Saturday, 5 April, 2014 – USA Food and Wine Tour

It is a bright, sunny day but gets off to a bad start. I decide to go along on the 8:00 AM walk but am forced to turn back because I can’t keep up with the mob. Every time I try to walk faster, the rods in the back start hurting more.

When the group goes back we go to a local diner. Some times these can be great, but this was not the case here. The girl taking the orders got everything screwed up. My meal was one of the early ones but was missing the sausage and the toast. Servings were on plastic plates with plastic cutlery. Several of the meals took a long time to come back, including Julie’s which was absolutely the last, probably 45 minutes after mine. Further, it appeared that Julie got food poisoning from the egss. She swears she will never have eggs again.

But, there were a number of good things on the day. We meet downstairs at the lobby with our bags to checkout in preparation to our move to the next hotel. There are stretch limos to drive us and a single pick-up truck (Ute) for our suitcases. There are 20 of them but remarkably all fit in the Ute.

The initial theme of the stretch limos is to show us around to various places in NYC. There is champagne and beer available but we do not partake, the other limo gets right into it.

One of the main points of the trip is to go over to New Jersey to take photos of the NYC Skyline. So we take the Lincoln Tunnel under the Hudson River to get to the New Jersey Shore of the Hudson.

The next stage is for the Limos to take us back to Harlem. So we drive along the Hudson in New Jersey for quite a ways, eventually going across the George Washington Bridge.

http://www.panynj.gov/bridges-tunnels/george-washington-bridge.html

The idea going back to Harlem is to see Gospel Singing. It is not exactly that but it is the Black American Musical Theater, MAMA foundation for the arts.

[Sorry folks, but WordPress keeps doing the wrong thing with this photo of the program. I will try to fight it another day]

Unfortunately for Julie, she has become quite sick, gastro or food poisoning, and disappears into the bathroom for an extended period. We are shown to our seats and we send Di to rescue Julie from the loo and she makes it out for the show to start. The show today is “Alive!” where all the singers are 55 and older. They did not allow any pictures but the show was quite uplifting. Many of the singers had stories to tell from their past which were quite sad. One man was abandoned at two months old and had spent over 40 years in jail. A woman had had 12 blood transfusions and the Doctors had given up on her but she saved herself through the “help of god”. The singing was excellent with one lady doing a fine version of Whitney’s Bodyguard theme but there were many others. There was even a white guy could could sing well.

At the end, each of the singers introduced themselves including their ages. They were indeed all 55+ with the highlight being this older guy, with a very deep voice, who had drunk non stop for 34 years before recovering. He was 74 years old. When they finished up, everybody was standing.

Julie had bought me a Alive! t-shirt. Then the door prize was announced, Julie won first prize and it was – an Alive! t-shirt. She got a smaller size for herself. We then head outside and scramble 4 taxis to get to our new Hotel.

It is the Sherry Netherland opposite Central Park. It is an old Hotel but inside is a combination of the best things about old and new. The room is spacious and very good. Additionally, our suitcases made it there. Of course, even though it is after 4:00 PM, and we have dinner tonight at 8:00, Di and Julie head out for more shopping along Fifth Avenue etc. I have a bit of a rest again.

That night we are in Harry Cipriani’s restaurant which is in the Hotel. It is a 4 course meal with the first course being an antipasto type on multiple plates.

There were a few choices for the main course.

Not bad for Italian remembering that Italian cuisine is not my favourite.

The end of a very down and up day.