Friday morning dawned cold and damp. Well, more than damp — it was raining. Bundled in scarves, coats and gloves, with umbrellas in hand, we walked to a nearby restaurant for coffee and our first NYC breakfast. Yes, there were bagels and lox. I said, there were bagels and lox; I didn’t say I ate any. Lox, that is. I did eat bagels.
We bought two day tickets for the sightseeing hop on – hop off double-decker bus and climbed aboard at 50th Street and 7th Avenue. We rode past Times Square, Madison Square Garden, the Empire State Building, and several museums until we neared Chinatown, Little Italy, Soho and Greenwich Village where we all hopped off.
Many of the ladies wanted to check out the the street vendors and meander through shops, but Robin and I were itching to move on down the road at a quicker pace, so we separated from the rest of the group. As we moved through Chinatown, that quicker pace proved to be my nemesis. I caught my toe on a storefront stoop and fell face first on the city sidewalk. I was okay, but did bump my knee and chin pretty hard and scraped up the back of my hand, leaving a bloody splotch on the sidewalk. We stopped into a small nearby pharmacy to buy some antiseptic, but the owners would not allow me to use the bathroom to wash the blood off. “Employees only. You can buy some bottled water to rinse your hand.” We moved on and found a Starbucks. One with no soap in the bathroom. Thoughts of septicemia danced through my head.
We walked from Chinatown to Little Italy and then circled around toward Soho and Greenwich Village, checking out shop windows and city architecture along the way. From there, we walked south to Ground Zero. When I was there with Glenda in 2005, there were memorial displays around the construction site, but that had all been moved inside a new Ground Zero Museum a block away, and there was a fence blocking our view of the work going on where the twin towers once stood. We paid appropriate homage to those who lost their lives on that terrible day, had a bowl of soup, and solemnly made our way back to a bus stop. We did not hop off again, but rode the bus north past the United Nations, Rockefeller Center and Central Park until we were back at our hotel.
After getting dressed up for the show, we walked to an Italian restaurant and had dinner before stepping over to the Gershwin Theater to see Wicked. This is my favorite Broadway show, and it was “Wonderful!” Fabulous music, amazing sets and a story that makes you rethink the Wizard of Oz and what made the Wicked Witch so wicked.
After the show was over, we met up with the rest of our group for a late night snack before returning to our hotel rooms for some much needed rest.