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Day 8: Princeton to NYC
The next day we headed back into town expecting things to have quieted down but they hadn’t really. There was another event on the lawn of Nassau Hall. But we found a parking space not too far from the main drag and headed over to PJ’s, the pancake house Marion frequented when she was a student there (walnut raisin pancakes!). It was not only there but as busy as ever. We sat at a long middle table with lots of graffiti scratched and drawn on it.
We both had the 3 pancake sampler – I had strawberry, blueberry and pecan (strawberry was the best) and Marion had pecan, apricot pecan and cranberry something (she did not name a winner). While we were there, what appeared to be a crew team came in. Definitely jocks of some kind. About 6 big guys and one little guy so that’s why we were thinking ‘crew’.
After breakfast we walked over to the Wilson School to take a picture in the same spot as one Dad took of me when I interviewed at Princeton in 9th grade. There were a bunch of workmen in neon vests sitting on the steps and eyeing the girls playing in the fountain. As well as a series of large metal heads of the horoscope animals. So it was a bit of an odd scene.
We got the picture and moved on to the Art Museum. The museum is very nice. Not too big but quite a breadth of stuff. And a lot of famous names. Downstairs, where we almost skipped the Asian stuff, there were some pretty cool little sculptures of grave guardians. Crazy creatures that guard the graves. We weren’t sure if we were allowed pictures so we didn’t get any. Too bad. But Marion got a postcard so I scanned that into the photo gallery.
Back to Nassau Street to get some money and it was on to New York City. I was disappointed that because of the various events, Nassau Hall was closed. One of my big memories from our last visit with Dad was that the stairs in Nassau Hall, while stone, have big depressions in them where they have been worn away by 300+ years of people walking on them! I just think that’s so cool.
It was an uneventful drive to New York and not a whole lot in the way of scenery. We got to Newark Airport to drop off the car where the Hertz guy was impressed that our week long rental only cost $12 (because we used points). I was fairly impressed myself. We got the train to the terminal and caught a cab into Manhattan. Thankfully they now have a set fare so you don’t have to worry and you know what you’re going to spend. However, what you’re going to spend is close to 100 bucks. Ah well. We saved way more than that on the rental.
The Iroquois Hotel is our new home and it’s beautiful. Contrary to our usual behavior, I let the bellman take our bags and he came up to the room and gave his spiel. He was very nice. Marion told him she had been there about 10 years back and he said that as the longest tenured member of the staff, he was here then too. And yet he didn’t remember her. His name was JJ and we greeted him by name when we came and went which he seemed to like.
We ventured out for some food, wandering a few blocks looking for a café or something. There are many but mostly they are a grocery store with a few seats in back. Not really what we were looking for. But we came across the Cock and Bull Pub and decided to give it a whirl. Marion had a Beef and Ale pot pie which she quite liked. I didn’t quite have the nerve to try the chicken pot pie and settled on the grilled chicken which was ok but not great. We’ll try to do better tomorrow.
We had ideas of taking a bus tour or maybe trying for half price tickets this evening but we both came to the conclusion without much effort that the thing to do was to spend a quiet evening in the hotel and try our luck tomorrow with Daniel and Eve.
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