One part travel blog. One part nerdy history lesson.

Day: October 15, 2021

Day 6 – Flushing, Queens and Jackson Heights

Today is the day of eating I have been waiting for all week. Ha Staying in midtown right off Times Square has its advantages, in that the 42nd Street port Authority Bus Terminal basically is the hub for almost every line of the subway in the city… and if you can’t get there from 42nd street, you walk south to 34th street and grab a train or subway from Penn Station, or you walk East and grab anything else at Grand Central. So, I wanted to get out of Manhattan and explore an area of “locals” so we took the 7 train as far out as we could take it, to Flushing.

Flushing is a very diverse melting-pot neighborhood with Chinese, Nepalese, Korean and other ethnicities all mixed in. The Main Street/Roosevelt Ave intersection in Flushing is the 3rd busiest intersection in New York! It’s a bustling place.

We had 20 subway stops out to Flushing, but it honestly only took about 35-40 minutes total. It seems like a crazy commute, but no worse that if I worked in Columbus while living where we live in Freetown. It’s 40 minutes to everything lol

Flushing is one of the 5 original Queens towns from when Queens county was established when the British took over the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in 1683. It has a bit of history.

Walking out from the subway station, you definitely had no doubt you had stepped into a very large Chinatown… but the pace was slower than Manhattan- people walked a little slower. It was busy and very “close” with awnings over the sidewalk, goods spread outside the store. But again, I’m drawn to this sort of community and network feel- not the modern sterile sort of shiny glass and elevators. Plus- the food in these places! You’d have to roll me down the sidewalk if I lived here. I might quite literally become one of those 600 lb women they have to knock the wall out to get her out of her apartment in a medical emergency! Lol

All of the shop signs in Chinese

We were headed to Asian Jewels, a Chinese dim sum house where they serve you from carts of steaming baskets of dumplings and small plates. This has been consistently rated as one of the best places for dim sum in New York, so the day was quite literally planned around this meal! Ha

Dim Sum started as small plates served to farmers and travelers along the Silk Road in tea houses as a means of serving some sort of food with the tea. Tea houses were sort of the pubs of the time and place. People gathered here for conversation and relaxing in the evenings after work or before settling in for the night. Dim Sum now is just a style of Chinese cuisine typically served for breakfast or lunch. Most places even in the US don’t serve dim sum after 3 or 4pm.

All of the Chinese waitresses LOVED Norah and kept commenting on how beautiful she was. To the point she was super embarrassed and quietly told me she wished they would stop. haha She’s definitely growing up and getting more self-aware. She had to perform in her school’s talent show last week and she said her hands were shaking because she was nervous. I don’t think this child has ever gotten nervous before.

The start of our spread. As you can see on the left, as you select off the cart, they mark your card depending on the price of each dish. We had pork buns, shrimp shumai, tripe, some sort of scallion dumpling.

After eating, we had quite a bit of a walk across to Flushing Meadows- Corona Park. It was needed. I needed to digest all that food.

This park was created for the 1939 World’s Fair. It was an ash dump until the 1930’s (featured as the Valley of Ashes in the Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald). Robert Moses, the great urban planner/public works creator around New York responsible for parks, highways, the Verrazano Bridge between Staten Island and Brooklyn, the Battery Tunnel, the Bronx Expressway and a lot of other great and controversial projects, led the creation of this park.

The park contains the Billie Jean King Tennis Center-which hosts the US Open Tennis tournament annually.

It contains Citi Field- the new stadium home of the New York Mets, after Shea Stadium was demolished in 2009.

It also hosted the 1964/1965 World’s Fair… which actually had a lot of impact on the world as we know it today, but you probably don’t realize.

Walt Disney consulted on designs and exhibits. The Its a Small World ride and song that we know was actually conceived and designed for the World’s Fair here! It ran here for 2 years, and was then repurposed into a ride at Disneyland theme park in California. Eventually copied and installed for Disney World in Florida.

The same with The Carousel of Progress, designed for the General Electric pavilion- Disney’s “most boring ride” to most people and kids- but one of my favorites. haha The carousel with animatronic people and animals and a theme song of “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” was designed to showcase technology and innovations and was cutting edge for its time. Sidenote: we got stuck on this ride a few years ago. We were stuck in the 1920s over and over and over and over. haha It was only like 15 minutes, but we definitely played that scene quite a few times before they shut the ride down. ha

Also, the concept of the metal seats on a conveyer belt used to usher people through rides originated here as they were expecting 70 million guests to come through the fair over 2 seasons. Disney eventually would use this concept in his parks for tons of rides.

