Springtime tourists in NYC and DC

When our dear friends Sotiris and Olina suggested last fall that they would love to come with us to New York the next time we visit, I thought oh what a nice idea, but didn’t think it would really happen! But lo and behold, it came to pass.

New York City in springtime is a riot of colors — red tulips, pink and magenta azaleas, yellow daffodils and roses. As it was our friends’ first trip to the U.S. and Big Apple, we had to plan our days well in the limited time they had to spend. That meant choosing just a few of the infinite activities and places to see in this wonderful city. In any case, now we had an excuse to play tourist too!

I. Midtown

5th Avenue, Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Grand Central, MOMA, New York Public Library, Morgan Library and Museum

On a warm springlike day with fluffy clouds and blue skies, the travelers set off.

The granddaddy of all observation towers, the Empire State Building, used to be the only place that tourists went up to see the view. Now you can go up in a number of observation towers, including the Summit next to Grand Central, where our friends had booked for an interactive tour.

The Beaux Arts Grand Central building opened to the public in 1913 in an Italian palazzo style.

The building, which was in in real danger of being demolished in the 1970’s, was saved thanks to the efforts of many New Yorkers, including Jackie Kennedy Onassis, whose name is given to the main door and foyer area.

Be sure to check out the Whispering Gallery on the lower level near the Oyster Bar. You need two people: one to whisper and the other to listen. You stand at diagonal corners and it really works! It’s It’s an acoustic oddity but not unique — there’s also a whispering gallery for example at the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.

On 5th Avenue we sat in a pleasant courtyard drinking…watery iced coffee (oh where are you, freddo cappuccino?) Surrounding us in the courtyard are sculptures with beloved Sesame Street characters like Ernie and Bert, Cookie Monster and Big Bird, who share their space and eat or drink together with a different creature. Plaques next to the sculptures stress connection, shared moments, embracing differences and unity and acceptance.

……………

Suddenly the skies opened in a deluge and just as suddenly vendors appeared selling $10 umbrellas. The skies cleared…for a little while.

We ducked into St. Patrick’s, this beautiful Gothic cathedral, another NYC landmark.

Next stop MoMA and the sculpture garden.

Besides the vast collection of 20th and 21st century art, every day in the lower level are several screenings of vintage films. When I lived in NY, I was a regular — I discovered a whole new world of Italian neo realism and others. There never seems to be the time though now to watch a film!

Tulips in rainbow colors fill the lawns of Bryant Park in back of the New York Public Library.

Despite a drizzle, there was a late lunchtime concert in the park.

The Library opened to the public in 1911, with its iconic lions in front.

You used to be able to walk through the magnificent reading room on the 3rd floor, but now you have to be doing research.Be sure to notice the gorgeous wooden ceiling with its painting of clouds and the the four huge Depression era, Works Progress Administration murals on the walls tracing the history of the recorded word.

In the second mural, a medieval scribe — a monk in white robes — is copying a manuscript. In the distance, people are fleeing a burning town.

As it was Friday, the Morgan Library and Museum has free admission after 5 pm (with reservations) and jazz music in the atrium. Don’t miss Morgan’s study, where he used to meet art dealers, businessmen and friends. He obviously loved red with the red damasked walls made of silk that he imported from Italy, along with the Renaissance paintings and furniture.

And the gorgeous library.

We sat down to have a snack and a drink.

Note: If you want to stay in midtown Manhattan, a good choice is the Radio City Apartments, a hotel whose rooms have little kitchenettes, so you have the option to cook if you want.

II. Central Park and the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Manhattan’s glorious park stretches from 59th St. up to 110th and cuts east side from west. We’re walking up the east side of the park to the Met.

There’s always a line of both adults and kids looking up at the Delacorte Clock near the zoo and south entrance. Every hour after the monkey at the top hits the top bell, then various animals dance around playing musical instruments. It never seems to lose its charm.

At the Dairy visitor center, you can get maps of the park, buy Central Park souvenirs and nearby watch or participate in chess games in fierce competition.

The park is a popular place for girls celebrating their quinceanera or 15 year old birthday, a celebration in Hispanic communities in the U.S.

A main attraction in the park is the 19th century Bethesda Fountain, built to celebrate an aqueduct that brought fresh water from Westchester County (north of Manhattan) to New York City.

