I Saw a Unicorn and Got My Playbill Signed By the Gods in New York City

New York City is a crazy place. Why is there everything that you'd ever want to see or do there, and it's all easily accessible via public transportation? And people just LIVE there like that's a completely normal way to exist!!! 

A place like Indiana must seem absolutely fucking miserable to a New Yorker. When a New Yorker is bored, they can go get cheap dumplings or ride the subway somewhere cool or visit a museum or go to a show or just walk around and people watch. When I'm bored, I have to resort to stupid shit like poking around in my garden or taking the dog for a hike or wandering around the mall and not buying stuff. Our lives are NOT the same.

Ah, well. One more full day to pretend to be a real New Yorker by doing all the touristy, non-New Yorker things I can fit into the schedule!

On this day, after the obligatory bagels for breakfast (you put too much cream cheese on your bagels, New York!), my partner polled the kids to see if they'd rather go see Stonewall National Monument or the unicorn tapestries. I think they'd have loved both, but unicorns were the winners this time. 

We'll pay our respects next time, Stonewall!

The Met Cloisters was quite the hike from our Times Square-adjacent hotel, but I think it might be my favorite place in New York City. Y'all know what a freak I am for the Medieval period (if you want me to send you Margery Kempe memes message me your cell number!), and here was a lovely little museum simply chock-full of Medieval and ONLY Medieval art! 

I'm especially fond of Medieval depictions of critters, such as this completely realistic lion that the artist has definitely seen before:

Spanish, Castile-Leon, circa 1200. My favorite part is its mustache!

Also, a dragon that is literally eating a guy!

North German, circa 1200

Another dragon, but this one's got chicken feet and a very sassy expression on its face:

Spanish, Castile-Leon, circa 1200

We apparently don't quite know what the deal is with this particular two-headed critter, just that William of Orange is stabbing it:

There are two types of museum-goers in my family. The first type looks at everything really fast and then sits around, bored, and contemplates killing the rest of us. Thank goodness for my museum buddy who's also of the second type!

We look at EVERYTHING. AND we read its label. And we take each other's pictures looking at the best stuff so we can prove we were there. 

King Arthur!

This is supposed to be either Hector of Troy or Alexander the Great.

I also like Medieval manuscripts:

The Romance of the Rose, French, 1340

This stained glass window apparently used to live in Canterbury Cathedral!

Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, 1180

But here's what we really came to see:

The Unicorn Defends Himself

These were astounding, although I wish the unicorn would have kicked those hunters' asses rather than getting killed. I love how it's depicted as A Definitely Real Unicorn That Really Exists, and in the corner of the gallery was also displayed a narwhal tooth, which I would certainly have 100% believed was a real unicorn horn if nobody had told me about narwhals.

I'm so curious about this mending. It's very visible, so perhaps it's also historic, or perhaps it was done purposefully so you could see the evidence of historical wear:

The Hunters Return to the Castle

The peaceful scenes are the best, though. Fuck those hunters!

The Unicorn Rests in a Garden

The Unicorn Purifies Water

Love this guy:

As the other two were finally dragging the big kid and I by our ears out of the museum, my partner said, "I wonder if anyone ever comes here twice?", thinking, I guess, about how out-of-the-way and very much up-the-hill it is. But I swear that if I lived here I'd come to the Met Cloisters every day just to say hi to the unicorns, maybe take a little peek at St. Michael slaying the demons, sneak into a guided tour or two, and then head back down the hill and down the block for this huge slice of pizza that was so freaking delicious and I swear to god it cost four dollars:

Sufficiently fueled, we took the subway back downtown and back to this Times Square-adjacent location just cattycorner from our hotel, because no matter that I'd already seen unicorns and eaten pizza--my day was about to get even better!

This trip was the coming together of a couple of dreams. Y'all already know that I love musicals, and that Hadestown has long been my favorite by far. Y'all don't need me to start waxing tearfully poetic about how meaningful I find this work of art that celebrates the beauty of knowing that your efforts are futile, but nevertheless trying as hard as you can. You don't need to do something because you think you'll win--you just need to do it because it's the right thing to do. Also, the beauty of telling the same story over and over, even if you don't like the ending, because the meaning isn't in the ending--it's in the telling. 

Ugh, you guys, I just love Hadestown so much.

