Holiday Windows, Part 2: Daylight Hours

Sneak preview of Part 3. Happy Honu-days!

We made a little bit of a change to our usual holiday-window-viewing routine this year. I think we usually go after work, or later in the day if we go on a weekend. We were trying to remember how we settled on that and we think it's because when we went on a weekend day once and the crowds were just too much. There are always too many people out there, that's just part of the deal, but there are degrees of crowdedness and apparently our one daytime outing featured a degree or ten more than we could handle.

Mandy was interested in some holiday music this year, though, and a couple of weeks ago it hit me that the Brick Presbyterian Church has a lovely carol service. I sang with the choir there years ago and Keith Toth, who was and still is the music director at the church, always picked interesting and beautiful carols and hymns for the choir to perform, combined with a few old favorites for the congregation to sing. That was at 4. Mandy picked Jane, a restaurant on Houston Street, for brunch; they turned out to be pretty popular*, with no reservations between 10:15 and 4, so we decided to take the 10:15 reservation, eat, go see windows until it was time to go to church, and then finish off whatever we'd missed afterwards (the service wasn't that long).

That worked out really nicely; the weather was spectacular, the crowds were surprisingly not as horrendous as we'd expected (plenty of people certainly but we've seen worse), the carol service was splendid (I almost can't believe I used to sing with that choir, they're really really beautiful), and since we started downtown and headed uptown, that left our favorite windows for last (and also for after dark, which is when they really show to the best advantage. Plus that put us at the Rockefeller Center Teuscher shop well before their closing time of 6:00 - treating ourselves to Teuscher is an integral part of our holiday ritual and we were absolutely crushed the first time we got there after closing time!

I took a LOT of pictures, as usual, so I decided to split it into 2 sets - click here for the afternoon set, I'll post the evening pix next.

Crystal honu above was actually from a high-speed preview of the Bergdorf Goodman windows Mandy and I took a couple of weeks ago - we'd gone to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and swung by Carnegie Hall to see if we could get Mandy registered there for the NYC ID program (free admission in 2016 to 33 cultural institutions, but you actually had to appear in person at each one to register - I didn't even try but Mandy has been doing this amazing cultural marathon through the fall getting herself set up, which was fun for her friends as we took turns joining her) so we were in the neighborhood and couldn't resist taking a quick look. I think this was the weekend before Thanksgiving, and the designers were literally putting on the finishing touches, which was fun to see. See the designer here? 

What a cool job that must be. The Bergdorf windows are always pretty spectacular but this year they were sponsored by Swarovski, so extra extra sparkly. 

Tomorrow - Holiday Windows Part 2: After dark! 

*Brunch was actually a little bit complicated - first we thought we would hit the Popover Cafe, which we went to once and enjoyed very much, but I asked that we reserve that for days when we had other uptown plans because the subway trip was a bit on the long side for just brunch - Brick Church counts as uptown, crosstown buses work pretty well, but I went to look at the menu or hours or something and discovered that they'd closed last year. Bummer bummer bummer! My  

. My next idea was Sarabeth's, which was even MORE popular than Jane - reservations there were going to be at 8:15 am or 5 pm, nothing in between. Whoa. We'll save that for sometime when we're planning a little more in advance - with Mandy signed up with the NYC ID thingy at the Met I'm sure we'll get back up there sometime next year, plus getting back up to my old neighborhood reminded me that used to love visiting Cooper Hewitt, the Museum of the City of NY, and the formal garden in Central Park that are all up there, all of which Mandy would love, so we are multiple excuses for returns to that neighborhood). Boy, am I ever spoiled by Courtelyou Road - I don't think I've ever made brunch reservations in my neighborhood!

Season's Greetings from NYC!

From the quiet of the Norwalk Islands, to the heart of NYC!

