2016

Friday November 25, 2016

We arrive in good time at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. We drop off our luggage and walk to the security checkpoint. There is a separate counter for Delta flights. We  answer the security questions and get  stickers on our passports. Then our carry on luggage is checked. We drink coffee at Starbucks. At 11.50  boarding starts for our flight to Newark. The flight goes smoothly. Halfway to Newark one of the  passengers gets medical problems and  a doctor is called for. It turns out that there is not one on board. Cabin crew is apparently ablehelp him so that an emergency landing is not required. We arrive around 3pm local time at Newark International Liberty Airport. Immigration control is quite fast. We have to wait for our luggage. Then through customs and on to the Airtrain. We buy  tickets for NJ Transit to New York Penn Station from the vending machine. The Airtrain takes us to the train station. We transfer to the NJ Transit train to New York. The trip to New York takes about half an hour. From Penn Station, we walk to the hotel. That's a bit longer than expected and it starts to rain. At  Morgans Hotel on Madison Avenue @ E 38th Street, we have a reasonable room (for a not so reasonable price) on the 11th floor. We take a rest. Around 6 o'clock we eat at Szechuan Gourmet restaurant on 38th street, just off 5th Avenue. It is crowded with mostly Chinese patrons. That must be a good sign. After the delicious dinner we  have a drink in the hotel bar. We to bed  at 8 pm.

Weather: 11⁰ (52°F) and light rain

Saturday November 26, 2016

We sleep fitfully and get up around 7am. Breakfast on weekends starts promptly at 8am. It is a continental breakfast, so no cooked food items and no meat. The buffet is laid out on the bar and we eat in the bar area.

After breakfast we have coffee at Starbucks and we go to the AT&T store in the Empire State Building. I buy a new SIM card and a prepaid data plan (GoPhone, 2.5 GB, valid for 1 month for $ 25) for my mobile hotspot, which I purchased in Las Vegas last year. A European hotspot does not work on the US mobile networks. Service is quick and excellent. Then we walk to Grand Central Station. Here we buy a MetroCard with a 7 day pass for unlimited travel for $30 in the subway station from the vending machine. We take the subway to 59th Street and walk to the Roosevelt Island Tram. With this cable car we go to Roosevelt Island in the East River. The island was called Minnehanonck in the original language of the Lenape Indians. The Dutch called the Pig Island, but after the take over by the British it was called  Blackwell Island from 1686 after the family who had a farm here until the early 19th century. The  great grandson of the first Blackwell built a wooden house in 1796, now known as Blackwell House, and it's the sixth oldest house in New York. The city bought the island in 1828 and built a hospice, a hospital, an asylum, a prison and a  small pox hospital. The island was called  Wellfare Islandfrom 1921 . In 1973 the institutions were closed and the island was renamed Roosevelt Island. Now there is a residential area on the island, a hospital and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park in memory of the former president and governor (1882-1945), native of New York. We walk along the quiet western side of the island with a beautiful view of Manhattan. We pass the ruins of the smallpox hospital  (designed by James Renwick in 1856) and continue to the Roosevelt monument  by architect Louis Kahn. Kahn designed the monument between 1972 and 1974, but it was not completed until 2012. It consists of a lawn lined with linden trees and a half-height wall with a bust of the president at the end. Behind the bust stand  the four freedoms that Roosevelt postulated in 1941 in his 8th State of the Union are chisseled: freedom of speech and worship, freedom from fear and want. These four freedoms were the basis of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , which was adopted by the UN in 1948. From here we have a nice view of the United Nations headquarters. We walk back to the cable car station and take the free island bus to the northern point. There is a - no longer in use - lighthouse dating back to 1872. The lighthouse was used until 1940. We have lunch at a sports bar before heading back to Manhattan taking the subway (Line F) . The subway takes us to Rockefeller Centre and from there we take the bus to the hotel.

