Erci and I went to New York City for a long weekend of medieval exhibits at various museums with other members of La Belle Compagnie.
Trip details and photos after the fold…
We both worked on Thursday. I work in Herndon, and my boss dropped me off at Herndon/Monroe Park & Ride, I caught Fairfax Connector bus 950 to West Falls Church, picked Metro-Rail to Union Station. Her workplace is in Chinatown and it was a short Metro ride to meet me at Union Station.
We ate a surprisingly good dinner at East Street Cafe (top floor of Union Station) that seemed to specialize on Thai and Filipino cuisine, so Erci had very good pancit noodles and I had respectable chicken with basil.
Amtrak does not check luggage for Acela Express to New York, so we kept our bags with us, which I preferred anyway, as my bigger bag is on wheels and makes moving things easy. It’s a Japanese bag that stands on one end on wheels and is easy to turn and move even when other bags are loaded on top of it.
The Acela is nice to ride. It is certainly no Japanese or French bullet train, but it is comfortable, and much more spacious than airline seats. There are few security hassles, much wider seats, ordinary 110v alternating current for powering devices, it is much quieter than the airlines (though there is the steady rumble of the tracks and air-conditioning). You can walk around quite freely. We happened to be lucky and the train was not crowded and we had a table booth of four seats to ourselves.
Once in Penn Station (NYC) we were greeted with very warm and humid air and lots of noise and confusion, but we figured out how to catch the A train (or it may have been a C train) one stop to 42nd street and 8th avenue, and came out the 43rd street exit across the street from our hotel. The surface temperature was much cooler, and the Westin Times Square seemed like paradise stepping in from the noisy, crowded streets of Manhattan.
Our room was spacious and immaculately clean with all the modern conveniences, even if it was simply decorated. Internet access in the room is an insulting $14.95/night; when will the hotels learn to stop insulting their guests? Around the corner were several internet hot-spots for more affordable rates and metered wi-fi access was available on the lower floors for better rates but did not reach the 10th floor.
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Friday morning we snagged a very good and astonishingly cheap breakfast at Villa Pizza (8th avenue and 42nd street diagonally across from the Port Authority). Interesting aside, the giant video screen at the Port Authority bus depot was displaying a Windows error. We walked around Times Square a bit and then caught a cab up to Mobia where we met Deb and Steve. |
Mobia is a biblical library that is mostly not open to the public, so cabbies do not know the location. It sits at 61st and Broadway near Columbus Circle (SW corner of Central Park). It happened to have a traveling exhibit of “Realms of Faith: Medieval Art from the Walters Art Museum,” which is the reason we visited Mobia.
Sadly, Mobia allows no photography at all, and they had no pictures nor catalogs of the Walters Art artifacts we saw.
Steve noticed that one of 3 medieval pyx had not only a hinged lid, but a second hinged lid on top of the main lid. Very interesting and intricate design on this mid 14th century French artifact. We noticed several hexagonal motifs first on liturgical chalices and on bishops’ croziers. There were several gorgeous 14th century Byzantine ivories and cameos. The gothic ivory diptych was out and presented excellently allowing very close perusal of it’s scenes.
| We walked along the South edge of Central Park past the Apple store on 5th Avenue that is beautiful, but it is also surrounded by a very long line of people waiting to get the new iPhone 3G. We shopped briefly at FAO Schwarz toy store and snagged a quick lunch at Pop Burger. Pop Burger is really a pop-music appreciation hall that happens to serve burgers, fries, and canned sodas and beer; avoid if you really want a good burger. We caught the 6 train to 33rd to get close to the Morgan Library, shopped for shoes and yarn while walking to the Morgan where we met up with Tom. |  |
Wow! We hit temporary exhibit jackpot at the Morgan. Wow.
“Illuminating the Medieval Hunt” was the most compelling temporary exhibit and it alone is worth a trip to New York to see. This particular copy of the Le Livre de la chasse is dated to 1407, which is earlier than either of the mass produced Gaston Phoebus facsimiles we already have. It had been unbound for a limited run facsimile, and we could see one side of each page up close with some well written additional museum detail. Some of the fun discoveries from the museum data plaques:
- Beagles did not exist in the medieval era, though there are hounds that look similar in appearance though not scale.
- A professional Huntsman should begin training as a seven year old “page of hounds” to get started on his career as a hunstman.
- May is the month of hawking.
- There are a few, non-typical, early codpieces clearly depicted in this 1407 manuscript!
- Most of the side swords worn by the gentry on the hunt were suspended from over one should style baldrics rather than sword belts.
Bad news, photography was not allowed at all.