And currently, the little kid's favorite actor is playing Orpheus. How could we pass up a chance for her to see Jack Wolfe in person, and for me to see Hadestown again, and for the other two to also come and hang out with us in New York City?

Money comes back, but life is made of memories:

Jack Wolfe didn't come out to the admittedly absolutely madhouse-level stagedoor afterwards, which was a bummer but omg COMPLETELY understandable, because OMG that crowd! However, we were super excited to see Paulo Szot--

--and Kurt Elling--

--and Allison Russell--

--which means that we got our playbills signed by all the gods!

Interestingly, the news just dropped last week that this cast's final performance of Hadestown is March 1. As the little kid and I were talking about it, I theorized that wouldn't it be cool if Jack Wolfe was headed back to the West End, where The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is now running. Wolfe played The Balladeer in a previous run of the show, and I joked that if he ended up as The Balladeer again I'd have to start looking for plane tickets.

"You wouldn't go without me?!?", the kid gasped.

Money comes back, but life is made of memories!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Ate a Pineapple Pork Bun in New York City and I Think I Will Never Be The Same Again

If you thought that bad weather would keep the tourists inside, you would be wrong. We will see all the sights in New York City no matter how cold it is!

We got so turned around attempting to find the right subway line to get us to Brooklyn that we ended up near Rockefeller Plaza, so we figured that we might as well walk over and see if the tree was still up.

It was!

And then the big kid saw the line to get into FAO Schwartz and was all, "Toys?!? TOYS!!!", so somehow we ended up doing that, too.

Of course, as soon as we got into the store and she realized that it was essentially just a mass of wall-to-wall people she wanted to immediately bail, but I said, "Come on, we're already in. Might as well power through."

The first week in January is actually a terrible time to visit FAO Schwartz regardless of the crowds--they were so picked over from holiday shopping, I guess, that although all the shelves were full, they were full with just, like, one or two products per brand, basically. Great if you want a goat cheese Jellycat or a Schleich brachiosaurus painted to look like it works there (which, okay, is kind of cute...)--

--but I kind of wanted to look at *all* the Jellycats, you know? Not just 1,000 copies of the worst one.

Whatever. At least it was warm inside, and it turned out that the subway station we wanted was right near there, after all!

On to DUMBO!

Technically, all people actually wanted to do on this day was walk around Chinatown and eat stuff. But I tacked on first walking across the Brooklyn Bridge TO Chinatown because, come on, it's RIGHT THERE!, and then, well, I tacked on first finding that one perfect photo spot that everybody goes to in DUMBO because if you're at the Brooklyn Bridge, well, then... I mean come on, it's RIGHT THERE!

Just us and 1,000 other tourists seeing the sights!

If you look veeeery closely at the photo below, you can even see a tiny Statue of Liberty. We really saw everything on this trip!

There she is again! 

Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge probably isn't something I need to do again, although I would like to catch a sunrise there, but it was a super easy and pleasant walk that puts you right into an interesting part of Lower Manhattan, a short walk from Wall Street on one side and Chinatown on the other.

We chose Chinatown!

And yes, I did force us a few blocks out of our way just so I could embody that Lumineers song.

It is SO hard for me to narrow down all the places I want to see when I visit somewhere:

But we did our best!

We bought buns and milk tea from Mei Lai Wah--

--and I need to tell you that this pineapple pork bun is the best thing that I have ever eaten in my life:

How do they make that crunchy pineapple topping? It was super crunchy, but it wasn't super sweet so it's not sugar. It was SO good, and I am devastated that I'm not eating it again right now.

We had no organized plan for what little shops and restaurants from my map we actually hit and in what order, so we got a lot of sightseeing done simply by wandering back and forth and around and around doing and seeing everything in the most inefficient manner possible:

Jin Mei Dumplings, cash only and window service only, but you get 15 delicious dumplings for $5!!!

I didn't see a tenth of what I wanted to see by the time we absolutely had to head out, which is always the way, sigh, and I guess it leaves plenty of reasons to come back one day.

Another place I'm coming back to: Madison Square Garden, where I once again managed to score the absolute worst seats in the house!