Around half past three we take the subway (line 4) to Brooklyn (named after Breukelen in the Netherlands) to visit the Brooklyn Flea Market. During the summer months this hipster flea market is held on the banks of the East River, in the DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass) area. In the winter, the organisers search for a suitable indoor location. This winter it is a former bank building of the Williamsburg Savings Bank at Hanson Place (subway Atlantic Avenue). Besides the 75 vendors of the flea market, also  25 food stalls of the outdoor Smorgasburg food market  have been squeezed in. It is a cozy incrowd venue for hip New York. We walk around the beautiful hall of the bank, take pictures and have a beer in the bank vault in the basement of the building. Then we take the subway to Franklin Avenue in Brooklyn and walk down the Avenue to Bergen Street. Here's the beer hall Berg’n. This was started by the same group that organizes the flea market. There are lots of beers on tap and food can be ordered at four stalls. You get a pager that buzzes when the food is ready. Erik's Filipino burger is disappointing, but my poutine tastes fine. We walk back along Franklin Ave  and drink coffee at Starbucks. We return with line 4 (express) back to Grand Central

Weather: Cloudy 11⁰ (52°F)

Sunday November 27, 2016

We have coffee at the Starbucks on Madison Avenue & 35th. We walk to Herald Square, where we take the subway line B to W 4th Street and change to line E to World Trade Center. We first see the memorial for the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001. This consists of two large basins in the sites of the twin towers of old the WTC. Along the edges of the basins  the names of the victims can be read. The pools consist of a waterfall along the edges. The water runs out through a square hole in the middle of the basin. Next we go to the One World Trade Center, also called the Freedom Tower, which replaces the Twin Towers. It is now with its  height of 1776 feet or 541 meters  the Western Hemisphere's tallest building and consists of a rectangular block, where pieces are taken out. The tower has a square base and a square roof, which are twisted relative to each other. After buying a ticket for $ 37 per person we take the escalator down for a security check. From there we go through a video presentation about the construction of the tower towards the elevator. Going up in the elevator, the development of the view of New York from the 15th century to the present is projected on the elevator's walls. A beautiful sight. The perspective changes as we go higher. Once upstairs our photo is taken (we can buy it for $ 30), before we arrive at a video wall. A film is screened  with images from daily life in New York and at the end of the movie screen is rolled up, and the real view is revealed. We can go through to the observatory, where can we buy an iPad iwith interactive commentary about what you see. It costs another $ 15. We give it a miss. The view of the city and surrounding area is beautiful. The weather is clear and we can see far in all directions. Initially (10am) it is fairly quiet, but it soon the observatory gets a lot busier.
After we have seen everything we go down again. We take a taxi to South Ferry, where we take the Staten Island Ferry to Staten Island. The crossing is free and offers stunning views of Manhattan, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. We are escorted by a gun boat of the US Coast Guard. Staten Island  is a  borough of New York City since 1898. The island was seized on behalf of the Dutch East India Company by Henry Hudson in 1609. He founded a trading post and named it Staaten Eylant after the Staten Generaal, the Assembly of the Dutch Republic. The island is twice as large as Manhattan but with a population of  just 500,000 people. We take bus S74  to Richmond Historic Site. The bus ride takes about half an hour. We pass New Dorp (Dutch for Village). Historic Richmond is an outdoor museum with original buildings from the 18th to 20th centuries. It is a bit disappointing. We take the bus back and then the ferry to Manhattan. We have lunch somewhere near South Ferry and take the subway # 4 from Bowling Green back to the hotel.

We rest and around 5 o'clock we take the subway # 6 to Bleecker Street. We walk from there to DBGB Kitchen and  Bar on the Bowery. The Bowery is a street, a near the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The word is a corruption of the Dutch word for farm (Boerderij). DBGB is a bistro style project of the famous star chef Daniel Boulud. We eat very good and affordable. From the restaurant we go to Chelsea with line # 6, then L and then line E to 8th Avenue & 23rd. We drink coffee at Starbucks and walk to the Baracuda bar. A quiet gay bar in a side street (W 24th St), between 7th and 8th Avenues. It's kind of stepping back in time. An old fashioned gay pub. After a beer we walk to W19th Street to G-Lounge. Which is a lot livelier with a transvestite bingo and gogo dancers. After a beer we take line # 1 to Times Square. We step out to street level to see the illuminated signs. Truly New York feel. Then back to the hotel.

Weather: partly cloudy. 4-8⁰ C. 39-46°F.

