April 2024

Return to The Big Apple
Given Grandma’s health situation, our long-planned NYC trip was TBD until almost the very last minute — but in the end, she seemed better enough that we would be able to make it happen. And so, we were off to the East Coast for the first time since 2005! We took a morning flight out of SFO, which meant leaving our house in the predawn. When we opened the back hatch of the Highlander to get our luggage out, R’s carry-on tipped over and some stuff fell out; he discovered on the flight that his airpods were missing, so either they fell out and we didn’t see them, or he’d left them at home. Despite that slight mishap, the flight went well and we got to Laguardia without further incident, then took an hourlong cab ride to our hotel on Central Park South (free through Marriott Bonvoy points — not a part of town we’d spent a lot of time in as students, lol). The time difference was against us, so it was pretty late in the day by the time we settled in; we wandered out in search of food, found a great little place with amazing wood-fired pizza, and then turned in for the night. 

The next day, a Sunday, we kicked off with (real, actual) bagels — now the kids know what we mean when we say bagels — and visited my favorite building in the world, the Empire State Building. I got tickets to the 102nd floor, which I’d never been able to do before, and it was as amazing as I thought it would be. Then we wandered back uptown, exploring as we went: Grand Central Station, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the New York Public Library, and whatever else caught our eye. 

On Monday, we all accompanied Annika on an official campus group tour of Columbia (led by the kind of blue-flame young woman we probably would not have been friends with back in the day, ha!). We fit in breakfast at Tom’s Diner (“We didn’t say it was good, just that it was perfect”), some shopping in the school bookstore, and lunch at Koronet Pizza (Lukas took a pic of a slice that was as long as his arm) in addition to the tour, before finding a spot on the very crowded steps (in front of Low Library) to watch the eclipse; NYC wasn’t in the path of totality, but it did get to a very eerie 92% coverage, so the whole thing was really cool (I could’ve made a couple hundred bucks selling my extra eclipse glasses, which I’d bought months ago for the occasion). That evening, we went down to Chelsea/Meatpacking district to meet Tony and Tara for dinner, which was awesome but we forgot to take pics, ugh. 

The next day, our planned trip to Ellis Island failed (there was a three-hour line, despite our timed-entry tickets), so we did some wandering around lower Manhattan, including Fraunces Tavern (which had a cool little museum upstairs). After making our way as far as the Village, we had dinner at a restaurant called Rubirosa, which was an absolute culinary highlight of the trip — pastas and wood-fired pizzas, and the best desserts we had anyplace (ugh, the olive oil cake I ordered … I miss it!). 

In the following days, we did some more walking around the East and West Villages, spent time at the Strand and exploring what NYU calls a campus (including a visit to the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, which had a very interesting memorial display), eating more pizza, bagels, and cannoli, and strolling the southern section of Central Park. We went out for dinner in the Theater District (oysters were a priority for Annika) and then saw Hamilton at the Richard Rodgers Theater — what a great experience to see it live, after all the times we’ve seen the filmed one with the original cast! We spent a day each at the American Museum of Natural History (starting with the dinosaurs — we have our priorities) and the Met — you could spend the whole day every day of your trip there and still not see it all, it was amazing. We had dinner with our friend Aaron and his wife Kiera — we still think of him as “the kid,” because he was a freshman when I was a senior; the man’s 47 years old, lol. The last day, we walked the High Line — another highlight, and one that didn’t exist the last time we were there — and met our college friend Alex Villari and his wife Amy at the Whitney; she is CFO of the Whitney, so we got free tickets and the insider tour, which was super cool. 

Our way home was a bit rough — a fairly leisurely morning having breakfast and packing up, then the flight was fine … until the 2x aborted landing at SFO, an announcement that we were going to SJC instead, then actually landing at OAK and being given a Lyft ride back to SFO where our car was. And then an airport miracle: R.’s AirPods were on the back of our car!!! and they worked just fine and were unharmed! Totally redeemed the flight. 

Throughout the trip, the kids were having a great time — we had worried they might not like the vibe, the crowds, the unglamorous subways, but they loved it! They actually really liked the subway (something about the freedom of movement, I think, not having to rely on cars), and soaked up the museum stuff, were adventurous eaters, paid attention to the art and history and architecture, put up with our many stories of back in the day, etc. We had fabulous weather — chilly, for the most part, and occasionally rainy (which our San Jose eyes were hungry for), with spells of almost-warm sunshine to break it up. And now they both want to go to Columbia! heh. Altogether a really wonderful adventure, which I hope we don’t wait 19 years to do again. 

Potpourri, aka there were three other weeks of April
—AP stuff: Annika went in to school on a Saturday to take a practice AP World History test, on which she got a 4 — she wanted a 5, but I think nobody got a 5, so … anyway, it bodes well for the official test in a few weeks.
—Driving: Newly permitted, Annika started driving us to school — she can’t legally drive with anyone under 18 in the car, so I would drive Lukas to the rendezvous point in front of Owen’s house, then she and I would switch and she’d take us the rest of the way to Pioneer. It was really kind of freaky, but she did well!
—Badminton: With R. spending every evening taking care of Grandma, Lukas was my badminton buddy for Annika’s games. We developed some fannish enmity toward some of those other teams, I tell you whut.