This game ended up being kind of heartbreaking, because I had to watch Shesterkin get injured (and he's still not back!), and then go on to watch the Rangers flat-out lose to the Mammoth, but at least they scored a couple of points in the meantime--

Here's a spot that I haven't yet made it to even once: the Empire State Building! I just like to look at it from the outside and imagine King Kong climbing it:

Fun fact: the best part of our trip is yet to come!

P.S. Come find me over on my Facebook page, where I often talk about my adventures, experiments, misadventures, and yet more misadventures as I'm doing them!

Day 1 for the Most Touristy Tourist Who Ever Toured Around New York City

Because I'm a tourist, so why wouldn't I visit the tourist amenities that were created for me?

Such as...

Times Square!

Like yes, obviously, Times Square is not any tourist's *favorite* place, but eh. I've never been hassled or hustled there, it's got places to sit so you can contemplate your next move and/or your life in general, everyone else is also a tourist so I'm not in anybody's way when I stand and gawk gormlessly at a huge ad, you don't have to watch out for traffic, we saw some people attempting to film a music video in the middle of all the chaos and that was pretty entertaining, and while my partner and I stood in line at the TKTS booth the kids wandered in and out of the big touristy stores and kept bringing us little Hershey bars they said the store gave out for free but honestly I wouldn't be surprised to learn they'd simply nabbed them. 

This day on Times Square was especially cool because the detritus of New Year's Eve was still apparent:

Did you know that the Times Square New Year's Eve ball is a legacy of the same type of time ball that we saw in Greenwich? So cool!

The ball is a LOT smaller than it looks on TV...

Anyway, our hotel was actually just a couple of blocks from Times Square, so we wandered through there a LOT:

I'd never done the TKTS booth before, and I was pretty amused to discover that reps from the different shows work the line while you wait, talking up their various productions. I was dithering between The Outsiders and Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York), but even though I know people have been loooooving The Outsiders I'm partial to original shows so I chose Two Strangers. And omg I am SO glad that I did!

But first, bagels!

Then, a bookstore!

The Drama Book Shop was on my want-to-visit list just because of this amazing sculptural piece that was even more impressive in person, but I also found the script for Ada and the Engine and a book about the making of Jesus Christ Superstar. Jesus Christ Superstar was my first musical, if you count watching the movie version on cable a billion times (which I do!), and now I'm obsessed with musicals, so there you go. Ada and the Engine is a play that I dragged both kids to a few years ago after we'd done a unit on the history of computers, and it also has a surprising and shockingly touching musical component. 

This trip to New York City has a theme, it seems!

Would you even be in New York City if you didn't spend some time each day wandering around lost?

Also see: wandering around looking for a drugstore because one of you might have just come down with that adenovirus that's been all over the news, and then sitting in the middle of Times Square and dosing yourself up on Mucinex and Robitussin and a cough drop in each cheek. 

Fortunately, I also packed plenty of masks. I *have* been to New York City in winter before!

Hadestown is the musical I'm most obsessed with, and honestly, it was KILLING me not to be in this line:

But it's okay, because I was across the street in THIS line!

I walked into this musical completely cold--I hadn't even paid attention to the promoters working the TKTS line. All I knew was that it was 1) indeed a musical, and 2) comedic. 

This is the set:

Dudes, this musical was AWESOME! It was hilarious, which serves to distract you so they can also sneak a bunch of feelings up on you, and the songs were great, and the actors were amazing. 

And if you sit in the first two rows they throw movie props at you!

One night my partner ran out to a shop, and he swears that they had one of these props taped up behind the cash register with a sign telling the cashiers to watch out for "counterfeit bills," lol. 

SUCH a good play.

Afterwards, the big kid and I stayed to stagedoor Two Strangers, while the little kid and my partner ran back to the hotel for her copy of Six of Crows, then hopped across the street to stagedoor Hadestown, because IYKYK!

Alas, Jack Wolfe didn't appear (although they did get to see Kurt Elling!)--

--but both Sam Tutty and Phoenix Best came out to the Two Strangers stagedoor, so the big kid and I got signed playbills. I told Sam Tutty that this was the big kid's first Broadway show, and he told her that this was his first Broadway show, too, which was pretty adorable.

Also VERY modest, because he's genuinely West End famous and this is simply his first time on this side of the Atlantic.

I wonder if he ever hangs out with the other genuinely West End famous actor who works across the street?

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!