Initially, Walt Disney wanted to use the Flushing Meadows site for his east coast park to recreate what had been so successful in California…but eventually, he purchased the swampland in Florida and made it into what it is today. It recreated the landscape and altered the American family dream to include a trip to Florida to visit this park.

The Unisphere was installed for the 1964/65 World’s Fair by US Steel
This column from an old Roman temple was gifted to New York by Jordan for the World’s Fair.
You may recognize these towers or the Unisphere from the Men In Black movie with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. The movie theorized that the world’s fair was a cover for the arrival of aliens to the planet and these towers were their spaceships lol
Spotted a friend off the side of the path. Just a big fat groundhog finding some food.

We visited the Queens museum which houses an amazingly huge miniature diorama of New York.

You walk all along the edge of the room to see various boroughs and buildings.

The exhibit goes dark every few minutes and it lights up to show the city at night.
Upstairs they had tons of memorabilia from the World’s Fair.
General Electrics pavilion called Progressland which included the Carousel of Progress Disney ride.
Another scale replica showing the layout of the various vendors and pavilions of the World’s Fair.

I really didn’t think there was much else to see here. There were a few artist exhibits and posters.. but it all felt a little over my head in terms of appreciating the art of it all since I’m not a real artsy person… but then I stumbled on this little room in the corner, dedicated to the design of Tiffany glass. It turns out, Louis Comfort Tiffany was disappointed at the quality of glass available and decided to open his own glasshouse furnace in 1893 in Corona Queens, just a mile or two from this museum. It was very rural at the time and allowed him to keep his glass recipes secret, well away from competitors in Manhattan. In 1901 he added a foundry, woodworking, metal working and other services to give him complete production control of all aspects of his business.

Charles Tiffany- his father- was the founder and owner of Tiffany & Co Jewelry…and Louis C Tiffany, started out as an interior designer and quickly found a passion for stained glass panels. This leaded Tiffany glass is what he became known for and what lives on today. A Tiffany lamp sold at auction for over 3 million dollars a few years ago! Supposedly you can find more common models for around $5,000. I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen a real Tiffany lamp in anyone’s possession. I thought I had because there are so many of these style around, but it seems they may all be reproductions or rival designers made to look like Tiffany lamps. I don’t know all that much about them, I could be wrong. If anyone reading this does know- please let me know!

Some Tiffany lampshades in the exhibit

What I found the most interesting was this case exhibit showing that they were cut and then wrap each individual piece of glass with copper, to help the solder stick to the piece.

Then they were assemble the lamp over a metal dome pattern to ensure the design was correct and shaped correctly.

There were 2 of these big racks full of flat glass sheets of Tiffany glass.
A collection of turtleback glass tiles. These bumpy, wavy tiles were used alone or in combination with the more geometric and smooth designs.
My favorite piece in the collection.

As we were leaving the Queens museum, a lady walking past us said “they are doing a puppet show up there… I wish my daughter was with me to see it… but I thought your daughter might like to see” – And she did!

It was a cute little modern rendition of Little Red Riding Hood put on by the City Parks department. The puppet mobile performs in a different park 5 days a week 6 months of the year. I think they said their schedule was on the parks website.


We walked a good few blocks to Corona which seemed to be a more Latino geared area where Flushing was more Asian. Kegan said he saw about 6 people that I looked like, so yep- must be in the Cuban and Puerto Rican area! Ha

When I lived in South Florida, people would walk right up to me without missing a beat and start talking to me in Spanish. And then if I didn’t understand or couldn’t answer them, they’d roll their eyes and walk off. At first I was like how rude! But after a while I realized it’s because I look very Cuban haha and these old ladies were super offended my young butt didn’t even know Spanish.

