NEW YORK CITY DAY 2: KATZ'S, HAMILTON, AND JAVA INDONESIAN

 February 15, 2020

By mid-February, winter is almost over in Southern California, so it was hard to face a day that only made it to 26° by noon and reached a high of 31° in the afternoon.

Andrew had to work, so we were on our own until evening. We desperately needed to catch up on sleep, having slept on the plane the previous night and then spending a very active day in NYC ending with a late night at the theater, so we slept in and got out of the hotel by about 10:15 AM. We had theater tickets for a 2:00 matinee, so we decided to eat lunch and then head to Broadway.

When we visited New York in January 2018, Andrew introduced us to Katz's Delicatessen. We thought we could get a quick bite to eat there, so we took an Uber from the hotel to the East Village. 

We underestimated the Saturday crowd. The line stretched from the counter to the door . . . 

. . . and a solid block further outside.

NEW YORK CITY DAY 1: DUMPLING GALAXY, THE SCULPTURE CENTER, MOMA PS1, AND TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD ON BROADWAY

February 14, 2020

In February 2020, about a month before the Covid outbreak in the United States, we flew to New York City for our sixth visit. We had two main purposes for the trip. First and foremost, we wanted to see an art show in which our son had a major piece of work. Second, Bob had given me tickets to Hamilton on Broadway for Christmas (and after Christmas we also picked up tickets for To Kill a Mockingbird on Broadway).

We took a JetBlue red-eye flight, which is our standard method of travel to NYC, and made our way to our hotel in Queens, where we dropped off our luggage and showered. We met up with Andrew and set out to find some lunch in one of our favorite NYC neighborhoods: Flushing (the real Chinatown), which Andrew had introduced us to when we visited in August 2018.

On our way to lunch, we peaked inside the Flushing Post Office, completed in 1934, the middle of the Great Depression. The murals were painted by Vincent Aderente, an Italian-American muralist.

We had lunch at a place Andrew recommended named Dumpling Galaxy. New York Magazine calls it Flushing's best restaurant. It is located on the upper level of a shopping mall full of Chinese stores.

Just looking at the menu was worth the visit. So many yummy options!