Traveling Johns

Our day began early again. Tharindu wanted us ready by seven thirty, but it was nearly eight o’clock when we finally pulled out. Our first destination for the day was the ancient city of Polonnaruwa, the second capital of the Sinhalese kingdom, and perhaps the most important archeological site in Sri Lanka.

The history of the city is somewhat complicated, and, as is usual in Sri Lankan history, involves many long names. Here is the short version. Toward the end of the tenth century, the Cholas conquered Sri Lanka. Despite the similarity in spelling, these were not bad Mexican girls but a south Indian kingdom. However, in 1070, a certain Vijayabahu led a force of Sri Lanka rebels which defeated the Cholas and restored independence to the island. Vijayabahu was acclaimed king. He decided to establish a new capital at Polonnaruwa to replace the completely ruined first capital of Anuradhapura. But Vijayabahu did not actually do much building. Instead the credit for actually creating the city rests with his successor, King Parakramabahu. And so our visit to Polonnaruwa fitting began with a visit to the statue of that great monarch.

The most important building at Polonnaruwa was naturally the king’s palace. In fact, it was probably the largest buildings anywhere in the world in its time. It was seven stories high and was supposed to have had over 1000 rooms. All that remains now is the foundation and the brickwork of the first floor. 

Like most ancient cities, Polonnaruwa was both a secular and a sacred site. The Sinhalese kingdom was devoutly Buddhist and its claim to having the Tooth Relic, perhaps the most sacred of the relics of the Buddha. Not only was this the only part of the Buddha’s body to survive his cremation, but it was so important that any king who pledged to protect the Tooth Relic obviously had the right to rule. Not surprisingly, then, the second most significant building in Polonnaruwa was the ancient temple that housed the Tooth Relic. Built in the form of a vatadage, a circular structure enclosing one or more stupas, it is still an architecturally intriguing building. Today in the center of the building where the stupa of the Tooth Relic had once been, there is only a statue of the Buddha.

But it is far from the only statue of the Buddha. There are statues of the Buddha and of bodhisattvas throughout the entire city done in a variety of styles and one of the delights of wandering through Polonnaruwa is seeing so many different pieces of Buddhist art. 

There are also stupas throughout the site. Many are small, but a few are absolutely enormous. This is the Rankoth Vehera, a massive brick edifice of over 100 feet. 

While I found much of the art and architecture of Polonnaruwa moving, I confess I had an instinctive revulsion to this building. It just reminded me of those hideous Victorian churches designed by A. N. W. Pugin that seem to litter central London. Its smaller whitewashed companion did not appeal to me much either. 

I liked the Lankatilaka Temple a bit more

even if it did vaguely look like the work of a Buddhist William Butterfield.

The great highlight of Buddhist art at Polonnaruwa is the Gal Vihara. This historic shrine features four statues of the Buddha in different forms and each is a masterpiece of Sinhalese art. The Buddha is depicted as standing,

seated,

and reclining.

The most sacred image of the four is actually the smallest 

but it is the focus of the most intense worship.

We did have some less reverent moments while at Polonnaruwa. John stopped for a bit of faux meditation in the only Hindu temple there

and I found watching the monkeys endlessly fascinating.

After a couple hours, however, our brains could not absorb much more information and we were hot and sweaty. Tharindu insisted — and he was certainly right to do so — that we dress appropriately for visiting sacred sites. But I am too much of a Southern California lad to enjoy wearing long pants when the temperature is hovering about 90 and the humidity is even higher than that. We went off to have an absolutely dreadful buffet lunch and we both changed into shorts we had secretly packed away. 

Our afternoon adventure was something we had added to the itinerary, a visit to a national park to see elephants. Sri Lanka has a large elephant population, and, in fact, you have to be quite careful when you are driving on certain parts of the island because you may just find an elephant crossing the road. We drove past one as we were heading towards the park. 

Tharindu arranged the safari for us. We expected to be crammed into a jeep with a half dozen other tourists, but to our surprise, it was only the two of us along with Tharindu and the jeep driver. 

We drove for quite a while before we entered the park. And once we did, we waited endlessly in line for admission. It seemed like there were hundreds of people who also thought that this was a good day to try to see elephants. After we finally made it past by the gate, we drove on wretchedly bad dirt roads for what seemed like a bumpy eternity without seeing much of anything. I began to think that a glimpse of a monkey might be my only wildlife sighting of the day.