For the record, my DNA shows 0% Italian, Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rica. or any other nationality people usually think I am. I’m a conundrum lol

I was so excited to see that Benforamo- The Ice King of Corona was open! I was afraid I just walked a mile for nothing. But if there is creamy Italian ice at the end, then it’s all worth it. This is the standard for Italian Ice. In business for over 60 years. They have like 50 different flavors and multiple sizes to choose from. It was busy with almost everyone walking by grabbing at least a small $2 cup.

https://vimeo.com/34416081

If you’ve ever seen the intro to The King of Queens- you basically just hit the highlights of our day. Ha they are walking down the street in what appears to Jackson Heights (where we headed next) lounging in the Park, underneath the US Steel Unisphere globe, eating at Benfaramos… hilarious. I only found this intro after our visit while looking at the Benforamo website lol apparently, they live in Queens on the show. haha I thought the title was just a play on Queens, Kings, rooks, etc…never actually put it together! So now I feel stupid. lol

I had been seeking a bubble tea since breakfast Dim Sum so we had our Uber drop us off a few blocks early when I saw the stand.. and because I felt bad for the guy sitting in traffic trying to get the 3-4 blocks down that I had keyed in. I didn’t know it was SO busy there!

We walked on down under the 7 tracks seeking a Birria taco truck. But it turns out, the truck doesn’t show up and serve until 5 and it was only 3:30. Boo. I’ve never had birria tacos, but they are the new fad food showing up all over social media and my Indy foodie food group. I figured this would be a really good spot to try them. But I guess we’ll have to seek them out closer to home.

I can’t believe i didn’t take more photos of Jackson Heights! This lone picture of a produce shop is all I have to show for a mile of walking. Shame on me. It was a very neat, culture rich area. I really liked it.

As we approached the Jackson Heights subway station, I spotted a place I had bookmarked to go and try Nepalese food. The photos people had taken of the dumplings and soup looked amazing as well as the rice dishes. We still weren’t super hungry and I felt guilty taking a table to only order a bit… but they weren’t super busy, plenty of seating open, so we went in.

Norah ordered French fries again. Don’t know what’s up with that… but whatever. She’s been good this whole trip- if French fries are her choice for lunch/dinner- so be it. Ha a little comfort of home I guess?

We didn’t know what to order so I started stalking their social media and ordered what someone else had that looked amazing.

Paneer momo. Very rich creamy cheese filled dumplings with herbs and maybe some greens or spinach of some sort. Cress? Leek? I don’t know. But heavenly.
The Goat Momo in Jholi (a spicy herby broth)

I immediately googled and made sure I could make this again in the future because it was going to be a LONG flight and Uber out to this restaurant again haha and there were plenty of recipes for momo in jholi. Let me know if you want an invite when I recreate this masterpiece at home. Ha we were reading a recipe and tasting the broth, making sure we agreed that those ingredients were definitely present here. Oh my Lordy.. it was so good. It was so good that after we got to the hotel later in the evening, we tried to go order more dumplings in broth, knowing full well that Times Square Kung Fu kitchen would never live up to this, but the restaurant had just closed. Probably better. Ha

I loved these hammered copper drinking glasses and pitchers. If I ever open a restaurant I’m stealing this idea. The cold metal made the water seem that much colder and more refreshing.
All the poor commuters heading East away from Jackson Heights towards Flushing. The trains were packed to capacity with this many people waiting to add to it. I can do the crowded trains, but I loved that we were headed the opposite way on a mostly empty subway car with seating available 🙂

The rest of our evening was boring. We were in the hotel by 6pm and didn’t leave again. Norah got some iPad time, Kegan watched TV and I caught up on blogging.

Tomorrow we catch a train out of Penn Station to go upstate to Poughkeepsie to explore the countryside of New York along the Hudson River Valley.

Day 5 – Museum of Natural History and Van Gogh Experience

We took the subway north this morning to 72nd street on the upper west side so we could walk towards our museum and pass Zucker’s Bagels and Smoked Fish for breakfast.

Norah chose avocado toast with an egg
Kegan got The Classic- smoked salmon, tomato, red onion, capers, cream cheese on a marble rye bagel.
I got The Delaney. Egg, Swiss, pastrami and a potato latke on a pumpernickel bagel.
We walked past the New York Historical Society on our way to the Natural History Museum and there was an Abe Lincoln standing on the steps.
The American Museum of Natural History.
There were giant halls lined on two levels with these amazing dioramas and taxidermies specimens of various animals.
In 2014, the museum added a planetarium, space theater and many space exhibits to its collection. Norah spent the most time here reading every plaque and screen.
There was a special exhibit called The Nature of Color that we had to get special timed entry into. It was very pretty as it was all laid out by color.

