Posted by Kathey on 10/16/2008, 2:46 am
69.106.252.177
Wednesday began with our first subway ride! 
We walked over to the theatre, hoping to get student tickets for the evening performance.
Of course, we had to take the "I Am Pointing At JB's Name On The Board!" picture...
I was not aware that we could get students tickets for both shows that day, so that was a nice surprise! I was thinking that we would have to head to the TKTS booth for the matinee. The man at the box office was very chatty. He asked where we were from and proceeded to tell us that he wants to move to California. We discovered that he just came back from vacation in Palm Springs…no wonder he wants to move! Oh, and he didn’t even ask to see our student id’s. I guess we just look youthful. 
We stopped at the Starbucks by the Broadway New York shop so the aunt could drug up for the morning (she’s a major coffee addict). We were trying to figure out what to do before the matinee. The aunt had seen a little blurb in the AAA guidebook about the Museum of Biblical Art operated by the American Bible Society up on 61st and Broadway. What a great find! I went to religious schools from preschool to 12th grade and I was amazed that I have never heard of this place.
We walked up to Columbus Circle and went into the museum. There is a terrific Chagall exhibit showing right now. It is fascinating. We wandered into a room where the conservator, Dorothea, happened to be sitting and she gave us a personal tour of one of the exhibits. Dorothea is a lovely, sweet lady and so full of information. We saw the first Bible that was printed in America in a Western European language and a bunch of other Bibles from as early the 16th century, including ones translated by Luther. Dorothea showed us how the format was changed after Luther’s death as the Bibles were basically turned into a marketing tool. She explained that they have over 40,000 manuscripts in the library. Some of those are the only written examples of extinct languages, a lot of them being native American Indian. Linguists come to study these Bibles. Unfortunately, the society does not have the money to advertise, which is why most people do not even know they exist. This is a fascinating place and I encourage everyone to visit it not simply because of the religious significance, but the place these items and manuscripts hold in world and American history.
We headed back down Broadway to catch the matinee of Tale, but that will be in another post.
After the show and stage dooring, we hopped over to sbarro’s for our traditional Wednesday dinner. The pizza was fantastic as usual! We filled out some postcards and then walked back to the theatre for a lovely chat with Jenny.
We had a little trouble getting back on the subway that night, but I figured it out and we arrived safely at our hotel at not too late an hour.
I don’t know if we were just buzzed from seeing the show twice or not adjusted to the time difference, but we were both wide awake that night. We didn’t go to sleep until about 3am. Yikes! We were up in about 5 hours to continue our sightseeing. We had tentatively planned on going to Ellis Island, but after we went to theatre and picked up tickets for the show that night, we realized we were both pooped and trekking all the way down and then having to get on the ferry…we decided on something else. We sat at Starbucks for a while and decided to be proper tourists and visit The Empire State Building.
A very funny and odd cultural experience happened when we were up on the observation deck. It was pretty full and rather windy. There were two foreign gentlemen standing next to us at one point and for the sake of not stereotyping, I will refrain from specifying their nationality. They had been speaking in a language other than English the whole time and suddenly I heard the one right next to me crying in distressed English “OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD!!” I can’t relay the full effect of his tone without a vocal example, but the way he was carrying on, you would think someone was smearing poop in his face. I turned around to see what was wrong….. My hair was blowing on him. Yes, that was it. I quickly grabbed a fistful and apologized and he turned around and went back to talking with his companion. I sort of wanted to laugh hysterically and snort in disgust at the same time. Am I being insensitive? Probably. But it was too funny.
After we descended from the top, we decided to walk down to 14th where we were meeting a friend for dinner. We strolled down 5th Avenue, popping into shops here and there and resting in every park along the way. It was such a beautiful day and it was nice not to be rushing around. We met up with my friend and did more shopping after dinner. I got another copy of Jane at The Strand and also picked up another Gaskell novel. How cool is that place? One could spend hours in there! It’s like a library book sale only a million times cooler. We went back to the theatre to catch Tale one last time. 
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