Episode 29: September 2007
Highlights of the month include:
• Weekend in New York City;
• Deb’s work trip to San Francisco;
• Weekend in Chicago;
• Harbor Springs Cycling Classic;
• Pappa Borg visits Midland.
The first weekend of the month was a three-day one, thanks to U.S. Labor Day. We celebrated work by not doing any (woohoo!) and instead flew to New York City for the weekend. We arrived late on Friday night and immediately turned in after a long day of work and travel. The fun started on Saturday. Being the avid sightseers that we are, we decided to explore the city by foot and took a long walk from our hotel – located close to Times Square – all the way to Chinatown. (For those of you who are familiar with New York City, I hope you agree when I say…dang, that is a long walk!) Lucky for us, the weather was perfect, allowing us to take in all the sights of the city and work on our tans.
As one does after a workout, we worked up a hunger once we got to Chinatown and stopped for a fabulous yum-cha (a.k.a. dim sum) lunch at a very authentic little restaurant packed with locals and natives (not a word of English was heard). Within seconds of being seated at our table (which we shared with another patron), we were indulging in all sorts of delicious bite-size samples of food. We spent the next hour trying all the offerings that came around, including the things that clearly were not from parts of animals that we are used to eating (though we never got up the courage to try the BBQ’ed chicken feet).
That evening, we hit Broadway to have a few mandatory pre-show drinks and saw the long-running musical, “Mamma Mia!” For those that have not seen it, we highly recommend it, regardless of your thoughts about ABBA. The musical was light-hearted fun, complete with great acting and (yes, even Neal admits it) catchy ABBA songs. (To Neal’s embarrassment I sang and danced in my seat through the entire show.) After the show, we caught a taxi (driven by a seemingly suicidal driver) to a restaurant in the meat packing district called Spice Market, suggested to us be a colleague of mine. The restaurant is part of the collection of famed restaurateur, Jean-Georges Vongerichten. The restaurant did not disappoint. The food was innovative and, better yet, tasted great. The décor made us feel like we were walking through a preserved Tibetan palace with huge ceilings, Asian artifacts, and a cool, dimly-lit interior.
The next day, we spent most of our time seeing the usual sights, many of which we have visited in past trips. By this stage we had mastered the subway (which our legs thanked us for), which gave us more excuses to venture farther from the hotel. We took the subway to the southern tip of Manhattan Island to see the Statue of Liberty, World Trade Center memorial site, Wall Street and the New York Stock Exchange, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Then we traveled back uptown to Central Park where we spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping under the sun.
That evening we headed downtown to the Lower East Side of Manhattan where we met up with some of Neal’s friends from business school who are now living in the city – Chris and his wife, Olga, and Hart. The meeting place was a restaurant called The Stanton Social, which was a surprisingly beautiful little place in the middle of a rougher neighborhood. We had a great evening – good food, great company, and lots of laughs – as we caught up on all that had happened in each other’s lives over the past two years.
The last day of our trip was a relaxing one. It started with brunch in Soho at a place chosen by Neal call Balthazar. We munched on a great meal, looked around the shops a bit, and then headed to the airport for our flight back to Michigan.
We ended the short work week with a movie on Friday night with a friend of ours (“Superbad” which, unfortunately, lived up to its name), followed by a night out at a local bar to celebrate the 30th birthday of one of my team members. On Sunday, I took off for a work trip to San Francisco. It was my first visit to that city, and I spent three days there for a recruiting conference along with two colleagues of mine. While there, we took the opportunity to explore as much of San Francisco as we could, including Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown, Little Italy, and Union Square. The city is fabulous, vibrant, and extremely diverse.
The following weekend we took another trip, this time to Chicago. We originally planned to go to Chicago so that we could see one of Neal’s friends from business school, Rado, who was going to be in town from London. Unfortunately, Rado’s plans fell through, but Neal and I decided to go ahead with ours.
We were graciously hosted that weekend by Neal’s business school friend, Jorge, and his wife, Letty. Jorge and Letty are originally from Mexico and when we told them that we were in the mood for some “authentic” Mexican food, they took up the task. As soon as we had arrived at their apartment, we headed to the Adobo Grill. To add to the atmosphere, it was the weekend of Mexico’s Independence Day and the city and its people had Mexico on their minds. True to Jorge and Letty’s word, the restaurant was fantastic. After dinner, we went dancing…but not just any dancing. In keeping with the Latin theme, Jorge and Letty took us to a salsa club. It was a little nerve-wracking being on the dance floor among people who were clearly much more coordinated that us, but we still found time to get down with our bad selves (those cha-cha lessons we took sure came in handy)!
The next day Neal and I decided to visit an area of Chicago that neither of us had seen. So, we hailed a cab to an area called Bucktown. This area of Chicago is better known for its alternative lifestyle shops. There are lots of odd-ball boutiques there, and lots of piercings and tattoos on patrons. It turned out to be a great place, as we got in some shopping and a nice lunch. We finished up our daytime adventure at a reasonable hour because we had tickets that night to see “Wicked,” a Broadway musical that was in the midst of a very long run of sold-out shows in Chicago. “Wicked” has a clever plot – it is supposed to be the prequel to the Wizard of Oz, explaining how the Wicked Witch became what she became. The show was fantastic – go see it if you have the chance.
On Sunday, Jorge and Letty joined us for brunch at a restaurant near their apartment. Then, the four of us went to the Lincoln Park Zoo, yet another Chicago attraction that both Neal and I had not visited. The zoo is free to the public and is surprisingly good for a free zoo. Helping things, the weather was tremendously good and we had a great day seeing the animals. We even found some time to walk to a nearby fair that was showcasing local artists. Finally, after a full day, it was time for us to get back to the airport for our flight back to Michigan.
Following another busy week at work, we spent another weekend away from Midland (seeing a trend yet?). This time we drove two hours north to the town of Harbor Springs to take part in the Harbor Springs Cycling Classic. The ride was 42 miles (68 kilometers) long that featured gorgeous scenery and some brutal hills. The Cycling Classic is an annual event put on to give riders the chance to cycle through the countryside and experience Michigan’s famous “changing of the colors,” the time in autumn when the leaves on all the trees turn from green to amazing shades of reds, yellows, and oranges. The most famous part of the ride is along the Tunnel of Trees which, as its name suggests, is a tree lined with trees all around it. (It reminded me a lot of the Avenue of Honour in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, only a lot longer and with a crystal-blue lake on one side.) Beautiful scenery aside, our legs were crying for help by the end of the ride. Good thing we did not sign up for the 60-mile option!
We rewarded ourselves with a stroll through the town of Harbor Springs, followed by a nice dinner at a restaurant that looks out onto the harbor and the lake. Sunday was part recovery day and part travel day where we explored the nearby towns of Charlevoix and Petoskey before heading home.
In the last weekend of September, we welcomed Pappa Borg to Midland. Dad was in Chicago for work during the week leading up to his Midland visit and he came over to us before flying back to Switzerland. After a relaxing catch-up on Friday evening, we drove back to northern Michigan on Saturday, this time to the Traverse City area. We went there to show Dad the same changing colors that we had seen the weekend before as well as massive Lake Michigan (one of the five Great Lakes of the U.S.). The final stop of the day was Sleeping Bear Dunes, an immense set of sand dunes (yes, sand dunes) that have formed along Lake Michigan. The Dunes can be climbed and, once you get high enough, they reward you with a view of Lake Glenn on one side and Lake Michigan on the other. The view is spectacular and worth the painful climb up several steep hills of sand.
And dropping off Pappa Borg at the airport ended a very busy, and fun-filled, month!