The dinosaur skeletons were particularly cool. So many full remains!

My favorite “dinosaur” is the Giant Ground Sloth. These things are sooo cool. I love when we find a skeleton. This particular dude is the largest skeleton ever found. He was massive. Or she… I don’t want to be presumptuous.

They had a very large collection of pacific Island items including a statue from Easter Island. Also, tons of Aztec, Inca and Mayan items as well

One of the more interesting items I thought were these diorama recreations of various port and trade cities at a high point in their history.

Some other random items we liked today:

The blue whale is a famous symbol of the museum. It has also become a Covid vaccination point during the pandemic. The blue whale even got a vaccine bandaid added to his fin as PR for the site.
Giant Sequoia slice
I really liked seeing all of the pre-homo sapien skulls that have been found that have helped create the evolutionary timeline. I’ve seen many documentaries on various species but it was cool to see them in real life.

Amazingly, we didn’t get tickets to the Hall of Gems and Minerals- I couldn’t figure out how to join the virtual line… figured maybe it was already sold out for the day since online said it usually was… and Norah was disappointed- but when we passed by the entrance, the attendant let us in anyway without asking for tickets! Ha there was no line so I assume since it wasn’t stacked full of people, anyone could go in but we’ll just pretend we were super special 🙂

After we had seen all our brains could take of museums for the second day in a row, we headed down to the subway back towards our hotel to grab some food. The subway station was decorated appropriately.

We chose Ben’s Deli because Kegan didn’t want to miss a good Jewish deli hot pastrami and matzah ball soup.
Norah twinning with the subway signage.

He said the pastrami was great and the pickles were spot on… but he actually likes my matzah ball soup that I make better! Haha

After dinner we hung out in our hotel for an hour until it was time to head south towards Wall Street again to visit the Van Gogh Interactive Exhibit on Pier 31

Right outside the entrance we found the Irish Famine Memorial. A real Irish famine house that has been brought to lower Manhattan to honor the Irish immigrants to New York during the potato famine. Pretty neat to see snuggled in overlooking the water from the top and in between giant modern skyscrapers

The Van Gogh exhibit was very cool. I’m admittedly not much of an art buff- and of course I knew a couple of Van Gogh’s majorly famous works, but so didn’t realize he was so young when he killed himself (37), I didn’t realize he was roommates with fellow artist Paul Gauguin and I didn’t realize that an argument with Gauguin led to the famous “ear” incident where Van Gogh cut off his own ear with a razor blade and put it in an envelope and dropped it off at a nearby brothel.

Needless to say, they weren’t roommates after that, Van Gogh checked himself into a mental health facility and remained there painting. He was discharged in 1889 and within months shot himself in the abdomen and died two days later.

Tragic story, terrible mental illness. Beautiful art produced from the madness.

The best part was this giant room of projectors that created this immersive experience of being inside various paintings. It constantly changed and created a 30 minute or so video with sounds. I enjoyed sitting and taking it all in.
After the immersive room, you could select a coloring page and “paint with VanGogh”. After you colored it (with the 6 color choices of crayons they provided ha) you could scan it to display on a projected art wall.

After coloring, we entered the VR experience room where we wore Virtual Reality headsets for a 15 minute ride through Van Gogh painted fields to see some of the villages and scenes he painted. Then, because we had VIP tickets, we got to select a Van Gogh printed poster to take home.

Overall, a great experience. There are many of these around the country right now. I highly recommend a visit!

We walked to the World Trade Center subway station after we left to ride back up to midtown/Times Square

Tomorrow we’ll head out through Queens to Flushing- the end of the 7 train line to experience some of the outer boroughs and search out some great Asian food.

Day 4 – The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Broadway

Today will be a pretty short post even though the day was fairly long 🙂

We took an Uber up to The Met to save some time because we got moving a little late and we had timed entry tickets to The Met. We had the Uber drop us off at Butterfield Market, a swanky little grocery with sandwiches and coffee and a surprise for me- a sushi counter! I love sushi rolls for breakfast, so I was set. ha

They also had Cape Gooseberries, my favorite fruit! I have been growing them for the last few years but we didn’t do a garden this summer, so I hadn’t had any because they aren’t very common… They are a Peruvian Ground Cherry, sort of like a tomatillo/tomato but tastes sweet and tangy like passion fruit.

Kegan found a Scottish Smoked Salmon sandwich on brown bread, so he was pretty thrilled as well.

