The rest of the choir went home on Monday, but Terry and Guillermo and I stayed on for another day.
In the morning, I went out to get breakfast and bring it back to the apartment. I went to the same deli we had tried to go to the day before - since we had no time committments this day, it didn't matter how long the line was. The deli was called Russ and Daughters. When I got there, I discovered that the restaurant doesn't do to go orders - you have to go to their other location, a couple of blocks away. So I went.
While waiting my turn, I found out some information about the place. The shop was founded in 1904 by Joel Russ, a Jewish immigrant from Poland. Since Mr. Russ had no sons, he took his daughters into the business, and changed the name to Russ and Daughters - according to their website, the first business in the U.S. to have "Daughters" in its name. Today, the business is still run by the fourth generation of the family.
So I left the shop with my bag of bagels and lox, and decided that I would take the subway back to the apartment:
I've always enjoyed riding New York subways, ever since I was a little kid. So I looked at the subway map:
...and determined that I needed to get off the train two stops from where I got on. Well, at the second stop, I looked out the window, and noticed that the station name was not what I was expecting. I looked at the map again, and realized that I had gotten on the train going the wrong direction - and the next stop was in Brooklyn! I quickly jumped off the train and caught one going back the other way.
Whenever I ride the subway, I always amuse myself by staring down the track, waiting to see the lights of the oncoming train (I'm easily amused). And here comes one now:
After breakfast, I went out again, this time to return to the Tenement Museum to buy something from the gift shop that I had noticed the day before - a collection of New York Times crossword puzzles, beginning with the very first puzzle published in the Times, back in 1943. I also returned to the candy store, to buy a gift for a friend.
When I got back to the apartment, we had company. Terry is a heavy user of the WhatsApp messaging app, and among her contacts is a woman named Wynter, who lives in Boston. When Terry told her that we would be coming to New York, she and her boyfriend Johnny decided to come down for the day and meet us. Sad to say, I never did get a picture of them.
We sat around socializing for a while, and then went out for the afternoon. We started by stopping for coffee at a place with the whimsical name of Joe, The Art Of Coffee. Then we took a subway uptown - and thereby hangs another tale. Allow me to digress again.
In the world of adaptive equipment for the blind, there's a new player in town called Aira. Here's how it works: A blind user - for instance, Terry - signs up for the service. She gets an app for her iPhone, and a pair of Google glasses. She puts on the glasses, and uses the app to connect with an Aira agent. The agent can see what Terry's looking at, through the camera in her glasses, and so the agent can act as her eyes - read menus, describe surroundings, help find misplaced articles, etc. The possibilities are endless. Over the years I've been with Terry, I've seen a lot of adaptive technologies come and go, but this is one of the best I've seen.
So the point of this digression is that Terry used her Aira glasses to buy her own subway ticket at the self service kiosk in the station. A seemingly small matter, but for Terry, anything that increases her ability to function indepedently is a big deal.
So we got off the subway at Columbus Circle, at the southwest corner of Central Park, and walked a few blocks north to Tavern On The Green. Having sung about it just the day before, we felt we had to visit. We didn't eat dinner there - way too expensive - but we had a few drinks on the patio:
...where Terry used her Aira app to read the drink menu. And then, finally, we went to dinner. Which presented a dilemma, because Wynter is a strict vegan. Earlier in the day, Terry and Guillermo and I were wracking our brains, trying to find a restaurant for all of us to go to, that would have vegan options for Wynter and Johnny, but also non-vegan options for us omnivores. In the end, Wynter and Johnny solved the problem for us with what should have been an obvious suggestion - an Indian restaurant. And as it happened, there was an Indian restaurant right next door to the apartment! So that's where we went.
And that wraps it up for this trip log. Wynter and Johnny said goodnight and left, and we went to bed, and the next morning we got up, packed up, got out and went home.