Monday, November 28, 2016

Today we have a rendez-vous with Julie, a volunteer of the Big Apple Greeter Service. This organization connects visitors to volunteers who want to show their city from the perspective of the local. We meet her at the subway station at 7th Ave & 34th St. Julie is in a wheelchair. She is quite skillful with. We take the bus to Fulton Yard on the banks of the Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan. Here the High Line begins, a former elevated railway that has been transformed into a landscaped park. Before we reach the ramp to the High Line we pass the terminus of the cheap long distance buses to Boston and Philadelphia and some other cities. Passengers stand in long lines waiting by the side of the road. The High-line was built in the 20s, to get the freight trains off the streets of New York. There were too many road deaths by collisions with freight trains. Because a lot of business activity has left Manhattan in the 1980s the tracks were no longer needed. In 1990  the last train rode the tracks. In 1999, the city wanted to demolish the railroad, but two local residents founded an association "Friends of the High line" that managed to accomplish the preservation of the High Line. The High Line is landscaped with carefully chosen planting by Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf. The old rails are incorporated into the pavement. Street furniture also fits in well with the track. The line first winds around the rail yard of Penn Station and passes buildings designed by Renzo Piano (New Whitney Museum), Frank Gehry (IAC building)and  many other famous architects' work like Zahar Hadid (520 W 28th Condos). From the overpass you have a whole different perspective on the city. Along the line some nice attraction points have been built, such as the 10th Avenue overlook. It  is an amfitheater with a view of 10th Avenue. Summer performances are  given here. There is also lots of art on the High Line. Most was commissioned by the association and is on temporary display. A stretch of the route runs along the Hudson River. There are sunbeds overlooking the river. The entire route is 1.4 miles long. At the Chelsea Market we leave  the High Line. The Chelsea Market is located in the former Nabisco biscuit factory. Lot of delicious food is sold here, but also much is eaten on the spot. We sit down to drink coffee with a pastry of Sarabeth. Through large windows  you can look into the bakery. We continue and Julie shows us a nice pasta restaurant,  Giovanni Rana. It's past noon and we are tired. We decide to say goodbye to Julie and to have lunch at Giovanni Rana. Rana is a pasta maker from the Veneto in northern Italy, who once home-delivered his handmade pasta himself to the customers. The company has expanded under his son into 38 countries and in 2012 opened the first restaurant here  in Chelsea Market.

After the delicious lunch we take bus M14 to Union Square and from there subway line # 4 to Grand Central. We rest in our hotel and at half past three we hit the road again. We take line 7 to Times Square and there line 1 to Columbus Circle at the southwest corner of Central Park. We rent bikes at Central Park Bike Tours. For $ 15 we rent a bike with gears for an hour. We cycle around the whole of the park and stop here and there to take pictures. It is fairly quiet and large parts of the route are closed to car traffic. The sun shines on the beautiful autumn leaves on the trees and the beautiful residential buildings around the park. The view of the Jacqueline Kennedy Reservoir is great. After an hour we have rounded the park and we return the bikes. We take the subway line A to Times Sq and line 7 to Grand Central. We take  some rest, because we will spent the evening with Charles, our friend in New York. He takes us to an Indonesian restaurant in Brooklyn, Selamat Pagi. It's a little alternative place, but the food is reasonable. It's very nice to see Charles again after so many years. Bas, Charles's partner is also there. Charles is originally from Brooklyn and Bas from Indonesia.

After dinner we take a taxi back to Manhattan.

Weather: sunny. 4-11°C / 39-52°F

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

It's raining cats and dogs. After breakfast and coffee at Starbucks we take the metro line 6 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.. We get off at 86th Street (& Lexington Avenue) and walk towards Central Park. We are too early and have to take shelter under a big umbrella before we join the line. At 10 pm, the museum opens and we get in line. The queue moves pretty fast. Once inside we pay for a ticket (suggested contribution is $25 but anything is welcome) and we leave our bags and coats in the cloakroom. The museum is huge and cannot be covered fully in less than a week. I selected a few highlights which we explore. We start with an Egyptian temple. It is Dendur temple and was donated by Egypt to the US for help in rescuing its archaeological heritage during the development of the Aswan dam. The temple takes up a separate wing in an annexe. Unfortunately, maintenance is being carried out, but it's still impressive. Then we go to the American wing and we see paintings of George Washington. Especially the famous painting by Emanuel Leutze, "George Washington Crossing the Delaware River" is impressive. Then we go to paintings by Tiepolo. There is a huge collection of French impressionists: Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gauguin ... it seems endless. Monet's "Water Lilies" and "Bridge over a pond with water lilies" and 18 others. Van Gogh for example, "Wheatfield with Cypresses" and "Self Portrait with Straw Hat" back to back with  "Potato Peelers". We look also at a lot of Dutch work. Lots of Frans Hals, Rembrandt, etc. A beautiful self-portrait from 1660 of Rembrandt and a portrait of Paul Verschuur, a former mayor of our home town Rotterdam by Frans Hals! After some searching we find a tiny small portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam by Hans Holbein the Younger. After a few hours we are full and we're off again. It is still raining very hard. We take the subway back to the hotel and eat at a McDonald's down the street.