Since we had a couple minutes extra, we ran by William Greenberg Desserts and got a few mini Black and White Cookies- a staple of New York! If you ever watched Seinfeld, there was a whole episode about the black and white cookie. Most of the major long-standing places that made black and white cookies seemed to have closed their doors during the pandemic… but William Greenberg is still open and standing.

We grabbed a table outside The Met and ate our breakfast of sushi, smoked salmon, fruit and cookies! ha I’d like to think people were looking at us weird, but truth is- it’s New York, no one gives a hoot about what anyone else is doing. ha

First, we visited the Rome and Greece wing. I wanted to make sure I got to see all of that before my brain was overloaded and I was missing things. Roman history is definitely my favorite (I’m sure you know that if you’ve followed this blog at all. ha Every trip- ROMANS! ha)

Some art students were sketching items from around the Roman and Greece galleries. Norah thought maybe it might be a drawing contest and she wanted to know if she could enter. I told her they were art students and if she practiced enough at drawing, maybe that was something she could do when she got older. (She has shown a real knack for graphic design already)- she promptly started photographing items to draw later 🙂

Some highlights of the Egyptian exhibits

The American Wing had tons of colonial furniture, clocks, Tiffany glass, jewelry, paintings… some of my favorites:

A large section was devoted to Medieval and European Portraits

Finally we walked through the Asian art wing. I don’t know a lot about Asian history or a Cambodian statue from a Tibetan statue.. but there were some intricate pieces and colossal statues that caught my eye.

After we had seen all our brains could take of the museum, we headed out behind the museum into Central Park.

First stop was the Group of Bears statue.

We walked along to the Obelisk or Cleopatra’s Needle.

It was a gift from Egypt to the US in the 1880s… and is over 1000 years older that Cleopatra!

We had to sit and rest because I was wearing dress flats all day in a museum and then walking across Central Park just trying to not look like a tourist for our Broadway show. ha Also, the Gershwin theater required Norah to have a negative Covid test within 6 hours of the show, so we sat and gave her the test and waited for the results. Then I photographed the test, alongside her passport for Identification and a phone screen showing the date and time.

When we arrived, the girls checking vaccines and tests were super impressed with our preparedness. haha

Continuing on across Central Park we passed Belvedere Castle, a miniature castle designed as a focal viewpoint for various parts of Central Park and situated on the highest point in the park. Central Park is so busy and so many people exploring, it’s hard to imagine…but from the 1940s to the 1980s, this castle was shut down and a target of vandalism and disrepair until it was restored and reopened. Blows my mind because now all of New York is so busy and so upscale/nice/clean…It’s hard to imagine the New York of the 1980s or early 1990s. or even more so, the New York of the late 1800s or early 1900s.

There is a nicely manicured area called Shakespeare’s Garden.

We entered the subway at the Museum of Natural History station- which we’ll be right back up to tomorrow to visit this museum

We found a Shake Shack right around the corner from the theater that had a nice table outside that we relaxed at and ate for over an hour waiting on our time to go through the Covid line to get in. They separated out different seating areas into different times of arrival and our seating area was the first group set to arrive 50 minutes early.

Turned the corner and realized we were at the Ed Sullivan Theater where they film The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

Wicked plays in the Gershwin Theater, named after George and Ira Gershwin- playwrite and lyricist brothers. Since 2003, Wicked has been playing here. It has the largest seating capacity of any theater on Broadway with 1933 seats

We were definitely the first group in. Totally empty theater.

We had the front 3 seater row of the mezzanine overlooking the lower level and the stage. Wasn’t the best view in the house- but we didn’t sit by people we didn’t know and there were no tall heads in front of us….so it was a great seat for me 🙂

The play was very good. I loved the “alternate” story of the Witches of Oz. It was no Hamilton. ha That musical BLEW.MY.MIND. I’m not sure anything else will ever live up to Hamilton. This one was objectively good, though.

Seeing 2,000 people file out of a theater all at once was interesting… lol

Passed the New York Times building on our walk back to the hotel

Walked through Times Square again because we decided to walk the 10 blocks instead of trying to hop the subway one stop since 2000 other people were headed that way too. It was a decent walk through the busiest weirdest part of Manhattan. ha Tomorrow is the Museum of Natural History and the interactive Van Gogh museum in the evening.