The sculptor stressed the power of the biblical pool Bethesda, an ancient healing pool in Jerusalem. At the top is the “Angel of the Waters” with four cherubs around her with the names Temperance, Purity, Peace and Health.

At the boating pond nearby, you can rent canoes and kayaks, and a restaurant with the outdoor tables facing the pond.

We knew the huge bronze Alice in Wonderland statue was somewhere around. There she is with her cat Dinah surrounded by her friends — the White Rabbit, Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat and the Dormouse having a tea party. It’s nearly impossible for a kid to not want to climb up on a mushroom… or even Alice’s head.

The statue is near the conservatory water, one of many such ponds, seven bodies of water in the park, to be exact. Also known as the “Model Boat Pond” or “Stuart Little” pond, this is where mouse Stuart captains one of those little sailboats, both in the E.B. White story and in the film version.

We’re exiting to 5th Avenue on east 72nd St. near the museum. There are the usual dog walkers.

After all that walking, it was time for a classic NY street food treat, a hot dog from one of the vendors everywhere with their yellow carts, Olina was curious to try a classic hot pretzel with mustard.

There’s a special exhibit of fans through the ages

From experience I know you need to limit your visit to no more than two or three areas! This time we pass up the Egyptian area which everyone seems to start with, and we and visited Asian art instead.

Since the day was just perfect, after the museum visit we walked through to the west side of the park. The Belvedere castle overlooking the Great Lawn, was built on the highest point of the park in the 1860’s and for a while, it was used as a weather station.

A great day for picnics on the lawn..

Or just sitting and reading a book on a bench.

Exiting on the west side, we walk down Central Park West. Of the many magnificent buildings along the walk, none are as grand as the Dakota (where John Lennon lived and was shot), a national historic landmark from the 1880’s and the oldest remaining luxury apartment in the upper west side.

The west side walk takes you to Columbus Circle with its modern skyscrapers and busy intersections.

III. Broadway Show / A Walk on the High Line

Just when we thought it was spring, winter returned with a last gasp for a couple of days.

What’s a visit to Manhattan without a Broadway show? We opted for a rom com musical, “light but not mindless,” a new show with an intriguing title: Two Strangers Carry a Cake Across New York. Two characters only: a British bloke visiting NY, a bit naive and romantic, and a jaded cynical New Yorker who works as a waitress… Witty and enjoyable and not so predictable.

Son-in-law Miltos insisted on taking us all out to a Brazilian steak house, Fogo de Chao. What a great place! The salad bar alone in its delicious and diverse ingredients could feed you happily for a week. But the restaurant is also a carnivore’s delight if you opt for meat too, like Miltos and Sotiris did. In this case waiters come to your table with skewers of all different kinds of meat.

By the time we finished our meal it was starting to get dark but we wanted to keep to our plan to walk on the high line, which is the route of the old elevated train that used to carry goods in the 1930’s or so. Abandoned for many years until 2009, it was made into an elevated green park between Chelsea and the extreme West Village.

It starts in Hudson Yards, a luxury complex of apartments and shops, near the “Vessel,” that looks like a giant jungle gym full of connecting stairways or something that Dutch graphic artist ME Escher would dream up. The Vessel has a checkered history –after it opened several people jumped to their deaths. It was closed for several years as they installed protective netting and glass barriers.

Along the high line you might find interesting art objects like these witchy looking shoes we saw a few years ago/

Or this “organization” clock

If you walk the high line to the end, you get out at the Meatpacking District extreme west side of 14th st, which used to be an area never to wander after dark. Like so many places, it’s been cleaned up and now has a number of classy bars.

Through the cold we walked through streets with beautiful brownstones to Washington Square. As you get closer to the square, you can see that nearly all the buildings belong to New York University. Not a soul on the streets. Desolate.

Sotiris and Olina undoubtedly were wondering why we were dragging them to this deserted park, but compare it with the way it usually is. Here’s summertime of course.

IV. Lower Manhattan / Staten Island Ferry /Battery Park / Wall St. / South St Seaport / Brooklyn Bridge / Chinatown / Little Italy

Who says there are no bargains left in NYC? The Staten Island Ferry! A 25 minute free ride that gives you great views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island in the background, lower Manhattan and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. From Whitehall Terminal, you go upstairs and join the line for the ferry. At Staten Island, you get off and follow the line around to go back to Manhattan (unless you want to stay in Staten Island!) If the weather is good, stand in the front for the great view of Manhattan receding and the sea gulls circling around the boat.