Getting off the train at Union Square - always seems to be "doings" in that station around the holidays! Last week, it was SantaCon - this week, I heard the unmistakable, unearthly sound of Silent Night, as performed on the Musical Saw - followed the sound to find the one & only Saw Lady! You never saw anyone play the saw with as much verve & panache as Ms. Paruz. Had errands to run but thoroughly enjoyed the moment!

The cause for my even venturing into the holiday madness of midtown New York City...Teuscher Chocolates for TQ's family.

Teuscher specializes in fancy packaging. Yes, the angel chorus is actually packaging for appropriately heavenly chocolate. When I go get this kind of chocolate, I make a habit of always getting a large box for giving, plus a small box. Call it the "decoy box" - it's basically to keep myself out of the big box!

Mission accomplished, I wander out past the tree, and the rink. I'd never skate here - there are lovely ice rinks in Prospect & Central Parks - but much though I'm not really into big crowds, this is always fun to see.

Needs no caption, right?

Back off to Connecticut now, chocolates in hand!

Happy Holidays to all!

Holiday Greeting from NYC, and a snowflake generator

Rockefeller Center Tree 2012

Rockefeller Center Tree 2012

57th St. Snowflake

Merry Christmas and (in case I don't get in another post before then) Happy New Year from NYC! Much family togetherness, no kayaking this year - just back from a long-overdue visit to TQ's folks, and now getting ready for an even MORE overdue visit to the relatives in Texas - haven't been there since 2007. The trip is turning out to be very confusing somehow, plans seem to change every time I hear from my folks, but whatever happens, it should be fun, Mom's side of the family finally gets to meet the guy I've been dating for ages, I'll get to practice driving a bit (eek, look out Texas, it's been a while!), and maybe we'll even hunt down a little barbeque this time (I think my aunt & uncle aren't big BBQ fans so we haven't really ever done that, but with TQ coming along I thought maybe we could put in a request, and it's met with a friendly reception).

We're not really doing presents, I hope (although I've gotten everything else wrong so I may have gotten that wrong too), but of course I have got some NYC goodies to take along - a box of Teuscher, which I've managed to stay out of, mostly by bribing myself with other kinds of candy...note to self: please stop being a slug and resume exercising after New Year, and then I made a special quick run into the city today after we got back from CT 'cause I found out that Joe's Dairy was open today (they're usually closed Mondays but since it's the day before Christmas they made an exception. Have smoked mozzarella & sausage, will travel!

Wanna make a snowflake? Click here for the Barkley US Snowflake Generator! The snowflake generator is fun, I made this one for the purpose of embellishing the "on-vacation" sign I put up on my computer at work on my last night before vacation, I was beginning to feel festive & couldn't resist dressing up the sign a bit.

Note later: Oy. I am recalling now why I started staying in Brooklyn for the holidays. The changes to the family holiday plans were tricky to keep up with but I was more or less following. But then US Airways decided to get into the "confuse the heck out of this poor woman" game too. It's like those coffee commercials - "We've secretly replaced Bonnie and TQ's Christmas day flight with a boxing day flight. Let's see what happens!" Thank goodness for online check in, I called US Air and a helpful rep there saw what had happened & helped get us back into flying on Christmas day. I am crossing my fingers that nothing else goes wrong and I'm not uncrossing them until we pull into my aunt & uncle's driveway. Here we go, fingers crossed, Boy iet;s haerd to typw thid way!

Kid at the Candy Store Window

Teuscher Chocolates, Rockefeller Center, 12/20/08

Holiday Hot Dogs (and a gallery of 5th Avenue holiday windows)

I've been working a lot of late nights this week getting caught up so I can take the next 2 weeks off, but my friend Mandy got me to take an evening off on Wednesday to go see the holiday windows with her. What a great break!

First we fortified ourselves with some good Italian food, then we set out into a wintery evening & strolled 5th Avenue from Bergdorf Goodman's (where yesterday's beaded bear was part of one of the strange tableaux in the north-facing windows of the store on the west side of the street) down to 34th st, where Mandy jumped in a cab and I headed on over to the subway station near Herald Square. Ended up being a nice way to see the windows; we did skip Rockefeller Center, which is one of my usual stops on my annual holiday lightseeing-sightseeing wanders (interesting how the call of the Teuscher Chocolates shop was muted by cold & a tummy full of pasta), and we did get VERY cold, but we had the windows almost to ourselves!

