I know we’ve been a little lax with the blog, but no sooner did we get settled in Washington, D.C., than we were packing again for a short side jaunt to NY. Yay! We do love New York. What’s not to love?

Anyway, we haven’t done much in the way of exploring DC since our main goal was to see our beautiful, smart, adorable granddaughter. We are staying in Petworth, which is in northwest DC. A couple of short wanders have revealed many Latino restaurants we’ve yet to try, but are eager to. We are also close to the Metro, which makes the neighborhood more desirable to us since we can get around without driving. More on Petworth and DC when we have a chance to explore.

And then we were off to NY.

A sidebar on train travel

We took Amtrak from Union Station to Penn Station, which is great because train stations are in the middle of cities and airports are not. We were able to walk to our hotel; however, I would swear that the train made as much lateral movement as forward motion. Good thing Steven had taken the train not long ago and he warned me to wear my motion-sickness patch. The trains in Europe are a lot smoother — and faster.

We are staying in Murray Hill at the Kitano, which is a lovely hotel except that it is Japanese and the Japanese are still very Covid-nervous so all the restaurants and the jazz bar are closed. Oh well. It’s not like we were going to eat here, but jazz would have been nice.

Why wouldn’t we eat at the hotel? you ask. Because there was pizza to be had for lunch when we arrived and bagels to munch for breakfast.

Saturday we did what we usually do and took a death march from 38th up through Central Park and all the way to 94th Street. Then, we decided we wanted ice cream. I had seen vegan soft serve on 30th, so down we went. We hiked about 12 miles, but it was a beautiful day and we didn’t have any plans.

That evening, we met Steven’s aunt and uncle (Hi Uncle David) at a very delicious Italian restaurant uptown, Sistina. The food was amazing and we always enjoy their company. Because we hadn’t gotten enough exercise, we walked back (just another couple of miles).

Sunday was drizzly, so we decided to see “Nope.” Of course, we walked to the theater, enjoyed the movie (good, not great) and walked back. We hadn’t had any Chinese food, so we thought, “Why not walk to Chinatown?” Of course! On the way, we passed McSorley’s, which was teeming with police and firefighters commemorating 9/11. (New York wasn’t as somber as I expected. We saw a parade on Saturday, which we thought was probably a commemoration and was full of union workers, but we weren’t downtown, so I am sure there was more going on there).

We stopped at a bar around the corner from McSorley’s called Cooper’s in the East Village for a drink and to watch the New York Giants (who, despite their best efforts, managed to win). We ended up having a great chat with a couple of firefighters and a niece of one of them. Before we knew it, it was after 8. We thought, “What the heck, we’ll keep walking to Chinatown,” … but it was raining and we were hungry, so we hopped the subway and had Chinese at Chili. around the block from the hotel. All’s well that ends well.

Monday was a work day followed by the Mets game (We had 4th row seats right behind the Mets’ dugout!). Man do I hate the Cubs! 5-2 sounds closer than it was. Bases loaded twice and nothing to show for it. Sitting next to their fans at Citi Field was worse! Even worse, they weren’t even from Chicago, but Utah of all places. But, Citi Field is fabulous and I can’t wait to go back. Let’s go Mets!