We decided to take a break in the Big Apple, so we spent three days tooling around the city. We arrived on a Wednesday afternoon; I was reading Once in Golconda, a history of Wall Street starting with the bombing of 23 Wall Street in 1919 and ending with the fall of Richard Whitney in 1938. We stayed at the Best Western President on 48th between 7th and 8th Avenues. We walked up Broadway to 57th Street and over to 5th Avenue, shopping along the way. We had dinner at Shelley’s New York, a really fancy (and good) restaurant on 57th Street. We walked back down 7th Avenue.

Thursday we went to the Whitney and walked through the Biennial (we saw the two pieces in the show from one of Aviva’s former professor, Peter Williams). We then went to the Frick and finally the Jewish Museum. We ate at a little Szechuan restaurant on 9th Avenue.

The Whitney Museum	The Jewish Museum

On Friday I finished Once in Golconda and started Developing the Leader Within You by John C. Maxwell. This book is about leadership and the things a good leader should do inside and outside. We took the subway to Chelsea and visited a few galleries, including the New Museum. Then we took a cab down to Soho, which was really commercial; we stopped at a Cyber-Cafe on Layfayette, and then walked through Soho and south to Chinatown, which is very large and busy. We walked north to Little Italy and had dinner at a nice Italian restaurant, Il Cortile at 125 Mulberry Street. After a nice gellato we cabbed back to the hotel.

A street in Little Italy	A cool window in Little Italy

Saturday was museum day – we took the subway up to the Cloisters, which is really nice. Its the part of the Met that houses the medieval collection. Then we subwayed and cabbed over to the Met and saw the rest of the medieval collection and then the paintings and the ancient collection. We met an old friend of Aviva’s for dinner at Park Avalon on Park Avenue; we had a great time reminiscing.

The Cloisters	The courtyard in the Cloisters
Sculpture of a monk’s head	A basalt head from Egypt

On Sunday we flew out – we waited over an hour in the plane to take off due to bad weather between NYC and Chicago.

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