After a while, we were stuck in traffic. All the rain had created muddy conditions and one of the jeeps had sunk into the muddy road.

I had just about decided that the safari was going to be a fiasco when we came to a large plain by a lake and saw our first herd of elephant. Of course, we were not alone.

But the elephants seemed pretty unconcerned with the jeeps and the clicking of cameras. 

They allowed us to come remarkably close to them, but a telephoto lens is still the safest option.

John and I were both delighted, 

but we could not match this young man’s exuberant happiness.

After that, it seemed like was saw hundreds of elephants. We saw many mothers with babies. I am not quite sure why young elephants are so adorably cute, but they are. 

We saw a couple of elephants bathing in the lake.

We saw several, umm, amorous males. I will spare you the picture of the one who had, as Tharindu put it, five legs. It was pretty intense.

However prudish, I prefer to focus on more domestic scenes.

We spent a couple hours looking at several herds grazing on the large plain. But as night began to fall, we had to leave and the elephants would be heading off into the forest for the night as well.

It was an utterly amazing day. This trip to Sri Lanka has not been cheap, but what we saw this afternoon made it worth every dime for me. 

After we woke up, we could look at our accommodations in daylight. We have a suite of two bedrooms, a sitting room, and a bathroom with both indoor and outdoor showers. 

John, of course, loved the balcony.

We had a pleasant breakfast in the small dining room adjacent to the pool. After that Tharindu met us with the car and prompted us to get a quick start to our day. 

As I said, we did not have much time to pack carefully, and I should have checked my camera before packing it. I was upset when I looked at it this morning to discover that it had no SD card. Tharindu came to my rescue and found a little phone shop in the village that had a few in stock. Ta dah!

Our first adventure in Sri Lanka was a visit to the ancient fortress palace of Sigiriya. It definitely has an interesting history. According to ancient chroniclers, in the late fifth century, Kashyapa, an illegitimate son of King Kathusena, killed his father by walling him up alive. He proclaimed himself king and forced Moggallana, his half-brother and the rightful heir to the throne, to flee to India. Yet fearful of Moggallana’s ultimate return, Kashyapa abandoned Anuradhapura, the historic capital of Sinhalese kingdom, and created a new capital on this enormous block of granite rising over 600 feet above the surrounding forest. 

Over the next 18 years Kashyapa transformed this spot into an extraordinary complex of palaces and gardens. But although the fortress itself was nearly impregnable, when Moggallana returned to claim his throne with a large number of Indian troops, Kashyapa was forced to face him in battle. Kashyapa’s forces were completely routed and the usurper committed suicide by slashing his own throat. King Moggallana returned the capital to Anuradhapura and turned Sigiraya over to Buddhist monks. It remained a monastery for many centuries, although it ultimately abandoned sometime in the fourteenth century. The site was almost completely forgotten until rediscovered by a British military officer in 1831. 

Some archaeological work began on the site in the late nineteenth century, but most of the excavation has been done in the last twenty years. And the word is still continuing as we saw at different points in our visit. 

Sigiriya was carefully planned. The entire site was surrounded by a moat. This has been allowed to fill with rain water and seems to be a favored spots for a variety of local birds. 

Once over the moat and within the first level of fortifications, a visitor to Sigiraya would have been found elaborate terraced gardens. Only part of these gardens have been excavated. 

Heading further towards the massive rock formation, an elaborate system of water gardens was constructed. These probably also had some practical function of storing and filtering water. 

But today the only function of the water gardens is to provide homes for birds. 

The last set of gardens before reaching the sheer cliff was was the “Boulder Garden” where large rocks were artfully arranged to highlight the first entrance to the palace. These presumably also had some defensive function as well.

Entering Sigiriya required climbing along the sheer cliff walls. A system of stairways was constructed and visitors had to proceed on foot, probably single file, until they arrived at the entrance to the palace itself. It is still a long and daunting climb. 

John decided at this point that he was not up to climbing that many stairs, particularly as the line was moving slowly and he would be standing in place for long periods. So he left us at this point and headed off to the cafe. Tharindu and I pressed on. 