We rest in and around 2:30pm we go to Macy's department store in Herald Square to buy some clothes. We find a Levi's for only $ 40. We go back to the hotel.

Around half past six we go get some fast food at Pret-a-Manger on Madison Ave before we we go by subway to Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side. Lincoln Center consists of six impressive marble and glass buildings from the 1960s. It replaced a slum. The residents moved northward and before the district was demolished the movie West Side Story, was filmed here, a film about a musical that took place in this slum. Lincoln Center is home to the New York City Ballet (at the David H. Koch Theater), the New York Philharmonic (at the David Geffen Hall), the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Julian School of Music (where Dutch chief-conductor Jaap van Zweden of the New York Philharmonic was educated), the Chamber Music Society (Alice Tully Hall) and the Walter Reade Theater (foreign films). We arrive at the Metropolitan Opera House, better known as "The Met." Here we see the opera La Bohème by Pucini. We have seats in a box, that we all to ourselves. The view is slightly limited. Nevertheless, the tickets cost $ 130 each. The opera is beautiful with lovely arias. There are two breaks. At half past ten it's over and we go back to the subway. The rain has finally stopped.

Weather: very heavy rain, 14⁰C, 46°F.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

We go by bus to the East Village. Until the 1980's the East Village was a dangerous and poor slum. As Greenwich Village or the West Village became increasingly popular as a residential area and therefore more expensive  the artistic alternative crowd moved towards the East Village. Today, housing prices here have shot up too, but it is still a fun and hip neighborhood. Here we take a walk through the neighborhood. Very different atmosphere than in Midtown. More alternative with many small shops. We start at Astor Place cube called the Alamo by Bernard Rosenthal from 1967. If you are strong enough, you can rotate it around its axis. We  also see here  the back of the Cooper Union Building. This is a college for the disadvantaged, founded in 1859 by the entrepreneur Peter Cooper. His statue stands in front of it on Cooper Square. This part of the Village is the center of the Ukrainian community in New York with its own museum around E 6th Street. A little further down is the shiny New Academic Building. We continue to Broadway and end up in the NoHo district. On Lafayette Street is the Public Theatre, from where in summer the Shakespeare in the Park festival is organized. We move on to the St Mark’s in the Bowery, where Peter Stuyvesant is buried, He was the last Dutch governor of New Amsterdam. He built a chapel here, which was near his farm. Late 18th century a church was built over the original Dutch chapel and the neoclassical facade was added in the 19th century. The Stuyvesant tombstone is now in the wall, but we can not see it, because  work is being done around the church. We do see a bust of "Peg-leg Pete," which was not very popular with the settlers. We continue along 9th Street to Tompkins Square, a park, where Charlie Parker once lived. We have coffee at 9th Street Espresso and then we take the M8 crosstown bus. We get off at 6th Avenue, but the connecting bus to 23rd Street does not show up. We therefore take a cab to Eataly. This is an Italian food emporium with plenty of dining options. The company is founded by the renowned chef Mario Batali. It is crowded, but we can get a table. We take the prix fixe lunch menu of $ 26 at Eatly's fish restaurant Il Pesce. Raw fish for starters and then mussels for me. Erik simple Caesar Salad is followed

by a roll with fish of the day. After lunch we take the subway. It has started raining again.

We have a rest in our hotel. Around five o'clock we want to go to the Refinery hotel's rooftop bar. Unfortunately the rooftop bar appears to be closed today because of a private party. Or so we are told by a rather unsympathetic, gum chewing character, who refers us to another bar in the hotel. We go there and enjoy a cocktail. After the cocktail we take the subway line M to the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) on 53rd street, where we have dinner at The Modern. We are welcomed with all honors in this excellent restaurant with two Michelin stars. We take the four-course menu that offers four choices for four courses. I start with Foie Gras Tart, followed by sea bass poached in olive oil. Then crispy Long Island duck and finally Honydew Melon crémeux (Feta and melon sorbet). It's all very tasty. We also take a wine pairing, which was well chosen by the sommelier. We take coffee after.

