glennbo123
DIS Legend
- Joined
- May 10, 2008
- Messages
- 10,233
Meanwhile, back in the city...(And Dig Inn and Phantom)
While the ladies were up in the Bronx with flower petals pressed to their nostrils, Glennbo was slaving away in the city. In my job there are some tasks that have to be performed on particular workdays of the month. When I originally booked the trip, my busiest day would’ve been two days prior. But in the meantime, our work schedule changed and put one of my busiest days on our first full day in the city. My only choices were to work from the hotel room or not go on the trip, so I opted to work from the hotel room.
I was up and working by 7:30. Here was my setup. “Command Central”:
I didn’t have any trouble getting on the hotel’s wireless and working remotely. Just picture me typing away at the laptop keyboard, working in Excel, highlighting data, entering formulas, and throw in the occasional control-C and control-V for good measure. Very exciting stuff.
I did go up to the top floor to see about breakfast, and they had a continental breakfast buffet , kind of like what you’d get for free at some of your more economical motels, for $14.95. I decided I’d save some money and just have some pumpernickel toast in the room.
At one point I took a picture of room layouts from the back of the door. Not so that I could see where the fire escapes are, several months after the fact, as valuable as that is, but I thought that it showed how different the layouts are from suite to suite. Kind of interesting.
Lunchtime came and I was still pretty busy, so I was tempted to just find something from a deli or sandwich shop and bring it back to the room, but that would have been a real waste of this opportunity to experience some more of the city. I had to do something at least a little more memorable than that. So I went to Steak ‘n Shake. I think I again looked at Yelp to see what was near me, and to be honest, I had this place confused with Shake Shack, which I’ve heard good things about. But hey, it’s still a burger and a shake. Can’t be all bad.
I took this picture while waiting for my order to come up. I’d already ordered on the opposite side, where the woman in the red sweater is. There were only a couple of people ahead of me when I got there, but the line got pretty long immediately after.
One more picture on my way out just to declare, “I’m a tourist and I’m not above taking a picture of the most mundane things in your lives, even this hamburger joint!!”
I crossed the street and took a picture of the Steak ‘n Shake and the Ed Sullivan Theater. David Letterman’s name had already been covered on the marquee.
Once I put all of my and Marlene’s photos into Photobucket, it was kind of neat to sort them by date/time and see what they were doing at the gardens while I was doing things in the city. For example, their picture of the koi pond was taken while I was in Steak ‘n Shake. Okay, maybe not that interesting. But it was interesting to me!
I thought that it’d be much nicer to sit on the grass and eat my lunch in Central Park than to head back to the room.
The food was decent. The hamburger patties were a little different than I’m used to...they seemed to be a little flatter, but not bad. The fries were good.
My view. Looking to the left. That’s Columbus Circle in the distance.
And looking straight ahead.
It was really relaxing to sit and eat in the park. And I only got mugged twice. (Just kidding!) Seriously though, I thought that if a visitor only ever saw the park, they’d think that New Yorkers never worked...there were so many people sitting, bike riding, and kids playing. People were just all-around enjoying the nice day.
On my way out of the park I took this picture of a statue at the south-western corner of Central Park, near Columbus Circle.
Judy and Marlene got back around 3:30 and rested a little bit. I was hoping to get done early, but worked right up until 5. You gotta do what you gotta do. But I was glad that I was able to get it done from the room.
For dinner, I looked on Yelp again to find some gluten-free/vegetarian-type of options. One that sounded promising to me was Dig Inn, and since Marlene wrote a little bit about dinner, I’ll let her chime in now.
That evening, we got food from “Dig Inn”. Mom’s favorite. My meal was salmon (my favorite fish) with vegetables and bulgur wheat - we sell it where I work (she worked at a natural foods grocery store over the summer) but I hadn’t ever tried any. I thought it was pretty fantastic. Judy has put bulgur wheat in homemade soups for years, and apparently Marlene has never known.
They have a bunch of locations in the city, but we went to the one at 40 W 55th street. We had trouble finding it, and were this close to giving up when either Judy or Marlene spotted the Dig Inn name in a window across the street from where we were walking. I looked it up on Google maps streetview just now and still had trouble seeing it -- it’s small and just seems to blend in. But the food is good, so it’s worth the search!
This place was pretty interesting, and as Marlene noted, it turned out to be Judy’s favorite of the trip. You could select a “big” or “small” plate, and then picked 1) a protein, 2) a grain or green, and 3) two sides. And they loaded them up. We all got small plates, and when Judy was getting hers it looked like they were putting so much on that I said, “hey, I thought you got a small plate” (like I’d gotten snookered into ordering a small when she’d order a large). And she goes, “I did!”
They had a couple of chairs by the window that you could sit at to eat, but this place is really a grab-and-go kind of situation. I could see it being very popular for lunch. We took ours back to the suite.
