s unclear) she was a saavy businesswoman at a time few women owned businesses.

Then we all met up with Louie’s dad and wife for lunch. We had delicious seafood, and then walked my brother to the train station—he had to get back to work.

We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking coffee and just hanging out. Louie and I were finding that we had spent a good deal of the week just being exhausted! We met up with his dad again for a wonderful dinner at a place called Vedge.

The next morning we left the hotel and went to the train station for our train back to NYC. Next stop, the upper limits of Manhattan!

It turned out that my sister Carrie was playing on a gig the first night we were there. And then it turned out that a violinist was sick, and so I would be playing on the gig! I had to borrow a violin, but otherwise thought it sounded like great fun to play a gig with my sister.

So, we got back to Penn Station around 11 am, and then found a subway to take us north. Another 45 minutes, we got off the subway, and followed the maps to Carrie’s apartment. She lives in Inwood with a roommate, who we also met, and the place is really quite nice! Of course it’s small, but it was pretty modern and honestly more spacious than I’d imagined. We went with her and her boyfriend Daniel to a ramen place called Tampopo, after the movie.

After lunch we headed up to to walk around Fort Tryon Park and visit the Cloisters Museum. It was really neat (and I really understood all those jokes about monks and art, as quite a lot of the stuff was a bit “have you ever seen a cat before?”)

Louie with a unicorn horn.

Then it was time to change and take the train to Brooklyn for the gig. We decided to get there early and eat dinner beforehand, so we managed to beat the rush (and luckily avoid the train delays that affected people later in the day). We picked a vegetarian place near where we were playing that ended up being so-so, and also met up with a friend of Louie’s.

Then Carrie and I headed over to Union Hall, where we were playing some music for a comedy variety show. We played some pre show music and then one thing during. The comedians ranged from really funny to kind of okay, but it was a good time and a friendly audience. I particularly loved the comedy of Aparna Nancherla, who was understated and self deprecating, but very polished. We all had a fun time, and even got involved with some audience participation.

Aparna—she was on a Master of None episode.

The theme of the variety show was that it was supposed to be the host’s 40th birthday (which they acted like this was something horribly old and crazy…) The event was hosted by a comedian named Jenny Gorelick.

I felt like the whole event was exactly how NY seems like it should be—random events where you run into celebrities!

The next day we did more sightseeing. We headed to the northernmost tip of Manhattan.

And we saw the place where supposedly the island was purchased from the Native Americans.

We decided to see a museum, and went to the Smithsonian Museum of Design by Cooper Hewitt, or something like that. It was a long walk to get there, and the wind was not fun. The museum was okay—some aspects were really cool, like this magic pen thing you could hold and use it to work with various exhibits and save stuff to your audience number online, but it didn’t work as well and I’d hoped, and the museum was on the small side. We enjoyed it though, and then went to dinner at another vegetarian restaurant on the East Side called Franchia. It was delicious but we felt really rushed through dinner by our server. I suppose we could have just taken our time, but it just felt like we were rushed to order and then we felt like the whole thing happened too fast and we didn’t really get to peruse the menu as much as we’d hoped!

Anyway, the next morning we went home, and that was uneventful…so that was our NY trip. It was great to see so many family members, to get some nice sightseeing in, and to relax and enjoy some good meals. And as a smaller city girl, it’s always fun when you feel like you are understanding the public transit options! I never use public transit here in St Louis, so I felt very big city riding the subway with my violin. There was a time in my life when I wanted to go to the Juilliard School but I ended up in Cleveland instead. I suppose things might have been different!