About halfway up the climb, there is a long painted wall. This dates from the time of Kashyapa. Supposedly the paint on it was originally so shiny that it was like a mirror. Over the centuries people have left message on it, one of the few times when graffiti actually has some historical value. There is also a small covered area with some frescos of half-naked women on it. Historians are divided about exactly who is represented here. One thing, however, is quite clear:  no photography allowed. With some satisfaction, I watched the Russian ahead of me in line have his camera confiscated for violating the rule. I still have my camera, however. This photo of the frescoes was swiped from Google Images with minimal regard to the legality of its provenance.

After the initial climb, about 400 feet, we arrived at a small plateau. This was the entrance to the palace itself. From both the archeological remains and ancient records we know that it was the face of a giant lion, symbol of the Sinhalese dynasty. Visitors actually walked into the lion’s mouth to visit the royal precincts. Today only the paws remain but even these are quite impressive. 

Almost nothing remains of the original palace at the top of the mesa. There are some foundation stones to suggest where room may have been. But whatever disappointment a visitor may feel historically is more than amply compensated by stunning views of the undeveloped countryside surrounding the site. 

On the way down I stopped briefly to admire the vivid colors in the parts of the rock wall. I tried to remember the minerals that make up granite, but somehow neither quartz, feldspar, or mica would seem to create anything so vivid. 

Along the way, John let me know that he was safe and happy at the cafe.

At the bottom we passed by a snake charmer. He also took pictures of people with the cobra hanging around their necks. I was sorely tempted, but there was a line of people waiting for this and we pressed on to meet up with John at the cafe. 

As we drove away we had one final look at Sigiriya and John used the camera’s zoom to capture the people standing on the top half a mile away. Not too bad for a point-and-shoot camera, is it?

We had lunch at one of those restaurants that specialize in serving busloads of tourists. It was still fairly early, so there was only a German family and us there. In fact, as they still had not finished setting up the buffet they asked us to wait. John noticed the pool and asked for permission to use it. 

After lunch, we drove a little bit to a place for our village tour. This is one of those things that tour operators always insert into an itinerary whether the client asks for it or more usually does not. We thought about arguing that we wanted to do something different, but it seemed easier to just go ahead with it. It will not be a highlight of the trip. 

It began with a depressing ox cart ride. I felt sorry for the poor animals dragging tourists on this awful wooden cart through the mud of this not-particularly-traditional village with cinderblock and stucco houses equipped with satellite television dishes. I felt sorry for the ox driver. I felt sorry for myself. It was torture for everybody involved.

After this, we were dropped off by the side of a dammed lake where we were met by a old man in a beat-up fiberglass catamaran. He doubt he spoke a word of English or any other foreign language. He walked so unsteadily and seemed so frail that I wondered how long he could continue doing this. I felt as sorry for him as for the oxen.

At least the boat ride, however, was pleasant as we drifted among the waterlilies. One of the things all these boatmen are apparently required to do is to take a waterlily leaf and turn it into a hat. 

John accepted this present with more grace than I felt. 

We walked from there to a “tree house” and after I obediently climb it, we were taken to a place where we were supposed to have a “cookery demonstration.” We actually were just given an extremely chewy piece of roti and some pol sambol, a classic Sri Lankan condiment made up chopped coconut, chiles, and dried fish. It is one of those dishes that foreigners can eat but do not particularly enjoy. 

Our boatman rowed us back to the dock by a slightly faster route. I tipped him fairly generously more out of pity than taken by his charm. We were met a younger man for a tuk tuk ride. For those who have not spent time in this part of the world, tuk tuks are motorcycles that have been converted to hold passengers. Sri Lankans often call them “three wheelers.” Our driver was irritatingly garrulous as he drove us to where Tharindu was supposed to meet us about a mile or so away. I conveniently forgot to give him his tip. 

Tomorrow we are going to see one of the island’s most ancient capitals and to go on safari as well. 

Looking back on it, we were wildly optimistic. We somehow thought we could renovate our house, decorate that house, throw a huge party on Christmas Eve, host Christmas Day for our entire family, and still be ready for a vacation that evening. On Christmas night as the cab was scheduled to come and take us to the airport, we were still throwing things in suitcases and were not completely sure we had even packed our passports. We kissed goodbye to the family, and, of course, to Edie, and we took Uber to the airport.

