An Expensive Lunch

The Whitney Museum has an upscale restaurant with the bit-too-clever name of Untitled. Mrs. C and I had lunch there on Monday. The food was original and flavorful but the prices, for what you got, were outrageous. (Click the link to see the menu if interested.) The portions were quite small by American standards, which was okay since most of our restaurants serve portions more suitable to cattle than humans. The "braised lamb, hakurei turnips, cabbage", a delicate, delicious little nest of veggies might - maybe - have contained an ounce/28 grams of lamb, for which I was charged $27. Welcome to New York. Well, it was the only meal we had to buy on the trip.

The bottom picture shows the restaurant's large windows and the line outside waiting for tickets. I was standing to the right of the revolving door when I took the pix in yesterday's post.                

In Line

It got cold again in New York on Monday. Because neither of us remembered to buy tickets for the Whitney in advance, we had to stand in a long line in the chill outside the door. Later, we were waiting for our table at the museum's upscale restaurant. It had a window wall looking onto the sidewalk and that line. I shot these with my little Olympus. It has a flip-out screen so you can shoot from waist level with little chance of being noticed.

These people have quite different reactions to the situation. The young Asian woman looks sad, and did the whole time I was watching. Her companion is quite perky. The woman on the right looks distraught in both photos. Did someone not show up to meet her?                       

At The Whitney

A pair of elderly women peer out over the Hudson River from the new Whitney Museum in lower Manhattan.

Our plane was late (had to be de-iced at LaGuardia) and it's way past bedtime as I post this back home. More about the visit over the next couple of days.                      

My Strange Family

Weird Crowe family tradition: this ornament has hung over the Christmas dinner table for 40 years, first at my father's house and now my sister's. Someone spins and spins the string, then lets go. When the ornament stops turning, whoever Santa faces will have bad luck in the new year. Everyone calls him Evil Santa. Did I say we go through a lot of wine in this family?

Below, quality family time - a niece, spouse and brother sucked into their iPhones.

Every family has ups and downs but this one has had less than its share of bad luck. I am the oldest of four siblings. We are all still alive. We are all still on our first marriages. Everyone graduated from college, and there is a Ph.D., an M.B.A. and a J.D. sprinkled around the group. We all still like each other and make an effort to get together a couple of times a year. We turned out okay.

New Jersey Transit

So we got a taxi from LaGuardia Airport to Penn Station with amazingly little traffic, then got a train to the town in New Jersey where my sister and her family live. Easy. The New Jersey Transit trains we took had a rather nagging nanny state tone. Do people actually clip their nails on the commuter trains? Do people need to be told not to jump off moving trains, particularly when the door is closed?               

Before Dawn

0 dark 30, as they say, at Lambert Airport in STL. It's way too early. NYC soon.

~

And now here we are.

Christmas Brunch At The Chase

As mentioned, the Crowe and Horrocks families had a sumptuous Christmas brunch at the Chase Park Plaza, Chef Brian presiding. 

Above, an ice sculpture Christmas tree in front of a real one.

Below, Madeleine with a "Santa got me what?" look (wearing grandma's glasses, which she thinks is funny) followed by Ms. M and her parents. The bottom pic needs explanation. Our flight is so early tomorrow morning we're spending tonight at an airport hotel, leaving Emily and Brian's home before they serve dinner. So my wife and I could get something to eat, I bought what is probably the loneliest product in the supermarket. However, we're still so stuffed from brunch we'll likely put it in the freezer.