Our trip to NYC on January 17th started out on such a high note, with an easy drive to the St. Louis Airport and then the crazy only 40 people on the plane and exiting the airport and getting into a cab out of the newly-refurbished La Guardia Airport.
When Mom and I were in New York in Dec. 2019 (when I’m sure that Covid was secretly swirling around everywhere) they were and had been working on La Guardia for a very long time and when we got off the plane back then we had to walk approximately one million miles to even find our way out of the building and then had to take a shuttle to the place where the cabs were located, and I still remember that it was a packed shuttle and somebody bonked me on the head with their big suitcase and didn’t even say sorry.
So this time, awesome.
Randy and I got to the Warwick Hotel before the plane had been scheduled to land. This is partly because the flight took less time cause we weighed only about 100 pounds in total. Maybe slightly more.
Even though I usually micro-manage all aspects of a trip itinerary, this time because things had been chaotic on so many levels around here I didn’t have time to give it much thought.
I’m going to attempt to do this more often.
Anyway, the Warwick…Kevin and I plus Mom and our friend Sandy stayed there in 2009 after Kevin and I returned from Scotland. It was fancy and old and the rooms were big if just slightly dated. I looked for photos from our trip but I guess by the time we got back to NYC I was too tired to take any more hotel photos. I definitely remember that we enjoyed our stay.
Here’s what their website says about the history of the Warwick:
The Warwick New York is Manhattan’s legendary hotel. Built in 1926 by early 20th century media tycoon William Randolph Hearst for the love of his life and soulmate, actress Marion Davies – who was performing at the Ziegfield Theater next door – the hotel became Manhattan’s most preferred place to stay.
The hotel played host to Elvis Presley, James Dean, Jane Russell, Elizabeth Taylor and was home to actor Cary Grant for 12 years. Upon The Beatles’ first arrival to the U.S. in 1965, Beatlemania raged with thousands of fans surrounding the hotel with the hope of catching a glimpse of the quartet leaving their hotel. The Warwick New York also proudly features in the backdrop of the famed photo “Lunch Atop A Skyscraper”, standing tall beneath the dangling boots of ironworkers taking a lunch break at 900 feet above ground while Rockefeller Center was being constructed.
I was going to book the Warwick again but I looked it up on TripAdvisor because that’s just what I do, and many people love love loved it but others bitterly complained that the rooms were out of date and the elevators were cramped and took forever. I finally decided we’d stay there.
When Randy and I arrived a man wearing a tall top hat opened the door for us and the hotel was just as nice as I remembered, maybe even more so. The elevator was small but we never had to wait long for it during our whole trip.
The room was smaller than the one we’d stayed in before but it looked like it had been recently updated and was perfectly lovely. I’d requested a high floor, thinking we’d maybe be on seven or eight, but we were on the 22nd. Very high indeed, and it took no time to get all the way up there.
All good.
Since I didn’t have a plan, we headed over to the half price TKTS booth and because it was late in the day there was no line. We got tickets for “Take Me Out,” a gay baseball drama.
Times Square, about a 15-minute walk from the Warwick, was pretty crowded but not like it had been before the pandemic. It seems like every time I’ve gone there, the giant signs are more ads for products instead of shows.
We walked around looking for a somewhere to eat and came across a place called the Glass House Tavern.
The food was delicious but two young women sitting next to us were very very loud and on the other side of us was a group of business people all wearing name tags and as more of them showed up it got louder and louder so by the end we had to yell across the table to hear each other.
But it was nice to sit down to a good meal.
We ordered warm chocolate cake with ice cream for dessert which was a delicious ending to our meal.
The play was very well done but the second act was very intense and kind of jarring. One guy delivered a lengthy monologue where he threw a table and a chair and yelled and stormed around quite a bit and I was relieved when that part was over. My hope in going away was to relax and achieve some calmness so the show didn’t do much for that, but it was very good.
Afterwards we walked around Times Square a bit and went to some clothing store that Randy knew of and he bought a cool fringed jacket.
Back at the Warwick we stopped at the bar for a drink. The bar closed at 11, which seems awfully early for a NYC bar. The drinks were delicious. Mexican mules, if I recall correctly.
It was a very good start to our brief stay.
ok then,
Mrs. February Hughes.