When one has a 13 week contract that is only five hours from very close long time friends versus 22 hours from those wonderful people, you start planning a visit. They are both from New Hampshire where I grew up, and I will use letters as their names to keep it interesting and mysterious. “C” and “PC” will be their “names” moving forward.
If you recall, I was staying in Norwalk, Connecticut for my first assignment. There is not an excess of exciting things to do in Norwalk when New York City (NYC) is a simple train ride away. Oh, hell yeah, NYC it is! The planning began.
We decided to buy tickets to the typical NYC tourist events: a broadway show and an opera. I shared that I had never been to a broadway show before and inquired if they were willing and able financially to obtain tickets for front row seating. They were totally on board with that. We snagged those front row tickets after agreeing to see “Wicked”.
Selecting the opera was a two fold decision. 1. None of us had ever been to an opera; 2. We found out that a historical opera was opening during our visit to the city. The opera was “Fire Shut Up in my Bones” and documented to be the first performance at The Metropolitan Opera (The Met) by a black composer in the 138 year history of The Met. We all agreed this option would be an amazing opportunity and we all looked forward to attending. Tickets purchased.
The time for the girls to arrive in NYC via Amtrak finally arrived and we were excited to start our adventure together. In addition to the two shows, we visited Central Park, found out the Empire State Building changes the color of its roof top lights at night to acknowledge a special event or historical moment. In addition to other touristy visual fun walk-by such as Radio City and where The Tonight Show is filmed to name a few.
Not much to report about our front row seating for Wicked, other than it was AMAZING! We felt like royalty being so close and personal to the performers and their fantasticly engaging performance. I do understand now why folks pay a little bit more to sit in those seats. First day in the books.
The following night we went to the opera. Prior to the performance, we got ourselves some dinner at a restaurant near the hotel we were staying at and thereafter started to walk towards The Met. As we were doing so, we realized that we had a long way to go and might not make it in time if we continued walking. We discuss different options on how we could move forward with getting to the opera. One would imagine that such a task would have been thought out proactively, but I digress.
We figured even if we took a cab we would be in the massive traffic NYC is known for, but we attempted to hail one anyway without success. We had no idea which subway to take so we diverted our attention away from that aspect. We continued to walk. Then suddenly we saw a guy looking for passengers on his rickshaw. If you're not familiar with what a rickshaw is, in this instance it was a bicycle with a carriage on the back of it. This one happened to be able to hold three people and as you already know there were three of us. We all made eye contact after we viewed this option, as if to say, this could be do-able, fun, and a bucket-list item we had no idea we wanted until that very moment (well that is what I was thinking).
We discussed our situation with this fella. He told us he could get us to The Met in a timely fashion. So we hopped up and squished ourselves into the carriage and we were off.
Holy wow! This guy wasn’t kidding. He maneuvered that rickshaw like nobody’s business. I will not mention names, but there were some screams that occurred in the carriage during our trip. The “screamer” mentioned concerns that our bicycle pilot was not stopping at stop lights. Just as good friends do, we were able to squelch that anxiety provoking though by instructing the “screamer” to eyeball the scenery instead of our pilot. That way we wouldn’t see anything that may be on its way to nail us. It wouldn’t hurt as much that way because we wouldn’t see it coming. Further shared our thoughts that he does this all day every day and should be familiar with his abilities and talent on this rig, especially with the rate he was charging. This seemed to suffice the situation. The entire ride was consumed with belly laughing which is always a sign of a great visit with friends.
We were very pleased when we arrived to The Met alive and with time to spare. We paid our bicycle pilot and tipped well, almost as a thank you for not maiming or killing us. Continued the giggles and headed to the show.
The Met is a gorgeous building inside and out. Mesmerizing. We found our seats and the performance started shortly thereafter. I was having a hard time understanding what was being communicated by the performers. I thought it might just be me and my hearing for some reason but C and PC were having a hard time hearing and understanding what was happening as well. Uh oh this may be a long night.
About a 45 minutes into it I glanced over at C and it appeared she was getting a little shut eye. PC was wide awake on the other side of me. We were both feeling somewhat disappointed with our opera experience at that time.
Intermission time arrived. C woke up. We enjoyed the break to get up and walk around. About five minutes after the performance started again, PC found a button on the seat back in front of her. She pressed it and low and behold, everything that was being said/sang was electronically visible. Can you say game changer? C and I then pressed the buttons in front of our seats and it was magical thereafter. Not sure how we missed that important show engagement aspect but PC was a freaking genius for finding that button! It was confirmed that I wasn’t going deaf, C stayed awake for the rest of the show and PC got the crown for the day for solving this communication mystery. Three satisfied and alive Opera clientele.