More photos on Flickr!

Holiday Windows Part 1: Jewelry for Buildings

 Yesterday's Jedi Traffic Cop and numerous colleagues in blue were helping maintain the traffic flow in midtown Manhattan. What was I doing in midtown Manhattan on a weekend day? Same thing I do once every year around the holidays - yep, on Sunday it was time for my annual holiday shop-window viewing and Teuscher chocolate splurge with Mandy! 

We couldn't have asked for nicer weather, we've been having this ridiculously springlike warm spell for a while here that's got all the flowering bulbs confused and coming up - boy will they be in for a shock when winter finally gets around to hitting us, but in the meantime, what excellent weather for strolling outdoors. I actually did that on both days this weekend; TQ and I joined a pleasant crew from Sebago in a tour of Green-Wood Cemetary (tour of a cemetary may sound a bit weird and macabre to those who are not from NYC, but it dates back to the early 1800's, is a beautifully landscaped and well-cared-for green space, and became a very popular burial site during the Victorian era, when mortuary art reached wild heights, leaving some astounding memorials behind. It's also the final resting place of some fascinating people, and Commodore Emeritus Tony did some good research to prepare for the tour and led us by familiar names, good and bad (Tiffany, Ebbetts, Tweed) and some less familiar names (Henry Chadwick, anyone? Eliza Gilbert?). That was a lovely day, and then Sunday was just as nice. 

I have a ton of pictures to sort through but I thought I would start off with a set showing jewelry for buildings! Here's Cartier, Tiffany, Bulgari, and Harry Winston, all dressed up in their holiday sparkle. 

Tis The Season...

Another fine holiday seisiun at Dempseys last night, and tonight, the annual shop-window trip with Mandy, starting with a stop for my favorite, easy-to-transport, one-size-fits-all, won't-clutter-up-the-house-for-long type presents for the family at Teuscher Chocolates (aka "Torture" according to at least one chocolate-loving friend, as in "Mmmmm, Torture Chocolate!":) at Rockefeller Center. Caught this kid at the candy store window in 2008, figured I'd put him up again.

So that's what I'm up to tonight - meanwhile, here at the blog, yep, it's time for the Hawaiian Twelve Days Of Christmas again! Yaaaay! Numbah one day of Christmas, my tutu give to me...

Mele Kalikimaka and all that jazz! And once again, Mahalo nui loa, Joe, for Surfin' Santa!

Rock Center Tree and Dyker Heights - A little more holiday stuff.

Karen's on her way back to Texas now after a great visit, everything worked out nicely and it was so nice to see her again after a long time! We'd gone separate ways on Christmas Day, TQ and I had already accepted an invitation to dinner at his parents' home before I knew she was coming, and although she would've been more than welcome, she was really enjoying seeing NYC in all its holiday finery, and also had a whole laundry list of restaurants she wanted to get to, so she stayed down here, and then we got a couple more seasonally-festive things in later in her visit too. Her last day in Manhattan was on Sunday; that's when we saw my friends at VolvoTango on the pier, and after a long walk around various areas in lower Manhattan, we headed for Rockefeller Center to see the tree.

I think that of everything we did while she was here, that was about the only thing we might have skipped given a do-over - it was lovely and warm and the weekend and not too late at night and that area was mobbed like I'm not sure I've ever seen it before. Seriously, you could've populated a fairly respectable small town somewhere with the people present. We shouldered our way in, looked at the tree, looked towards the Teuscher store, decided it wasn't worth the trouble of getting there (we'd had a big, late brunch, and the walking areas on either side of the skating rink in front of the tree were absolutely jammed with people who didn't appear to be moving at all), shouldered our way back out, and called it a night. I did get some nice tree pictures though. 

