Bye-bye New York!

Thursday - our last day in the city. To our surprise it has become warm again and no coat was needed. We packed our luggage efficiently to not succeed the weight limit and left the house for a last culinary adventure at Maki-Maki, a new Japanese restaurant closeby theater district and Rockefeller Center. It's been just a hole in the wall, but they had a very efficient "assembly line" for the rolls (cut and handrolls) they exclusively offer. No wonder, Kevin, the owner, was an engineer and knows how it can be done effecively. Fresh fish and seafood with avocado or sauces wrapped in rice and rolled or put into a cone-like shape. It's been fun to watch and delicious to eat.

But,,, best thing this day was a 1.20x1,50 m (4x5 ft.) large laminated subway map, which I got for free. In one of the stations MTA workers were taking down old maps and I asked one of them whether they throw them away and he gladly gave it to me. What a finding! Made our day and, surprise!, didn't even have problems to bring it on the plane.

After lunch, we went back to our friends' place to pick up our luggage. Being a little anxious about security because of the terrorist attack a couple of days before, we left pretty early, around 1 pm, to arrive at Newark Airport at about 3 pm. Two hours for the trip is a good time considering the three trains we had to take. Departure was at 6:20 pm and once we were in the air we got a great last view of NYC from above (pic). The plane was full, but flight time was only 7 hours and we arrived half an hour earlier. Didn't sleep a single minute. Another two hours in total to get from MUC to our home - all worked out perfectly fine today.

Considering the 1,150 miles (1840 km) driven in one week in Upstate New York and the many, many miles walked and spent on subways in NYC – no wonder, that we are really tired and exhausted now. At least the weather in Germany is o.k., partly sunny and not too cold today, so that we went for a walk to the garden in the afternoon to get some fresh air and to not fall asleep too early.

NYC revisited

Monday was not our day. Our long-planned Staten Island tour was a no-show. We had left the house early to get to the southern tip of Manhattan and catch the ferry to Staten Island. But, nobody showed up for the promised half-day tour and the office of "The Wheel" - a humongous project including a huge Ferris Wheel and a shopping/entertainment complex - was closed. We have heard about problems with the contractor there, but not quite sure yet what's going on.

Well, we did a lot of other things instead, e.g., we walked The Highline again - a green promenade on the elevated tracks of a former railroad, with artwork, fantastic architecture, stages and benches and plants grew immensely – and inspected the crazy-growing, booming Hudson Yards area, a railroad hub. Wondering, who can afford all the apartments coming up there... Chinese? Arabs? In any case, not your regular New Yorker!

On Monday evening, we took the subway to our previous long-time "home from home", to the Strange Dog Inn in Brooklyn's Midwood section, and had dinner with our friends Paula & Gail & BB (Benny, a huge Australian Shepherd), with Dom and the two cats.

Chinatown (picture on the left), the Lower East Side, the Bowery and the Broadway (probably the best area to go shopping) - even these neighborhoods are progressively changing, old shops and restaurants substituted by modern chain stores.

The old Essex Street Market, a city market hall from the 1940ies will soon move to a newly built highrise, the LES shows almost no Jewish or German reminiscense anymore, with the exception of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum (pic below, left), the Broadway gets more and more chain stores (besides the old souvenir vendors like the one on the pic above), just Chinatown didn't change that much. Around the famous Flatiron Building (pic below, right) a new neighborhood, "NoMad", is up & coming, things are definitely changing.

Oct. 31 was Halloween and besides the big parade in the evening - which we missed because of a hockey game (Rangers : Las Vegas) in the Madison Square Garden – there was a kids' parade going on in the afternoon on Washington Square, where at the same time one of a series of artworks of Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei – "Good Fences make Good Neighbors" – was installed in the arch. We spent some time in the sun and watched the kids in their elaborate costumes, while at the same time, about 1,5 mi. away, a crazy truck driver murdered 8 people on the promenade along the Hudson River. We heard the sirens and saw the police cars and ambulances without knowing first what's going on.

Before the hockey game we spent part of the evening with our friends in a new Indian Restaurant called "aRoqa" in Chelsea and the food was terrific! Spicy, but not over-spiced, each dish very different in taste, from crabcake to duck and vegetarian dishes. Cocktails from the bar (pic) were fantastic, too.

Also, we went shopping - though, not excessively: Bought a bag full of books at Strand's, our favorite bookstore with new AND used books, and some clothing at Uniqlo (pic), a Japanese department store, which we like. Also, we stopped for another visit at Union Square Market - the presentation as well as the variety of goods is just amazing.

Farewell to Upstate New York

On first Sunday morning stop, before heading south, was the Vanderbilt Mansion, neighboring FDR's home in Hyde Park. Unfortunately, it was under renovation and surrounded by scaffolding on the outside (the pic isn't my own one therefore) and it had wrapped furniture on the inside.

Nevertheless, this park ranger with a Greek name did an amazing job in explaining the history of the Vanderbilt family and the way society – "Nouveau Riche" and "Old Money" – worked at the time. This was the home of one of many grandsons of the famous railroad patriarch Commodore Vanderbilt, Frederick Vanderbilt and his wife Louise. They lived here from 1896-1938, not year around, but only a couple of months in the spring and fall. Besides the fancy interior with all luxury imaginable, the estate offers spectacular scenic views of the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains that inspired the Hudson River School of Art.