Outside the terminal you’re in Battery Park, where you get the boat to actually visit the Statue of Liberty and tour Ellis Island, where 12 million immigrants passed through from 1892 to 1954.

This statue, appropriately entitled “The Immigrants,” stands in front of Castle Clinton, a sandstone fort built during the War of 1812, and the first immigration center before Ellis Island. The statue celebrates the diversity of NYC.

Lower Manhattan is the oldest part of the city. More tulips, in fiery red..

We’re walking on the east side to go through the South Street seaport and the Brooklyn Bridge. (If you opt to walk west, this will take you to Tribeca and the 9/11 memorial — which Sotiris and Olina went to on their own — at Ground Zero, along with the Oculus, the shopping mall with its unusual architecture and white color.)

Walking in the seaport area you really feel like you’re in an earlier time, different from the rest of Manhattan, with its cobblestone streets, renovated boats and a preserved hub of New York maritime history that you can discover in the museum. Fulton Street still has a market, but the fish market, that operated from 1822 for 183 years, has moved to the Bronx. So many changes…

At last, we find the entrance for the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian walkway. The bridge is unusual in that you’re totally separated from cars that are on the lower level. So you have this wonderful wooden promenade all to yourself.

The bridge is the scene for many historic protests, from the early 20th c. suffragettes to civil rights marches in the 60’s to more recent marches like Occupy Wall Street and Black lives matter.

As with Central Park, this seems to be a place where girls celebrating their quinceanera like to pose for photos.

We turned around halfway, where the concentration of vendors is highest — T shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, magnets, $1 key chains.

The road takes us into Chinatown. At Columbus Park, the women are playing Mahjong and the men their own game, placing lots of bets.

We don’t want to miss Tasty Dumpling on Mulberry Street, across from the park, known for their delicious dumplings of pork and chive or pork and cabbage. Cash only as the sign says.

Chinatown is one of the most densely populated areas of Manhattan, and has kept the old fire escape buildings.

Mulberry Street and Mott Street run right into Little Italy, which is really rows of restaurants.

If you enjoyed reading about New York City, you might like to check out my fictionalized memoir Step Lively: New York City Tales of Love and Change, about living in Manhattan in the late 70’s and early 80’s:

https://a.co/d/eZQC44j

On to Washington DC (with Vamoose bus)

Smithsonian: Botanical Gardens / National Gallery of Art / Sculpture Garden / Museum of Natural History / Air & Space Museum

I don’t think there’s anything like the National Mall, bordered on one side by the Capitol building and the other, the Washington Monument. In this huge area, you would need days to visit these fabulous museums, 21 now, known as the Smithsonian, all with free admission. It was British scientist James Smithson who had the idea for the first museum now known as the Castle, built in the 1840’s of red sandstone.

We poke our heads into the Air and Space Museum, recently renovated. If you’re interested in air and spacecraft, this has the largest collection in the world, including for example the original Wright Brothers plane from 1903. Besides the models, the exhibits are fascinating and sometimes interactive, like the history of flight.. You need lots of time for this fabulous museum! Because of its popularity, you now have to get timed passes online (still free).

I always enjoy the Botanical Gardens with their lush plants from around the world.

Particularly the tropical plants that you can climb a bridge and look down on.

From the Botanical Gardens you get a great view of the Capitol.

Inside the National Gallery of Art, East Wing.

There’s more on Calder’s work at the top floor next to the door where you go out to see the blue rooster.

Break time in the cafe next to the fountain and walkway to the National Gallery west wing.

west wing courtyard

After the Air and Space museum, probably everyone’s favorite is the Natural History. During the week it’s always packed with schoolkids on field trips. Besides the dinosaurs and the fascinating evolution exhibit, check out the gems and minerals, home of the Hope Diamond.

Memorials in the Tidal Basin

Our friends of course wanted to see the front of the White House. This was not meant to be; detours take you everywhere but. What gives? Lafayette Park across the street is all dug up. We try to approach the White House from the back but that’s impossible too. We opt for passing by the Washington Monument and walking down to the Tidal Basin, the Potomac with its view of the Jefferson Memorial, but alas we’re too late for the cherry blossoms.