Fantastic news, the exhibit has an online version, in staggeringly fine detail, all pages displayed are available for free on the internet! Go visit the online exhibit to see the details.
The other exhibits at the Morgan are “Three Gutenberg Bibles” and “The Prayer Book of Claude de France.” Both exhibits are small but beautiful.
We shopped the bead district a little, then Tom went off to find friends while Deb and Steve took us to Hill Country for some surprisingly convincing Texas BBQ. The food was good, they had bottled coke with real cane sugar, and we smelled like hickory smoke when we walked out. In fact, we still smelled like smoke after another hot and humid subway ride and we showered before having excellent martinis in Bar 10 at our hotel.
Saturday:
We started with a quick breakfast at the EuroPan underneath our hotel, which was very crowded and cheap, though not as cheap nor good as the Villa Pizza a few doors down 8th Avenue.
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We met Deb, Steve, Tom, and Will at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and hit jackpot again this time in their standing exhibit of gothic ivories and leather cases in the medieval treasury. I do not recall seeing this many all together the last time we came to the Met; so the displays have probably been improved. The “Medieval and Renaissance Treasures from the Victoria and Albert Museum” exhibit was very small, and once again no photography was allowed of the visiting exhibits. |
Lunch in the Met’s cafe is vastly improved over previous visits; still captive audience markup, but at least the food is very good now. Several of us had very good sushi.
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We dragged through the South Asian galleries to see the Reinstallation of the South Asia Galleries Gandhara, Mathura, Andhra and Gupta Sculpture and then over to see Radiance from the Rain Forest: Featherwork in Ancient Peru. We picked up copies of The Unicorn Tapestries in The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Devil’s Broker at the Met’s museum store. |
We traveled in separate groups to Deb and Steve’s for dinner, La Belle discussion and to meet Jessica. We enjoyed birthday cake for Deb (an evening early) and it was very rich and very good, more like a fudge than a cake. Everyone liked the food, and I found a macaroni salad I will eat – it was yogurt based rather than using mayonnaise and it was delicious. Beans and garlic were particularly yummy too, and so was lamb.
Erci was very tired, but I was still excited to be in the city so Tom and I walked around Times Square a bit and shared a night-cap at the gorgeous Brasserie44 that is the lounge for the Royalton New York Hotel where Tom decided to stay. The lounge has been redone since the website, and looks very different, very dark and glamorous now, see the Royalton New York Hotel’s site for pictures.
Sunday:
| Several La Belle members had a case of life hit them and could not come into New York as they’d planned to continue the chevauchée on Manhattan’s Museums, so Tom met us at our hotel and we started the day with breakfast at Villa Pizza again (man, this is an incredible bargain). Erci was determined to get the new iPhone 3G so we went to the 5th Avenue Apple store again and she got in the long line for iPhone buyers. We discovered that there was no line to get into the store and shop for other things, so Tom and I explored the store itself, which is beautiful but very crowded because of the iPhone hype; and then started our shopping trek while leaving Erci standing in line for the iPhone. |  |
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On 61st we ran into New York’s celebration of Bastille Day, and a few blocks after leaving that we went through the International street fair. We snagged an Espirit messenger bag for Tom, and did some more 5th avenue shopping and walked through St Patrick’s Cathedral (which is worth seeing during mass as it is very different when full of people than when empty). We saw the public areas of Rockefellercenter Center with lots of Art-Deco designs, and the Fuller Building with it’s art-deco facade. |
| We met Erci and her new iPhone at Kellari Taverna on 44th street near 5th Avenue for excellent Greek food and parted company with Tom who was going to Queens and then Long Island to visit armorers for commissions. Erci and I snagged a replacement messenger/laptop bag for me and a new purse for her at Fossil. Then Erci had to focus on homework while I did another walk-about Times Square and Midtown West just to gawk and people-watch. We met up with Tom again for cocktails at Brasserie44, which has a tequila based cocktail called Lunacy that is amazing, then walked over to Havana Central (46th near 7th) for really good Cuban food and perhaps the hottest hostess in town. |  |
Monday:
One last breakfast at Villa Pizza, packing, checkout, and Penn Station to catch Acela back home. The Acela lounge is a quiet refuge from the hustle and bustle of Penn station. We snagged wraps and chips from Zaro in Penn Station to eat on the train, and enjoyed another ride where I wrote most of this posting.
From Union Station (DC) we caught Metro-rail to West Falls Church, and the Fairfax Connector 980 Bus to Herndon-Monroe Park and Ride where my boss picked us up to take us to my car at work.
Teh Kittehs were mad we’d left them but glad we are home. Now we do laundry and arrange package pickup of UPS deliveries that only show up when you are away.
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