Rain was pouring down in buckets when we left the house and it rained hard all day long. We made a brief stop in Beacon, an artsy community with a quaint main street and glimpsed into the Hudson Beach Glass Company, before we headed out towards NYC. Though it was only a 100 mi-drive from Poughkeepsie, it took forever. We didn't want to drive on the hectic toll roads, so, we chose backroads (would have been a fantastic drive through the Hudson River Valley without rain!), and, from Yonkers we drove on Broadway/Hwy. 9 (the same famous Broadway as in NYC - one of the longest roads in the world!), through the Bronx, over the Harlem River into Inwood, Washington Heights to Harlem. It was stop&go, since traffic was dense on this Sunday afternoon and the driving style of the New Yorkers is horrible, especially in the rain: parking second row, cruising slowly and looking for parking, cutting into lanes, taxi cabs, pedestrians, you name it. It was no fun at all, especially in this hard rain, with real poor visibility and flooded roads.

Well, eventually we made it and because of the rain dropped our luggage in Harlem, at Heidi's house, first. There is absolutely no parking, so we had to be quick to unload before we returned the car at Avis in Uptown. All sweaty and exhausted and wet afterwards, we arrived "home" at about 4:30 pm.

Since Monday we are back to exploring The City, NYC, walking instead of sitting in the car. Though, don't miss the car! The weather has improved again, but now the time of thin sweaters and t-shirts is over. Temps don't climb over 55 deg. F. anymore, but sun was out quite a bit. NYC photos will follow tonight, it's hard to catch up when days are soooo long.

From bark or vine to bottle

Warm and nice weather on Saturday. We were picked up shortly after 8 am for our first stop: the FDR Presidential Library. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, short "FDR", was the 32nd U.S. President (1933-1945) and the first one who introduced the custom of "Presidential Libraries" when he was still in office. Besides having been re-elected three times, he was a real character, an energetic "doer" and a people's man.

Most remarkable is, that he was paralyzed from the waist down because of polio, which he got when he was 39 years old, before his presidency. Since in the old times a physical handicap was considered a no-no in such a position, he sort of pretended to have overcome polio and with the help of heavy metal braces on his legs, a cane and an aide, he always walked a couple of steps at public appearances and hid his inability perfectly. Most people in America didn't know that he was paralyzed and that his legs were completely useless. In the house he used a wooden wheelchair and a dump elevator to hoist himself up to the upper floors pulling ropes.

The promenade, FDR used to exercise with his crutches, and his modestt gravesite in the rosegarden:



His wife, Eleanor, a distinct relative from another branch of the Roosevelt family, was a highly intelligent and personable First Lady, involved in human and civil rights, a writer and fighter for justice and FDR's best adviser.

Besides the Presidential Library and the Visitor Center there is the FDR House (pic), called "Springwood", owned and reigned by FDR's mother, Sara, open for tours. The mansion is surrounded by a huge park, plus a Rose Garden with the family grave sites. The exhibitions in the Library tell the story of the Roosevelt presidency beginning in the Great Depression and continuing through the New Deal and World War II. The Oval Office Desk and FDR's Ford Phaeton are to be seen and besides his merits during the presidency, topics like the deal with the "Japanese American Internment," the Holocaust, his Health, the Fireside Chats on radio, which he introduced, are dealt with.



Across the street from the FDR's estate: Hyde Park Brewing Company - our lunch stop after the highly interesting FDR Library. Sitting outside, on the patio in the sun, we enjoyed samplers of their German style beer, for which they are known, going well with Bratwurst and Knockwurst with Sauerkraut and "German Potato Salad".

It's been a little drive through the woods - beautiful in the sun - and, thankfully we didn't have to drive ourselves (without GPS a challenge!), to the Madava Farms/Crown Maple Estate in Dover Plains. They are famous for their gourmet maple syrup, using state-of-the-art production technology and extremely high purity standards. The sap (tree juice) used for the syrup comes from around 50,000 sugar and red maple trees on the grounds, which is, considering that it takes 40-50 gallons of sap to make a gallon of pure maple syrup, not too surprising. The method used is highly technical, with Reverse Osmosis to remove water and produce a concentrate, which is pumped into an „Evaporator“ and only quickly heated there before filtered twice and pumped into barrels for storage until bottling. Much different from the small sugarhouses we have seen in New Hampshire and Vermont in the past!

Millbrook Winery - horribly busy, city dwellers from NYC all over, visiting this apparently very popular winery with two large tasting rooms, wine and cheese room and a new balcony with great Catskill Mountain views. The winery is housed in a former dairy barn on a hilltop, surrounded by lakes. We got a regular tour and tasting there - after some waiting time - and got to know that besides wines (partly with grapes from California), the company also owns olive groves in Italy and produce their own olive oil.

Another highlight of the day: the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, the possibly most prestigious cooking school in the world. They have branches in San Antonio/TX and Napa/California which we have both visited before, plus a new one in Singapore. The campus alone, directly on the bench of the Hudson River (pic), all green and nicely manicured, and the main building, a former Jesuit college/monastery, are worth a visit! We got a tour through the different kitchens and halls by a very young student who wants to open a croissant bakery in NYC once he has accomplished his bachelor's degree (4 years). A year in this highly reputed college costs around $ 40,000, all included, especially gourmet meals, and most probably also a job after studies.





Not quite a CIA meal, but great prime rib, that's what we had afterwards in the "Shadows on the Hudson". The great views towards the river came for free, in addition. Back to the hotel a little after 8 pm, it's been a busy and interesting day in the Hudson Valley.