Our flight was scheduled to leave Los Angeles around 9:30 in the evening on Christmas Day. The airport was not as busy as it usually is, so after making it through security we still had about two hours left before we were scheduled to board. John had decided to splurge this time and buy business class tickets. This allowed us to use the Emirates Airlines lounge while we waited. And waited. And waited. The flight was delayed by almost two more hours as they had to change a tire on the giant Airbus 380. 

The best part of taking business class on these long plane is the fact that the seats recline into beds. And on a 16 hour flight, you really want to be able to sleep for at least half of the time. 

As the plane had left Los Angeles two hours late, we were about two hours late coming into Dubai. There is a hotel in the airport itself in Dubai, but for such a short period of time we figured we would just spend it in the lounge. We were frankly a bit disappointed that the Dubai airport was not more wonderful. It was perfectly clean and comfortable, of course, but somehow we just figured that the airport here would be completely over-the-top. And likewise the lounge certainly was an improvement over sitting around in the gate area, but it was not particularly special either. I was a little surprised to see some Christmas decorations, however modest and commercial, here on the Arabian peninsula.

The flight from Dubai to Columbo was uneventful. We were on a Boing 777, so all the controls for the seats and the entertainment system were just different enough to be annoying. We were fed breakfast and then almost everybody went back to sleep.

The airport in Columbo is efficient but hardly elegant. We cleared immigration and picked up our bags easily. And once we walked through the “Nothing to Declare” exit we were met with by a cheerful man with a sign reading “Mr. John Pratt.” He took our bags and escorted us to his Toyota. He introduced himself as Tharindu. He is going to be our driver and guide for the next week or so. 

We knew our first hotel was going to be the Lake Lodge, but we were not sure where it was. The guidebooks listed a rather nice place of that name in Columbo, but we did not remember scheduling several days in Sri Lanka’s largest city. Tharindu explained that we were headed to a hotel of that name in Dambula, a small town in the center of the island, about four hours drive from the airport. Both John and I had to suppress a groan at spending yet more time traveling, but we had no other choice.

It was not a not a particularly interesting or attractive ride. Most of the way the road was lined on both side with the usual cheap rebar and concrete buildings that seem to be found in every part of the developing world. There would be an occasional break in the near wall of buildings and through it we could catch a glimpse of a rice patty or a bit of forest. I dozed off at points. 

We finally pulled up to our hotel as the sun was beginning to set. We were greeted warmly. The people at reception had us light a lamp as part of the traditional greeting ritual.

And our welcome did not stop there. We were greeted with a “welcome” made out of leaves on our bedspread.

And the sight of that bed was welcome indeed. We may have slept a lot on this trip, but we are still exhausted and have a big day of sightseeing ahead of us tomorrow. 

We caught the Lake Shore Limited, the Amtrak sleeper to Chicago, at Penn Station. We had a charming room with two seats and a toilet. We rode up the Hudson River valley at sunset with the occasional rain showers and then glorious shafts of sunlight. Really, someone should do some oil paintings of this area. We had an almost edible dinner in the dining car, then went to bed and woke up in Toledo. Not, alas, the one El Greco hailed from. No, this is the one that John Denver famously panned. But no place looks particularly good from its railroad tracks. 

After a few more hours across verdant farmland and a bit of industrial wasteland, we arrived in Chicago. My cousin Rebecca and her husband Dennis were off at a memorial service, so we let ourselves in. This gave us a chance to scope out their condo which is a block off the lake. My favorite part of their home is the sunroom. I kicked out the cat and set up residence.

When they returned, we were delighted to find out that their son John and my cousin Emmalyn were there for the weekend. We celebrated the family reunion, as I like to celebrate everything, by going out to dinner!

  John was considering having the duck but decided against it. Or maybe vice versa….

The next day, to conclude our theatrical tour of the summer, we saw a matinée of War Paint at the Goodman Theatre. With designs on Broadway, this musical stars Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole. This casting of two major divas makes musical theater types feverish with anticipation. The divas didn’t disappoint but, once again, and I know it’s old-fashioned, a few tunes wouldn’t hurt. Every tuneless song is sung like a showstopper and this was just in Act I. Act II has a little more variety and a lot more costumes. As for its chances on Broadway, see my list of shows I didn’t like in my comments on The Color Purple.

That evening Dennis barbecued and John had a one-day-early ice cream birthday pie. After nearly a month on the road it was nice to have a home-cooked meal.

