After yesterday's Hamilton events, all my New York friends had to get back to their other pursuits - Nancy returned home Sunday night and Marianne headed back this morning, and Sergio and Nicole left for the island of Nevis to prepare for the dedication of the new Hamilton statue there. That left us three out of towners - me, Patty, and Eliza - to find our way around New York on our own. After eating another pair of yummy foodcart breakfast sandwiches, we decided to keep the day (relatively) simple and easy - we would go uptown, check out the Hamilton statue in Central Park, do some wandering around Times Square and see the Rockefeller Plaza, and then head back to the hotel to rest a bit before going over to Weehawken, NJ to see the famous dueling ground in the afternoon. Simple schedule, not too busy, right? Famous last words!
We hit Times Square first, and paid visits to the Richard Rogers theater, since Eliza hadn't seen it, and the Lyric Theater, where "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" plays (tip of the hat to my wife's love of the Potter series). Then we hiked over a few blocks and visited the Drama Book Shop, a famous local store purchased by Lin-Manuel Miranda in 2019 (no, he wasn't there, but I did get the number of their book buyer, so maybe I can talk him into stocking PRESIDENT HAMILTON!).
After that we hopped back on the train and headed to Central Park to find the Hamilton statue there, which was gifted to the park in 1880 by Hamilton's son, John Church Hamilton. It's a very imposing sculpture of Hamilton, and Eliza says it's her favorite. She and I both snapped quite a few pictures of it. After that, we grabbed some genuine New York pizza for lunch at a nearby pizzeria (I am going to miss those delicious slices when I get home!) Then we hopped on the train and headed back down to Rockefeller Plaza. We had a marvelous time there - Patty and I took Eliza to the FAO Schwarz store, which she had never even heard of, and we all spent a solid 45 minutes wandering around that enchanted toyland. Then we walked a "couple of blocks" (which is New York slang for a distance that can vary from 200 yards to 25 miles) to a gift shop to purchase souvenirs for our family. By now Patty's plantar fasciitis was really bugging her, and she limped back to the train station and said that we would have to go to Weehawken without her. So we rode the subway back to our hotel and got there just before six PM - only three hours past my original estimate!
Eliza and I paused only long enough to charge our phones for a few minutes and get Patty settled in, then we headed out again, determined to see the site of the fateful duel for ourselves before returning to Texas. We rode the train up to the proper part of NYC without a hitch and managed to find the Transit Authority bus terminal after only one unnecessary lap around the block. We figured out which bus to get on and went through the Lincoln Tunnel, but both our Google Map aps kept losing where we are, and we overshot our bus stop by a couple of miles (at least, that's what it felt like!). Then, when we finally reached the proper spot, we discovered the "steps of doom" - a zig zag ascent of some 25,000 steps (that is only a slight exaggeration) to get to the top of the cliffs overlooking the Hudson. I was huffing and puffing when we got to the top! But from there it was only a relatively short half mile walk to the famous Weehawken dueling grounds, where both Alexander Hamilton and his eldest son Philip met their deaths. Despite the trouble we had getting there, it was an inspiring place to be, and I commented to Eliza my wish that, in his final moments, Hamilton could have just gotten a single glimpse of what New York - and America - would become. I think his vision of our country as a mighty economic powerhouse has been borne out.
However, as inspiring as that vista of a sunset-illuminated New York was, we both decided that we did NOT want to walk back down the steps of doom! Instead, we split the cost of a Lyft driver and got back to the train station, and from there it was only another couple thousand paces before we got on our train and headed back down to the Wall Street Station, next to our hotel. Eliza had a bit further to go, since she's spending the night with a friend uptown, but I got back to our room, took a quick shower, and then we confirmed our boarding passes for tomorrow and I came down to update this blog.
Tomorrow, we return to Texas, but today we took in a WHOLE lot of New York on our final day in town - 27,000 paces' worth, to be precise. I'd like to thank my wife Patty for her wonderful patience during all this history nerd rambling, and Eliza for her wonderful, child-like enthusiasm for all things Hamilton. It's been as much fun watching her see all of this as it has been seeing it for myself - more, at times! And thank you, constant readers, for tagging along with me.
Tomorrow night's entry will be written from my home PC. Good night!
No comments:
Post a Comment