Nothing pierces the veil of gloom more than a timely visit to New York City, where my wife and I were on Sunday and Monday. This would be the last opportunity to see our daughter Allison before journeying to Costa Rica for her "destination wedding" in a few weeks.
We arrived just in time for the nor'easter that dumped six and more inches of snow on the New York City area. I didn't even know of the impending storm until we arrived at our hotel, the Algonquin.
The Algonquin is renowned, of course, as the meeting place for some of the great wits associated with The New Yorker magazine. I love that history. Some of these people were my literary heroes - Harold Ross, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley. Oh to be sitting at the famous round table back in the day.
The most amusing character now in residence at the Algonquin is a cat, Matilda. I saw Matilda jump on the reservation desk and present its rear end to a guest. You got to love a hotel with a cat with a superior attitude, which in truth, I suppose, is just about any cat.
The Algonquin is close to the theaters around Times Square. We saw "39 Steps," a vintage spy thriller that I actually had to read in high school. This version was played strictly for laughs and they milked many of them out of the unlikely story.
Only four people are in the cast - three men and a woman - and they play multiple parts, with the exception of the lead character. The staging was a wonder of creativity and the whole experience was highly entertaining.
(By the way, we went to the matinee at 3 p.m., having purchased our excellent seats at half price in the discount outlet right in the center of Times Square.)
That night, we went to an unusual restaurant that I had previously become intrigued with in a stroll around my daughter's neighborhood a couple of months ago. It was called Flex Mussels (178 East 82nd Street. between Lexington and 3rd Avenue). While it had other seafood offerings, this is a place for mussels, as the name suggests. It was excellent food and good value.
We came out to find the first of the snow. By Sunday morning, the nor'easter was well and truly upon the metropolis; it was blowing and cold. We assumed that our US Airways flight would be canceled but by lunchtime the storm had passed and the flight was still listed. I read that 900 flights were cancelled at New York's three airports but we got out of LaGuardia against all expectations.
Sometimes you get lucky. We returned to Pittsburgh on time to find no snow but the region as cold as an ice box.
Posted
Mar 03 2009, 05:58 PM
by
Reg Henry