The next day, the Fourth of July itself, we went on a tour of the Windy City. Rebecca is a docent with the Chicago Architecture Foundation and does walking tours of the Loop. She is getting ready to start doing the boat tours that are certainly the most famous offerings of that organization. So we booked a tour and sat in the back. Rebecca told us what the lady was going to say even before she said it. Our docent was pretty good. Rebecca will be fantastic. We both posed for pictures with the skyline in the background. 

Chicago is a more satisfying place to see monumental commercial buildings than New York is. There is something about the Manhattan grid that makes it impossible to ever find a place to see anything except maybe the Old Pan Am building. The river and the more generous sense of space in Chicago allow you to appreciate the buildings better. Even when they are monikered in ways you’d rather not see….

We went to the top of the old London Insurance building, now a hotel, for a drink on the rooftop bar. I had no idea it was possible to charge so much for a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. 

But the view is, I suppose, what you’re really paying for. And who can resist this view up the north fork of the River along Wacker Drive? 

Rebecca told me that John that he should find a restaurant for his birthday lunch. He consulted the phone and found the River Roast, a place specializing in roast meats (this is Chicago, not Santa Monica) right on the river by the La Salle Street bridge. We called Dennis and the crew and before long we were all seated down for a delicious meal. It was fun finding a place that where the locals had never eaten before!

 Since it was his birthday John got to sit next to Rebecca. 

Our last morning in Chicago was devoted to more art and architecture. That’s the theme of the painting below, I think. Or maybe those are just rectangles and not a skyline. The viewer is the one who creates the meaning…

Rebecca gave us an abbreviated version of her Loop tour. We started at the headquarters of the Architecture Foundation.

 We saw great old Chicago favorites like the Board of Trade

 and The Rookery.

Dennis and Rebecca wanted to take us to lunch at the University Club. There’s a cool balcony near the top floor. That’s where the arrow slits on the ninth floor are in the picture below.  There must be a correct architecture term for that. We will have to ask Rebecca next time we see her.

Unfortunately, Dennis was wearing an extremely tasteful tee shirt and John was wearing those godawful cargo shorts, and both of these were fashion faux-pas for The University Club. So while we were not completely expelled from the premises, we had to eat lunch by ourselves in an enormous gothic room. I missed the lake view, but it was a pretty cool Downton Abbey feeling. 

 After this, we went off to the Art Institute 

We had only one play to see today and the weather was absolutely perfect. So we decided to ride around New York on bikes. We started off near the Chelsea Piers and decided to ride south. 

A very pleasant ride down the Hudson River bikeway brought us to the financial district. We had lunch there in the shadow of the new Freedom Tower, the replacement to the World Trade Center. 

We went to see the 911 monument. I found the fountain curiously unmoving. I understand the idea behind this memorial, but it just for me it lacked the emotional impact of something like Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial. 

The new town certainly looks better than the old Twin Towers. Those were a eyesore from the moment they went up. This tapers slightly, and the lines create a sense of upward motion as well. 

The transportation hub, designed by famed Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, is impressive, at least from the exterior, although I am hardly convinced it is worth the nearly four billion dollar price tag. 

John and I wanted to revisit St Paul’s chapel. We had been there a couple months after the attacks and found the displays from around the country moving. It was, however, closed up pretty tightly for some unspecified renovations. 

From here, we cut through the maze of streets in the old part of downtown towards the Battery. Our plan was to explore the bike path along the East River. Unfortunately, this bike path has the charm of the one along the Los Angeles River. It takes you through some pretty depressing post-industrial parts of New York, and in places it is not particularly safe. One small high point is where you get to see the Brooklyn Bridge. 

Somewhere around the United Nations we cut over to the West Side and returned to Chelsea to clean up and take a nap.

In the evening, we went to see our final play of time in New York, The Color Purple. This revival is generally supposed to be much better than the original. I vaguely recalled reading the book and seeing the movie a couple decades ago. The plot seemed somewhat familiar. But most of the audience knew every world already by heart. For me, it had the feeling of being not at musical revival but a religious revival. 

We had breakfast this morning at our new Chelsea accommodations. As much fun as it was to stay at the Ritz, none of the people we saw there were particularly interesting. We enjoyed talking to people at the Townhouse, and none more than Betty. 