Then back to the subway and to the hotel.

Weather:  dry morning, but around noon it starts to rain. At times very hard. 9° C / 48°F.

Thursday, December 1st, 2016

After our last breakfast at the Morgans Hotel, we check out and store our suitcases with the Bell Boy. We take the subway line 6 to 68th Street. From the subway station on Lexington Ave we walk to Central Park and then to the 70th street for a visit to the Frick Collection. The coal and steel magnate Frick was not only a ruthless businessman also an avid art collector from Pennsylvania. In 1913 he moved to New York. He came here to build a house on the edge of Central Park in 1914, which covers an entire housing block and above all had to accommodate his vast art collection, which would be expanded considerably. The works are not just pretty pictures, but a collection of great masters from all periods and (mostly European) countries. Rembrandt, Turner, Hals, Vermeer to name but a few, as well as Tiepolo, El Greco, Bellini, Ducio, Gainsborough hang here. Also imperssionists like Manet, Monet and Degas. Everything is beautifully displayed in spacious halls and rooms. The paintings are n

ot grouped by school or period, but fit in thematically with each other and also match the interior. The Fragonard Room is a special case. Frick bought the four-part series about love, after the children of JP Morgan - banker and art collector - put it up for sale. Frick did convert a salon to fit the paintings into his house. Unfortunately we can not take pictures in the building, except for the courtyard, which was built when the house was expanded after Frick's death creating extra rooms by incorporating a service road to the house.

In the basement is a temporary exhibition of the guilding artist Pierre Gouthière (1732-1813) with some loans from the Louvre, combined with Frick's own collection. In the west wing is an exhibition of Meissen porcelain from the Arnhold collection.

After all that beauty we take the bus to the Rockefeller center. Yesterday the lights in the giant Christmas tree were switched on with much fanfare during a live TV broadcast. Unfortunately, the evening was pretty rained out. Now there are many people who come to have their picture taken at the backdrop of the tree. The Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 buildings that has been developped between 1929 and 1940. Architecturally and zoning wise it forms a harmonious complex of buildings entirely in Art Deco style. It is located in Midtown Manhattan between 5th and 6th Avenue, between 48th and 51st streets. Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller started the construction in the middle of the economic crisis that followed the stock market crash of 1929. Rockefeller went through with and was saved by the advent of radio and later on TV. The major national radio and TV networks hired a lot of floor space for their studios. The complex got its nickname Radio City this way. NBC is still here. On weekdays the Today Show is broadcast live from here since 1952. Partly on the street in front of the studio. On Saturday night there is a live broadcast of Saturday Night Live since 1975. The Comcast Tower (formerly GE Tower) is the tallest building in the complex at its foot we see the gilded statue of Prometheus, and in winter the famous ice skating rink. Opposite the Rockefeller is the famous department store Saks on Fifth Avenue. We take a look inside, but are appalled by the level of prices. Besides Saks, the Catholic St Patrick's Cathedral from 1878 in Gothic Revival style. It was here that the funeral ceremony for John F. Kennedy was held in 1963. N

ext we walk down Fifth Avenue and have lunch in a side street, 49th Street very cheap and simple at the Liberty Deli and Pizza. Later we go to the big bookstore Barnes & Noble browsing for books.

We walk past the headquarters of the NY Public Library. This beautiful building from 1902 in the Beaux Arts style has one of the largest publicly accessible collections in the world. Opposite the library in the 40th street we go to Maison Kayser for tea and coffee with a pastry. Parisian chic in Midtown Manhattan. Very good.

We walk back to the hotel. We take a rest and then take a taxi to Penn Station. From there we take the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) to Jamaica. A separate ticket is required for the LIRR. At Jamaica Station, we switch to the AirTrain to JFK airport. We drop off the luggage at the Delta counter and go through security. We eat a snack at a wine bar (incredibly expensive) and drink a coffee. Check-in is at 6:40 pm.

We depart at 7:45 for Amsterdam. We can see Manhattan clearly from the air. The skyscrapers are nicely lit, especially the Empire State Building. At Schiphol we are not arriving at a walkway gate, but need a bus to the terminal. Once we get through passport control, the suitcases are already on the conveyor belt. We can go straight to the train station, where our train departs at 9:55 for Rotterdam.

Weather: 12°C or 54°F. Cloudy but dry

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