I thought to take a picture of the outside as we left. I know that it doesn’t look like it’d be hard to find, but in amongst all of the other sights, we almost missed it. This was another inexpensive meal. It was probably around $40 for our 3 plates and 3 iced teas.
Here are our plates. Mine is the one in the lower left. I got meatballs (which were particularly good), brown rice, sriracha beans, and cauliflower/chick peas. Judy got meatballs, sriracha beans, and kale/rhubarb salad. Marlene got salmon salad, bulgur wheat, spring vegetables, and kale/rhubarb salad. I jotted down some quotes from Judy and they went like this: "Oh my gosh. This food is really good!" "Oh my gosh. I'm going to end up eating it all!" I’m pretty sure Judy wishes we had one of these shops near us.
Then came Phantom of the Opera. I was on cloud 9
for this show. I’d seen it before, but from seats that were further back and up from the stage. This time we were lower and closer to the stage, with a more full view of everything going on. It was intense at times, with a lot of the familiar and wonderful operatic elegance that I love about this show. Needless to say, I would see it again a million times.
Let me give a little more background here. I need to go back to December of last year, which was when I started needling Marlene to make a decision on which play we’d see. I wanted to make sure we got decent seats to whichever show she picked and had looked at the ticketing website of Wicked and saw that seats were starting to sell. Not a lot, but you know, enough that we needed to get ours booked. I suggested that we see Wicked, since Lauren and Judy loved it so much on their trip, but Marlene wanted to see Phantom of the Opera. She has the music from it on her iPod and just loves it. She knew that I wasn’t an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan after I saw “Cats” in Buffalo and I absolutely hated it. But she persisted and since it was her trip, I went ahead and bought tickets. No more than a week later, her high school band released the itinerary of a trip they were taking to New York City in the spring and guess what they were going to do? They were going to see a performance of “Phantom of the Opera”! I was disappointed, but as she indicated in her comments above, Marlene was not. She loved seeing it during the band trip and was eager to see it again. James was also along on the band trip and when he told me that it was really good and that he’d see it again, I wasn’t so pessimistic and started to warm up to the idea. (But between you and me, I really wanted to “Fish in the Dark”, written by “Seinfeld” co-creator Larry David. By the time we went, it starred Jason Alexander, who played George Costanza on Seinfeld, rather than Larry David, but I’m sure it would have been a riot. But again, it wasn’t my trip!)
We walked down Broadway to 44th street to get to the theater. On our way, we passed a big group of schoolkids that were probably late-elementary school or middle school age. There were so many of them that it took us a few blocks to pass them all. At one of the lights, when the “walk” symbol came on, one of their chaperones said, “All right kids, come on! Shake ‘n Bake! Shake ‘n Bake!”. We told Judy about it the next day and it kind of became a “thing” for the rest of the trip. Even at DisneyWorld, if we needed to get our little group moving, we’d say “C’mon! Shake ‘n Bake! Shake ‘n Bake!”
Marlene in front of the theater. You can see her in the middle of the picture, in her green army-type of jacket.
In our seats, waiting for the show to start.
Here’s a pre-show picture that Marlene took. It reminded me that after she took this, some people sat in those empty seats in front of us. The woman took out her cell phone, held it up over her head and started taking video of the whole room, panning in a slow circle. We were literally right behind her, 3 feet away from the phone. So of course, when she pans past me, I couldn’t resist making one of my dumb faces. I think I gave her the one that I made for the ride camera on Space Mountain our last trip. Yeah, that one...yikes. They’re making memes of me in China now.
The chandelier at intermission, heading up to the ceiling.
Some stuff in the play even occurs up there amongst those cherub figures. He is the phantom of the opera, after all.
I was good and didn’t take any pictures during the show. Just a couple from the curtain call.
I have to say that the show was utterly amazing. To be the musician playing the organ for the opening sequence of the play has to be the greatest gig in New York City. It was like they gave him a general outline of the melody and then paid him by the note, because he or she was all over that keyboard. The joint was absolutely rocking, and I had to think that people walking by on the sidewalk outside could probably see the building shaking and hear all of the music pouring out. There was some humor thrown in as well, particularly in the play-within-the-play, and in another scene when several characters have received letters from the phantom. And visually, they did some things that I don’t even know how they did -- I mean, at one point it looked like the phantom was boating on an unground body of water with candles floating in it, and I completely bought it. And for the song “Masquerade”, the stage is made up like a ballroom and the whole company is costumed and singing, coming down a huge flight of stairs. I let out an audible “Wow!”
So, it turned out that seeing “Phantom of the Opera” was a major highlight of the trip for me. Who’d a thunk it?