With an strong Melbourne accent and those wonderful glasses, Betty seemed like the basis for Barry Humphrey’s famous Dame Edna. But this woman was hardly a silly suburban housewife. She is a judge on the Victoria Supreme Court and her passions are criminal justice and politics, not china patterns and gladiolas. 

We were staying not far from the celebrated High Line, an old elevated train trestle converted into an urban oasis. 

Part of what makes this part of New York so appealing is that the old factories and wharves that separated the city from the Hudson River are now largely gone. Of course, there is a downside to that as well:  those industries and the shipping connected to them created middle class jobs.

There is a lot of art on the High Line, and some of it is a little disturbing….

This part of Chelsea used to be called the “Meatpacking District” and we found one small remnant of that era. 

The new Whitney Museum anchors the southern end of the High Line. It’s a seven story building, but only three floors are devoted to exhibition space. Here is Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney herself in a portrait that scandalized polite New York society. 

We did a tour of portraits from the permanent collection. I was particularly intrigued by the idea of “portraits without people.” These are painting that symbolically represent a person. The one below called Painting, Number 5, 1914 is by Marsden Hartley. A New Englander who studied in Berlin, Hartley fell in love with a young German cavalry officer named Karl von Freiburg. Unfortunately, von Freiburg was killed right at the outset of the First World War. This painting was intended to capture his essence as a Prussian military man. 

Some of the art was apparently still in the process of creation. 

And some of the art was on the other visitors to the museum. We learned later that Lynn, our niece, had gone to the Art Institute of Chicago with this guy. 

 The decks and stairwells of the museum provide a find look at the city and the High Line

and the integration of art in its urban context was particularly fascinating. 

In the afternoon, we went to see The Humans. This play won Best Drama this year at the Tonys. It is a family drama set in a cramped China town basement apartment on Thanksgiving. 

Family dramas have been a staple of the American theater since Eugene O’Neill, but this play was sensitively written and superbly performed. 

In the evening we rode bikes again up to the theater district to see Shuffle Along. This play is about the making of the groundbreaking African-American musical in the early 1920s. Although the book awkwardly combines the standard backstage musical plot with somebody’s doctoral dissertation in American musicology, the score is good and the dancing was particularly fine. The lead in this show was the celebrated Audra McDonald. She was great, and, as Scripture says, great with child, too. The show will close next month so she can have her baby. This is a shame, while not the greatest show I’ve ever seen, I certainly liked it better than many huge Broadway hits (Book of Mormon, Cats, Rent and the list goes on) that I’ve seen. And the show is an ensemble piece and not a star vehicle.

This scene, using the suitcases as percussion instruments, was probably my favorite in the show. 

Tomorrow will be our last full day in New York. The time is going fast!

We moved today from our grand splurge to more realistic accommodations. We will be staying for the next three nights at the Townhouse Inn of Chelsea, a bed-and-breakfast that received rather good ratings on TripAdvisor and booking.com. It’s a bit of a letdown after our glorious accommodations overlooking Central Park, but we will be fine I am sure. The room is somewhat dark as it is in the back of the building, but there is absolutely no street noise even with the windows open, and given the fact that it is on West 23rd Street, that is a minor miracle.

John and I decided to sign up for three days with the Citibike program. We decided to take a ride back through Central Park to the Metropolitan Museum. John knew that there was this huge fashion display there and he wanted to see it. I lasted about five minutes before begging permission to explore some other part of the museum. John as you can see below spent much more time here. 

I am not sure if anybody was even supposed to wear this one. 

The fabric is kind of cool on this one, but it must be designed for some woman with awfully long arms. 

This one is rather startling, though I am not sure if anybody I know would look good dressed like a sponge. 

No surprise — this one is a wedding dress. But unless you were getting married at Saint John the Divine I suspect the train would still be at the front door when the bride had made it to the altar. 

I explored lots of old stuff like this Assyrian bas-relief, 

a reconstruction of a Roman bedroom,

Art Nouveau furniture, 

 and stuff from Africa. 

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Meanwhile, John also discovered something that looked like the set from Psycho on the roof. 

 As we were riding back, I made John stop so I could take this picture. That way I figured we could tell everybody that we had seen Hamilton in New York. 

In the evenings we went to Fun Home, the Broadway musical. I found the story quite engaging and the score was pretty good for that modern Broadway style. 

