New York for the Holidays

"Miracle on 34th Street" cemented scenes of New York with the Christmas season in my mind as a young boy, and the movies continued to reinforce those images through the years.

This year, Julie and I had several great reasons to test New York Holiday Hospitality for ourselves.

Our youngest daughter Amy re-located to New York after graduating from UConn, and she now shares an historic Hamilton Heights 4-bedroom apartment with three friends.  She has a view of the Hudson River from her small bedroom, and it is a short walk away from both a subway station and Subway Sandwiches on Broadway.  We didn't visit their "How I Met Your Mother" haunt, Harlem Public, but we did have breakfast at the nearby McDonald's when we arrived and at Dunkin' Donuts, where they have surprisingly good breakfast sandwiches, the next morning.

Our oldest daughter Gina has worked at Columbia University for several years, and she and her husband Laszlo live in Washington Heights with Emma, our star granddaughter.  Laszlo's parents Z and Ria also live with them, with Ria watching Emma full time to allow Laszlo, a teacher, as well as Gina to pursue their full-time careers.  They live in a modern apartment which includes a guest room with comfortable beds that allowed us to sleep soundly during out stay. 

For our first night, however, we booked a room at Hotel Newton, a sensibly priced Uptown Manhattan property.  We were met by a doorman before enterring the small but elegant lobby.  The desk clerk allowed us to check in early, and our room was very nice by New York Standards at a price under $300 per night.  If you're cruising from the Big Apple, this could be a good choice.

After spending the morning at Amy's place and the afternoon with Emma at Gina's place, we picked up Amy from the office of Curbed National where she works and headed to Nai Tapas Bar in the East Village for a tapas and sangria dinner. Because Gina had a meeting until 6 and Laszlo wanted to be home to tuck Emma into bed, they were a tag team, but we had a nice time in this restaurant that felt more like Barcelona than New York.  There's a flamenco show that starts at 8:30, but we only watched a few minutes before calling it a night and walking back to the subway.

Most of the time of our stay, we hung around Gina's place, where we ate tacos, played Scrabble and were entertained by Emma.  A highlight was making a gingerbread village, which turned out as intricately detailed as the ones made by a dentist Amy wrote about recently...well maybe not quite that good.



On Saturday, we took the subway to join the holiday hustle and bustle of movie-fame firsthand.  Walking past the windows on Fifth Avenue, however, proved to be more dodging other pedestrians on over-packed sidewalks than taking time to enjoy the decorations, although there were some cool graphics on what looked like chalk boards at one store that caught my eye as we raced by.

At the Winter Garden of the American Express Building, we saw Santa Claus and took time to linger, soaking in the scenery.  We were able to look over at the new World Trade Center being built on the site of the infamous 9/11 site.  A guided group of appropriately serious European tourists, still contemplating the trajedy of the Twin Towers Terrorism that struck New York 11 years ago, walked passed us, and Emma greeted them with a cheerful, "Happy Holidays People!" 

We took the subway to Grand Central Station, where we learned budget cutbacks had scuttled their traditional laser light show on the always impressive ceiling of that famous structure, and then walked to 30 Rock, home of NBC Studios, the ice skating rink that Donald Trump revitalized after the government's failed attempt, and, of course, the huge Christmas tree.

As always, the time flew by, and after eating delicious fruitcake that Gina and Amy had made as their traditional annual project (in honor of my mother Mary who laid the groundwork) and opening presents on Sunday, we headed to JFK Airport in a taxi.  This turned out to be something of an adventure, as the English-as-a-second-language driver didn't know where the United terminal was located and apparently couldn't read the signs.  We were helping him decypher the directions, which admittedly were very confusing, and eventually we wound our way through the maze.  We had another unique experience getting through security using only emailed boarding passes on Julie's iPhone (which kept autocorrecting the position of the scan code into an incoreect position), because the United kiosks were all shut down.  It was a good reminder to print out boarding passes before going to the airport.

We enjoyed a wonderful holiday trip.