NYC Girls Trip

This is a journal of a mother daughter trip to New York City, a kind of a coming of age trip for her 13th birthday. We arrived in NYC and checked in the Dream Hotel which is conveniently located at 55th St and 7th Ave. The rooms are small as are all NYC hotel rooms, but this hotel has been recently renovated and the beds are comfortable with nice linens. Dreamy blue lights illuminate the inside of the glass topped desk and underneath the bed. The hotel offers complimentary meditation and yoga in their Deepak Chopra Center. I was able to get quite a discount on the room rate through Travelocity.com about a month before the date of the trip. The first place we went was the MOMA where we saw works by Cezanne, Chagal, Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, Van Gogh, Dali, Jasper Johns, Matisse, Picasso, Rauchenberg, Monet, Warhol and Serat just to name a few. My daughter was especially taken with a tongue in cheek painting called "OOF" which you can see on our photos. I could have stayed an hour in front of Monet's Water Lilies. There is a special exhibit of massive metal sculpture, which was intimidating and undulating, with smooth curvy surfaces. The sculpture begs to be touched and I satisfied myself with walking close to the walls feeling the presence of the piece going in and out of the "rooms" made of metal walls. Another exhibit was a wall of drawings by Dan Perjovschi which included political and social satire in doodle form. We spent quite a bit of time viewing this exhibit. Dinner at Tony's was homey and reasonable, with huge portions which they recommend serving family style. We had Tony's salad of Arugula, Sweet ripe Tomatoes, Onion and a balsamic vinaigrette along with a garlicky Linguine with Clam Sauce. Dessert was Tortufo with Mango, Passionfruit and Raspberry Sorbets drizzled with White Chocolate. George, our waiter, was charming and attentive. We loved the place. Times Square is as I remembered it from a trip 10 years ago, busy, bustling and wild, but very clean and safe, even at midnight. We got lost (or is that creative navigation?) going to the Empire State Building and were able to walk through Grand Central Station and see the Chrysler Building, a nice surprise which we had not planned. If you have to see the Empire State Building, by all means go, but the waiting in line for the the next line to wait for the line for the express elevator, which took us to another line for the elevator to go 6 more floors tried my patience level. However, we did note on Thursday, that the lines during the day go out the front doors of the building so night is definitely better. Another benefit of our "creative navigation" resulted in our stumbling upon a man proposing to a woman at the top of the Empire State Building. It was very emotional for the couple and the passersby. Had we not been lost we would have missed quite a touching scene.