Every good weekend getaway begins with a proper itinerary, at least when you’re a Virgo. This year’s Mother’s Day weekend on Broadway was an ambitious 1-2-3 punch that started with the bang of ‘Hamilton’ and didn’t let up until ‘The Cher Show’ ended things with a rousing cry of “You haven’t seen the last of me!” In between were a few beautiful days in New York City, where we managed to dodge the rain and wind until the last possible moment, and by then we were ready to board the train to return home.
We stayed at the Park Lane Hotel, right on the southern border of Central Park, and thanks to the extra Standby Upgrade charge for each night we eked out a room on the 37thfloor, which afforded us the magnificent view you see here. I always forget the sprawl and expanse of Central Park until I see it laid out like this. A certain magnificence of foresight was required for such a lasting endeavor, and it’s a testament to the importance of proper planning that we have it like this today.
There is always a sense of excitement and spring happiness when we come down on this weekend. The Met Gala has come and gone, leaving the new exhibition behind to peruse. (In this instance it was a must-see show: ‘Camp: Notes on Fashion’ which we’ll get to in a couple of posts.) The store windows at Bergdorf Goodman teased at the theme, dripping with their customary over-the-top decadence. A bouquet of orchids near the elevators of our hotel greeted us in shades of chartreuse. All in all, beauty was conspiring to start the celebration off in the best possible ways.
For our first show, I splurged (and emptied my account) as a Christmas gift to Mom ~ ‘Hamilton.’ It was even better than I recalled it from the first time I was lucky enough to see it, as this is very much a show that benefits from some background listening and research beforehand. You can still get a lot out of it from a cold viewing, but there are so many layers of complexity and storytelling that you lose something if you’re seeing it for the first time. Luckily Mom does her research and I’d given her the soundtrack a few months ago so she knew what was going on both sonically and historically. We had an early dinner at Sardi’s, which was a comfortable, classic, old-school haunt we’ve done whenever we need a place in a pinch.
In the middle of the greatest city in the world, the shows were about to begin…