Washington DC is full of large open spaces so this area is suitable for large memorials, like the recent one to Martin Luther King. At the Lincoln Memorial, these imposing steps lead up to Lincoln’s statue and the words of his famous speeches on the walls.

Looking down on the beautiful Reflecting Pool. Wait a moment, there’s no water in the pool! What’s going on? Apparently this is still one more project of the U.S. president (promised to be $1 million and now $13 million) to clean it up (?) and paint the bottom “American flag blue” for the 250 year celebration. As with most of his projects, it is being challenged in court…

Here’s what it looks like in the scene from Forrest Gump when Forrest is reunited with Jenny.

The impressive memorial to Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) with its fountains and flowers

A popular part of the monument is the bread or unemployment line, characteristic from the Depression era early 1930’s, in the first years of FDR’s administration..

From 29 years ago when the memorial opened:

After another watery iced coffee break…

The Vietnam memorial: 58,320 names on black granite. Simple, so moving.

There’s also a statue on women’s role in the war as nurses, which Kristin Hannah wrote about beautifully in her novel The Women.

Before we head off to find the closest metro, one last statue and that’s the one for Albert Einstein, in front of the National Academy of Sciences, that’s across Constitution Avenue from the Vietnam memorial.

This huge bronze statue is tucked away in a wooden grove — and easy to miss if you’re not looking for it.. In Einstein’s left hand he holds a tablet with mathematical equations.

This statue, like Alice in Wonderland, invites you to climb on it, as Theo and Suzanna did.

In front of Einstein a star map with thousands of metal studs shows the planets, sun, moon, stars, and other celestial objects, the way they were positioned on the dedication date in 1979.

And on the bench where Einstein sits, three quotations; let him have the last word here. Who can disagree?

As long as I have any choice in the matter, I shall live only in a country where civil liberty, tolerance, and equality of all citizens before the law prevail.

Joy and amazement of the beauty and grandeur of this world of which man can just form a faint notion.

The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.

Georgetown

Tired of monuments, museums and memorials, we thought to wander around the historic neighborhood of Georgetown, always a favorite to walk around by both locals and tourists. Back in high school, it was my favorite place to hang out.

We start with the walk along the river. Once this waterfront area was a dynamic center of commerce and trade, but then factory buildings were left vacant and ugly for years until it was made into a park in 2011.

In the back of the kayaker are the Watergate building and the what I hope will remain named the Kennedy Center.

Georgetown is home to the oldest D.C. jazz club: Blues Alley. I do remember it from my school days.

Wait, something else is missing. Where’s the water in the C & O canal? It’s here in Georgetown where it starts, the canal that brought commerce to the area for nearly 100 years, that stretched for 185 miles up to western Maryland. It’s a pleasant place to walk or run along or ride your bicycle. But again, there’s no water just like the Reflecting Pool. I read there’s a project going on for this too…What’s next, the Potomac River?

Music is playing on the streets and students are everywhere, some wearing T shirts saying “Georgetown Day” carrying around some strange looking bottles with blue or green drinks.

We head to the university, where eons ago, I got my master’s degree.

Signs saying “Georgetown Day 2026” abound — graduation! Tables with food — hot dogs, hamburgers, corn, chips … So why not? We join in the fun.

Time to make our way down what are known as the “exorcist steps” used in the filming of the 1973 thriller “The Exorcist”

The steps take us to Key Bridge, which leads to Virginia. For a while I used to do this marvelous walk across the river every day while I was studying at Georgetown. (Unlike Brooklyn Bridge, here like most bridges, pedestrians walk on either side.)

From the bridge, on one side is the Georgetown boat house and in the back the university

The time has come. Sotiris and Olina prepare to return to Athens. How wonderful that we made this visit a reality. It’s always so interesting to see the familiar with fresh eyes — and now Elias and I have to get ready for family to come to celebrate my mom’s 100th birthday. Happy birthday Mom!

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Sherri Moshman Paganos is a writer and former educator, inspired by her life in Athens, where she and her husband are happily retired and enjoying their travels in Greece and abroad. You can check out her writing — fiction, non-fiction, poetry and articles here.