On my own in the Big Apple: Tuesday

After sleeping for too many hours, it was clear that I had pushed myself pretty hard for the past few days. I was supposed to see a friend who also has metastatic breast cancer. She lives in New Jersey and can no longer get around easily, so I thought I'd try to get to her by bus. It turned out that by oversleeping, I'd made it almost impossible to get to her and back in time to see the opera that night, so we caught up a bit by phone instead.

Fueled up with a cup of H's delicious coffee and an H&H Bagel, I walked across Central Park and uptown to the Jewish Museum, which I had never seen. It turned out to be a good choice, just the right size to see the whole collection in a couple of hours. There was a temporary exhibit by Andy Warhol -- Warhol's Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered. Warhol's idea of who is an influential Jew was a little weird. Golda Meir and Albert Einstein sure, but the Marx Brothers?

It was sunny afternoon but my feet hurt, so I took a cab back to H's neighborhood and went shopping. I had passed a couple of boutiques selling women's hats and decided I should try some on. No luck; everything was either too large and floppy or too casual to wear to synagogue. I ended up at Loehmann's where I bought a cute green straw topper that will be perfect for summer in Seattle.

After a quick change back at Chez H, I took myself out for an early dinner before the opera. Arte Cafe offers a prix fixe dinner for $19.95. I had a green salad; the bistecchina, a "little" skirt steak served with mashed potatoes and salsa verde; and an expensive, rather bad glass of shiraz. The scoop of chocolate ice cream was not memorable and anyway I was so full from the steak!

I decided to walk the few blocks to Lincoln Center in order to digest. This was the reason I stayed on in New York City -- to see the City Opera production of Leonard Bernstein's Candide.