Up next: Top of the Rock
While the ladies were up in the Bronx with flower petals pressed to their nostrils, Glennbo was slaving away in the city. In my job there are some tasks that have to be performed on particular workdays of the month. When I originally booked the trip, my busiest day would’ve been two days prior. But in the meantime, our work schedule changed and put one of my busiest days on our first full day in the city. My only choices were to work from the hotel room or not go on the trip, so I opted to work from the hotel room.
I was up and working by 7:30. Here was my setup. “Command Central”:
I didn’t have any trouble getting on the hotel’s wireless and working remotely. Just picture me typing away at the laptop keyboard, working in Excel, highlighting data, entering formulas, and throw in the occasional control-C and control-V for good measure. Very exciting stuff.
I did go up to the top floor to see about breakfast, and they had a continental breakfast buffet , kind of like what you’d get for free at some of your more economical motels, for $14.95. I decided I’d save some money and just have some pumpernickel toast in the room.
At one point I took a picture of room layouts from the back of the door. Not so that I could see where the fire escapes are, several months after the fact, as valuable as that is, but I thought that it showed how different the layouts are from suite to suite. Kind of interesting.
Lunchtime came and I was still pretty busy, so I was tempted to just find something from a deli or sandwich shop and bring it back to the room, but that would have been a real waste of this opportunity to experience some more of the city. I had to do something at least a little more memorable than that. So I went to Steak ‘n Shake. I think I again looked at Yelp to see what was near me, and to be honest, I had this place confused with Shake Shack, which I’ve heard good things about. But hey, it’s still a burger and a shake. Can’t be all bad.
I took this picture while waiting for my order to come up. I’d already ordered on the opposite side, where the woman in the red sweater is. There were only a couple of people ahead of me when I got there, but the line got pretty long immediately after.
One more picture on my way out just to declare, “I’m a tourist and I’m not above taking a picture of the most mundane things in your lives, even this hamburger joint!!”
I crossed the street and took a picture of the Steak ‘n Shake and the Ed Sullivan Theater. David Letterman’s name had already been covered on the marquee.
Once I put all of my and Marlene’s photos into Photobucket, it was kind of neat to sort them by date/time and see what they were doing at the gardens while I was doing things in the city. For example, their picture of the koi pond was taken while I was in Steak ‘n Shake. Okay, maybe not that interesting. But it was interesting to me!
I thought that it’d be much nicer to sit on the grass and eat my lunch in Central Park than to head back to the room.
The food was decent. The hamburger patties were a little different than I’m used to...they seemed to be a little flatter, but not bad. The fries were good.
My view. Looking to the left. That’s Columbus Circle in the distance.
And looking straight ahead.
It was really relaxing to sit and eat in the park. And I only got mugged twice. (Just kidding!) Seriously though, I thought that if a visitor only ever saw the park, they’d think that New Yorkers never worked...there were so many people sitting, bike riding, and kids playing. People were just all-around enjoying the nice day.
On my way out of the park I took this picture of a statue at the south-western corner of Central Park, near Columbus Circle.
Judy and Marlene got back around 3:30 and rested a little bit. I was hoping to get done early, but worked right up until 5. You gotta do what you gotta do. But I was glad that I was able to get it done from the room.
For dinner, I looked on Yelp again to find some gluten-free/vegetarian-type of options. One that sounded promising to me was Dig Inn, and since Marlene wrote a little bit about dinner, I’ll let her chime in now.
That evening, we got food from “Dig Inn”. Mom’s favorite. My meal was salmon (my favorite fish) with vegetables and bulgur wheat - we sell it where I work (she worked at a natural foods grocery store over the summer) but I hadn’t ever tried any. I thought it was pretty fantastic. Judy has put bulgur wheat in homemade soups for years, and apparently Marlene has never known.
They have a bunch of locations in the city, but we went to the one at 40 W 55th street. We had trouble finding it, and were this close to giving up when either Judy or Marlene spotted the Dig Inn name in a window across the street from where we were walking. I looked it up on Google maps streetview just now and still had trouble seeing it -- it’s small and just seems to blend in. But the food is good, so it’s worth the search!
This place was pretty interesting, and as Marlene noted, it turned out to be Judy’s favorite of the trip. You could select a “big” or “small” plate, and then picked 1) a protein, 2) a grain or green, and 3) two sides. And they loaded them up. We all got small plates, and when Judy was getting hers it looked like they were putting so much on that I said, “hey, I thought you got a small plate” (like I’d gotten snookered into ordering a small when she’d order a large). And she goes, “I did!”
They had a couple of chairs by the window that you could sit at to eat, but this place is really a grab-and-go kind of situation. I could see it being very popular for lunch. We took ours back to the suite.
I thought to take a picture of the outside as we left. I know that it doesn’t look like it’d be hard to find, but in amongst all of the other sights, we almost missed it. This was another inexpensive meal. It was probably around $40 for our 3 plates and 3 iced teas.
