A few months ago, Dave and Kara mentioned that they had a wedding in New Jersey in July and wondered if we would want to meet up with them in New York. Intrigued with the prospect of seeing family and possibly a musical, we started researching and lobbying until we convinced Dave and Kara to join us for a matinee of Hadestown and whatever else we managed to fit in over two days.
We fit in a lot. We took the train up from DC and after a subway ride and a 10 block walk met up with Dave and Kara at our hotel where they had already checked in (membership has it's privileges). We dropped our stuff in their room and headed out for lunch followed by a quick stop at the waterfront before we could finally check into our room. While most of us were pretty exhausted from the heat and the travel, Allen was restless and managed to convince the rest of us to check out the MoMa. Allen was so inspired that he became a member (because membership has its privileges); meanwhile the kids were a bit more critical of the exhibits with the exception of what they interpreted as an homage to the Doctor Who "Snowman" episode.
After the MoMa, we headed out for a lovely dinner followed by a trek to get fancy gelato just off Broadway, which was deemed worth the extra steps (which totaled 21k for the day).
The next mornings the boys woke early in order to meet Dave and Kara and the hotel breakfast while Nora and I lingered (Nora wasn't a fan of Allen's snoring). After climbing 17 flights to collect us (and bring me coffee) we decided is was wiser to let sleeping Noras lie while the rest explored Central Park before I doubled back to get Nora and meet everyone for brunch.
Brunch was a delicious albeit loud affair which involved Fruity Pebble pancakes for Dave and a mojito mocktail for Nora. Afterwards we killed time at the M&M store before heading to the Walter Kerr Theater for the Sunday matinee.
While we had seen Hadestown at the Kennedy Center, the Broadway version was something else entirely, Ms Hermes was played by Tony award winner Lillias White, the original Broadway Eurydice (who announced she was leaving the production the day after we saw it) Eva Noblezada performed, and Orpheus was played by Tom Hewitt who as Owen mentioned repeatedly, both originated and survived the role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. The staging was also pretty amazing with the cast descending into Hadestown onstage instead of walking off to get there. The performances were incredible and Dave and Kara loved it too.
Afterwards, we convinced Dave and Kara to take the subway to the Little Island at Pier 55 in order to catch a free concert with cellist/guitarist and Beatles coverer, Agustin Uriburu. It started to sprinkle so we grabbed dinner and then took the High Line (and several additional midtown blocks) to finally make it to Kara's preferred destination, Milk Bar, where she was finally able to compare how her high altitude cornflake chocolate chip marshmallow cookie compared to the original (spoiler alert: they were very, very different). Having hit 23k steps that day, Dave and Kara opted to say their goodbyes and take an Uber back to the hotel while we forged ahead with the subway. This was a mistake: the heavens opened up while we were underground and we had to walk the 10 blocks back to the hotel via tsunami. All clothes (and more importantly, shoes) were soaked.
The next morning, Dave and Kara headed to the airport, I desperately tried to dry out everyone's footwear using the hotel hairdryer and Allen grabbed sustenance at the hotel breakfast bar. We then headed back to Central Park for some more bouldering and some lunch, before grabbing our stuff at the hotel and making our way back to Penn Station and eventually, DC.
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