After it was over, we walked around. Times Square at night. While it is hardly as seedy as it was when I first came to New York in the early 1980s, it did not strike either of us as being quite as cleaned up as it was ten years ago.  

After a train ride through mostly urban decay we arrived in New York City, which was decked out for the 4th July. I had gone crazy and booked us for one night in the Ritz Carlton. Our view from the ninth floor was amazing. We had access to the club room which served round-the-clock Hors d’oeuvres. John refused to understand my logic that this made the hotel a great deal that practically paid for itself.

At these prices John was hard-pressed to get me to leave the hotel for even a minute.

Of course, since it was in the neighborhood, we had to visit St. Patrick’s, which had just undergone a very thorough cleaning  and gleamed white inside and out.

At the end of Rockefeller Center we found this object of art. It’s a full size swimming pool set on its end. I thought it was rather silly untilI John told me the name of the piece, “Van Gogh’s Ear”, and then I thought it was profound.

We got into MOMA for the last forty-five minutes before closing for half price. We saw this Seurat of Honfleur where we had once rented a house with our friend Vicki.

We took off early from Charlottesville in order to make it to Washington DC in time for a matinee production there of “Taming of the Shrew” with a traditional all male cast.

 I had mixed feelings about the production as a whole, but Maulik Pancho’s performance was outstanding. You may remember him as Alec Baldwin’s secretary in 30 Rock

I enjoyed the use of the turntable set which gave cinematic flow to the action.

Walking back to the theater we popped into the National Portrait Gallery and had a snack in the atrium, which is an amazing bit of architecture. The whole central courtyard is covered by huge steel and glass creation that allows you to feel you are outside and yet not have to deal with the mid Atlantic States weather.

You never know who is going to be added to the portrait gallery. This new portrait of Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood seemed especially apropos for the DC Museum.
I continued to be fascinated by California WPA artwork. Golden Gate Bridge in progress and Bunker Hill before urban renewal.

Millard Sheets

On to the big apple.

We left Asheville early Wednesday morning. 

We stopped in Charlotte to see our friend Myra. She claims to be the only Jew in Charlotte. I don’t know about that, but Myra has always had fabulously edgy taste in clothing and an eye for Asian art. When we went for lunch at a restaurant the place was packed with aging southern belles. John and I were the only men there. Mayra looked nothing like these steel magnolias and I’m sure her home decor looks nothing like theirs either.

We arrived late into Charlottesville. 

Thursday we had a quiet day around the house. Ellen was working. We went shopping for Saturday’s dinner. We had dinner at a nice Italian restaurant in town. 

Friday morning we went to Richmond. 

We met up with Cynthia from John Bassett’s EFM group. She gave us the quick grand tour.

Richmond is a city with lots of history that I can’t begin to cover here, But Cynthia knew it all.

Monument Avenue is a boulevard of stately homes. At each intersection is a statue of former Richmond residents that we Yankees we’re surprised to see immortalized.

Jefferson Davis                                                                                                      Robert E. Lee

Stonewall Jackson. Arthur Ashe end of the road facing the opposite direction of all the other stashes. Can we say tokenism.

Jefferson Hotel

We met up with Kay and Elsa for lunch. We were having such a good time chatting and eating that I forgot to take pictures. 

That evening, back in Charlottesville, we had been invited to dinner at Ellen’s friend Fatima and her husband Nassar’s house. It was Ramadan and they are Muslim, so they had invited some students of Ellen’s, also Muslim, who were there for an African symposium, to break their fast with us.

At dinner Nasser mentioned that he was Shiite. One of the young men, who was Sunni, look stunned. “I have never meant a Shiite before.” There were several tense moments but Nasar handled the whole situation with great diplomacy. This is exactly the sort of experience the symposium was created for.
Saturday evening we were invited to another professors’ house. The Africans this time we’re not Muslim, so we ate before sunset and most everyone had a glass or two of wine.

One of the women at the party had obviously singled me out. She asked me many questions about John Bassett. She finally asked how long I had known him. I mustard up my courage, not knowing what the reaction I would get from this African woman, and told her that John and I were married. Her voice became very low and she told me that she was the head of the LBGT group where she lived in Africa. She had not come out to anyone in her group here. She left the room for a moment and came back with several pins from the first gay pride parade they had just had in her hometown and gave them to me. 

We leave tomorrow morning first thing.