Here are our plates. Mine is the one in the lower left. I got meatballs (which were particularly good), brown rice, sriracha beans, and cauliflower/chick peas. Judy got meatballs, sriracha beans, and kale/rhubarb salad. Marlene got salmon salad, bulgur wheat, spring vegetables, and kale/rhubarb salad. I jotted down some quotes from Judy and they went like this: "Oh my gosh. This food is really good!" "Oh my gosh. I'm going to end up eating it all!" I’m pretty sure Judy wishes we had one of these shops near us.
Then came Phantom of the Opera. I was on cloud 9
for this show. I’d seen it before, but from seats that were further back and up from the stage. This time we were lower and closer to the stage, with a more full view of everything going on. It was intense at times, with a lot of the familiar and wonderful operatic elegance that I love about this show. Needless to say, I would see it again a million times.Let me give a little more background here. I need to go back to December of last year, which was when I started needling Marlene to make a decision on which play we’d see. I wanted to make sure we got decent seats to whichever show she picked and had looked at the ticketing website of Wicked and saw that seats were starting to sell. Not a lot, but you know, enough that we needed to get ours booked. I suggested that we see Wicked, since Lauren and Judy loved it so much on their trip, but Marlene wanted to see Phantom of the Opera. She has the music from it on her iPod and just loves it. She knew that I wasn’t an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan after I saw “Cats” in Buffalo and I absolutely hated it. But she persisted and since it was her trip, I went ahead and bought tickets. No more than a week later, her high school band released the itinerary of a trip they were taking to New York City in the spring and guess what they were going to do? They were going to see a performance of “Phantom of the Opera”! I was disappointed, but as she indicated in her comments above, Marlene was not. She loved seeing it during the band trip and was eager to see it again. James was also along on the band trip and when he told me that it was really good and that he’d see it again, I wasn’t so pessimistic and started to warm up to the idea. (But between you and me, I really wanted to “Fish in the Dark”, written by “Seinfeld” co-creator Larry David. By the time we went, it starred Jason Alexander, who played George Costanza on Seinfeld, rather than Larry David, but I’m sure it would have been a riot. But again, it wasn’t my trip!)
We walked down Broadway to 44th street to get to the theater. On our way, we passed a big group of schoolkids that were probably late-elementary school or middle school age. There were so many of them that it took us a few blocks to pass them all. At one of the lights, when the “walk” symbol came on, one of their chaperones said, “All right kids, come on! Shake ‘n Bake! Shake ‘n Bake!”. We told Judy about it the next day and it kind of became a “thing” for the rest of the trip. Even at DisneyWorld, if we needed to get our little group moving, we’d say “C’mon! Shake ‘n Bake! Shake ‘n Bake!”
Marlene in front of the theater. You can see her in the middle of the picture, in her green army-type of jacket.
In our seats, waiting for the show to start.
Here’s a pre-show picture that Marlene took. It reminded me that after she took this, some people sat in those empty seats in front of us. The woman took out her cell phone, held it up over her head and started taking video of the whole room, panning in a slow circle. We were literally right behind her, 3 feet away from the phone. So of course, when she pans past me, I couldn’t resist making one of my dumb faces. I think I gave her the one that I made for the ride camera on Space Mountain our last trip. Yeah, that one...yikes. They’re making memes of me in China now.
The chandelier at intermission, heading up to the ceiling.
Some stuff in the play even occurs up there amongst those cherub figures. He is the phantom of the opera, after all.
I was good and didn’t take any pictures during the show. Just a couple from the curtain call.
I have to say that the show was utterly amazing. To be the musician playing the organ for the opening sequence of the play has to be the greatest gig in New York City. It was like they gave him a general outline of the melody and then paid him by the note, because he or she was all over that keyboard. The joint was absolutely rocking, and I had to think that people walking by on the sidewalk outside could probably see the building shaking and hear all of the music pouring out. There was some humor thrown in as well, particularly in the play-within-the-play, and in another scene when several characters have received letters from the phantom. And visually, they did some things that I don’t even know how they did -- I mean, at one point it looked like the phantom was boating on an unground body of water with candles floating in it, and I completely bought it. And for the song “Masquerade”, the stage is made up like a ballroom and the whole company is costumed and singing, coming down a huge flight of stairs. I let out an audible “Wow!”
So, it turned out that seeing “Phantom of the Opera” was a major highlight of the trip for me. Who’d a thunk it?
Up next: Top of the Rock
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I pretty much stay away because I can't resist the giant shakes, and we like In N Out better.
I'm wonder if she edited you out. 
, but I've never seen that movie the whole way through, so this reference went over my head! 
Freddy's is my favorite!
I'm glad you made it! I've seen your kids growing up on Instagram...next thing you know, you'll be an empty-nester!
I'm glad it surpassed your expectations!
