To wake up in a city that never sleeps, king of the hill, top of the heap – if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere….
We had booked the last flight of our tour a few months prior: Virgin Atlantic from JFK to London Heathrow. We hadn’t, however, got around to planning a great deal of what we were going to do during our final week. When an old friend Andrew suggested we stayed in his Brooklyn apartment, we jumped at the chance.
Feeling pretty groggy after our night flight from LAX, we arrived via Uber at Andrew’s apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Norman Avenue and had some great catchups and recommendations for local eateries along Manhattan Avenue. I think we made it to nearly all of them.
We headed out to a traditional diner across the street for breakfast. As the girls stared at the enormous pancakes in front of them (quick to learn that American food is supersized outside California), we realised it was Shrove Tuesday.
We spent the rest of the rainy afternoon at the Brooklyn’s Children’s Museum, founded in 1899, its the original museum designed specifically to educate kids and in 2008 became the first green museum in the city. It was quite a long journey south from Greenpoint, in a residential area, Crown Heights. (In my mind, Brooklyn is a relatively compact district just across the East River from Manhattan. I had underestimated it.) Sadly the museum felt a bit dated, but we made the most of it and had fun rearranging the greengrocers and meeting a sloth in a live show.
We made it back to spend some time with Andrew before he took a flight to the UK. For dinner we walked out for a pizza up the road at Fornino – a lovely atmospheric restaurant full of displays of Murano glass and enormous, delicious pizzas (including gluten free options and sides of artichokes and brussels sprouts). We went back there another night it was so good.
The girls daily diaries by this point in our trip had got quite far behind. So, considering how cold it was outside, we decided to start each day in quite a leisurely fashion, knocking off a few days at a time so we could be up to date before getting home.
An especially slow start came for a good reason on the 26 February – lots of presents to open as it was Joanna’s 5th birthday! We made it down the road to Frankels for a birthday bagel lunch before getting onto the subway to fulfil Joanna’s one birthday wish: to see the Statue of Liberty.
We boarded the Staten Island Ferry from Battery Park enjoying some rather misty views across the Hudson.
Joanna’s godmother Sonia had told us we must take the birthday girl to Magnolia Bakery for a sweet birthday treat, so we did – enjoying the bohemian feel of Greenwich Village and Blecker Street.
We ate them in the playground across the road, but it really was too cold for a long play. Boarding the subway again we enjoyed tunes from a Handpan busker. (Tom getting some tips for when he is reunited with his – which had been taken back to the UK with friend John, who we later found out had been a little surprised at the size of the pan Chef Tom had asked him to look after!). We got out at Bryant Park, watched some ice skating and had some mulled wine and hotdogs whilst listening to some live music. We took in the lights of Broadway and Times Square and met some familiar characters.
The girls thought we were heading back to the apartment when we took a detour – for a surprise evening outing to see the Lion King at the theatre.
It was a brilliant show, all of us blown away by the costumes and stage set, we had bought great seats on a balcony, with characters coming close to us and great sightlines of the musicians and main action on the stage.
Perhaps due to underestimating the size of Brooklyn, Tom and I did some really long runs that week – several half marathons completed.
Running over Brooklyn and Williamsburg Bridge gave spectacular views of Manhattan.
I went across to the World Trade Center one day and ran the whole length of Brooklyn to Prospect Park another, Tom making it across to Roosevelt Island. After the first couple of days of drizzle the weather had cleared, now faced with sunny blue skies but subzero temperatures.
Given the cold, art galleries and museums seemed a good idea – although getting between them was often a struggle. We got particularly frozen in Washington Square after visiting the Grey Art Gallery at NYU to see the Barjeel Art Foundation’s exhibition ‘Taking Shape’.
We then explored some galleries in the Lower East Side around the New Museum, particularly captivated by Walter De Maria installations ‘Earth Room’ and ‘Broken Kilometer’ from the Dia Art Foundation.
One afternoon was spent in the Met, with a tour from friend Marcie of exhibitions on the Sahara and Scientific Instruments, then exploring the main collection and striking some poses.
Another day we met more friends Cari Frisch and Sarah Kennedy at MoMA.
The girls enjoyed the Art Lab, a Donald Judd solo show and following the kids guide around the permanent collection.
We stayed until closing, only breaking for a late lunch at Xi’ian Chinese dumpling restaurant across the street.
A couple of times I went off to explore more art solo – visiting the newly opened Met Bauer to see the exhibition ‘Alien Property, Home is a Foreign Place’ and recent acquisitions in context.
Another afternoon I went to meet friend Lily Lyons at Intelligentsia café in the High Line Hotel and was amazed at the number of new gallery spaces in Chelsea, visiting the Pace Gallery, Gagosian, David Zwirner and more.
One evening I went out to Bushwick, Morgan Avenue to artist Kamrooz Aram’s studio for drinks and private view of his new work for upcoming show at Natur Morte, New Delhi.
On the 29th I went down to Williamsburg for a Leap Year party at the bar Tuffet, organised by Ben Davis, meeting a mix of arts journalists and enjoying some Negroni cocktails.
That evening, Tom and the girls took advantage of not needing to be gluten-free by having dinner of sausages and pretzels at BeerHall, another recommendation from Andrew.
We had a few must-do eatery experiences to tick off – one was Katz’s Deli for pastrami sandwiches with the best pickles.
We went down to DUMBO area to meet friend Pippa at the Time Out Market.
As it was a weekend it was busy but warm and had a good range of outlets. We went upstairs onto the terrace and felt some snowflakes on our tongues.
The girls had a ride on Jane’s Carousel, which has been in position since 1922, a bargain for $2 ride.
Our main foodie day came when we met our friend Marcie in her home district of Queens.
We met at MoMA PS1, first enjoying the James Turrell installation ‘Portal to the Sky’ and other artist interventions by Pipilotti Rist, and Cecily Brown – getting trapped in a stairwell!
It was the final day of the exhibition ‘Theatre of Operations – the Gulf Wars 1991-2011’ not that kid-friendly but with powerful work by Wafa Billal (who was there) Francis Alys, Thomas Hirschhorn, Ala Younis and others.
Food time: we went into Court Square subway and traveled out to Jackson Heights, Junction Boulevard marveling at the sheer volume of food stalls and eating at an incredible Mexican taqueria.
We went onto Corona (still something to laugh at back then) to visit the iconic Lemon Ice King – choosing cherry, watermelon and rainbow flavours.
A cold walk took us around Flushing Meadows, appreciating the place where the US Open tennis tournament takes place, seeing the space rockets from Men in Black and the New York Hall of Science.
Back at Greenpoint we had a fun evening at restaurant Sauvage on Lorimer Street, going home with some birthday balloons kindly given by a lady in the restaurant and cookies from a lady upstairs!
We appropriately had our last dinner at Tick Tock diner at Penn Station. There was some drama on the subway on the way back to Brooklyn as Joanna and Molly accidently knock into one another and Molly’s mouth started bleeding, as we were listening to a rather good busker playing the Saxophone.
The result was of course a wobbly tooth coming out, the tooth fairy finding us on the Egerton World Tour for the first time, on our last night.
Tom and I had some final games of Quirkle and Uno, which had been regular fixtures throughout our 8 months.
Our last day was a rainy slow one, packing up and buying some gifts, eating some final tacos at Calimexico and coffee and cake from Swedish coffee shop Konditori. It was time to head back to London and start a new Life with Mojo.
Life with MoJo 