The next day I went to work while Karen did some more solo sightseeing. She met me at work at the end of the day and then we met TQ at Purple Yam (she'd originally hoped to go to Onomea, the terrific Hawaiian place in Williamsburg, but they're closed on Mondays, but some good Pinoy cuisine was an acceptable substitute, mmmm adobo) and then after dinner, although the temperature was dropping and a drizzle with a bit of ice in it was starting up, TQ was a good sport, nay a great sport, and drove us out to see the famous holiday lights of Dyker Heights. Going on a cold (well, slightly colder than it has been) and sleety night after a long stretch of semi-tropical (or at least they felt that way compared to normal winter weather) temperatures turned out to be a great way to see these world-famous displays; this is a pretty well-off neighborhood, the residents who go in on the annual extravaganza actually hire decorating companies to do their displays, and according to a couple of articles (like this one) about the illuminated displays, the neighborhood draws around 100,000 visitors per year - but we were one of a very small numbers of sightseers to brave the first frozen-ish precipitation of the season. 

Here are some photos - that's it for the write-up, click on the first one to get to a slideshow view. 

Holiday Windows 2013

Generally speaking, I don't like crowds too much. Black Thursday? No thank you! Times Square on New Year's Eve?  Good heck, you couldn't PAY me enough to be there. But there some things for which I will make an exception, and one of them is my annual trip with my friend Mandy to go see the holiday windows. I can't remember how or when we started doing this but we got to be friends when we were working together at NatWest Markets back in the 90's, so I think that by now this counts as a tradition!

That's not Mandy with the pups, btw. That's a picture I took for my friend Gracie, who started taking pictures of dogs doing what dogs do in NYC and posting them on Facebook, just for fun and as a way to keep her page active for her friends (I enjoy it!). Eventually she started putting them up on a blog, Dogs Of New York. Couldn't resist grabbing a shot of this society lady taking the fluffies for a walk in their little coats for her!

She's passing in front of Bergdorf Goodman, which was where we started this year. Last year we were a bit disappointed - in the past, we've always sort of saved Bergdorf's for last because their window have alway been these spectacularly detailed surrealist fantasies (think, oh, life-sized polar bears covered in fringe and crystals, entire scenes covered in intricately cut paper or tile and glass, absolutely gorgeous with a mindboggling amount of work in the planning and execution), but last year they pretty much just had female mannequins in clothing they had for sale, set in fairly simple scenes with male mannequins dressed as waiters, ushers, etc., only with animal heads.

This year they didn't have as many of the fantasy windows as they have in the past but at least they were back to the elaborate and bizarre scenes. This year's theme was Holiday on Ice.  

Valentine's Day

Halloween

Arbor Day

Next stop was the Plaza. 

I don't think I've actually ever set foot in here but we walked up to look at the fountain that the Fitzgeralds so famously frolicked in (full of evergreens and lights this time of year) and decided to walk in and see if they were serving tea. They were, and although our dining plans this year involved post-window steak, we're now toying with the idea of working in high tea with our window excursion sometime, just for fun.

Next stop, heading south on Fifth Avenue - Tiffany's!

We always love the Tiffany's windows - they are small ones, designed as showcases for Tiffany's jewelry (same as Holly Golightly loved so much in Breakfast at Tiffany's), and for their holiday displays they build these amazing miniature sets. The last couple of years they've started expanding the window themes outside of the windows - last year or maybe the year before they had a carousel theme with carousel canopies built out over the windows. This year they'd done an elaborate design of windows with silhouettes in them on the building's facade - 

and then in the windows they'd built miniature NY street scenes - 

with tiny silhouettes in the windows. 

We always love the details they get into these models - look at the chimneys and skylights and water tanks, perfect NY roofscape in our older neighborhoods!

Mandy with a present! :D

Across the street, Bulgari's has adorned their building with a gigantic "diamond" snake armlet. I think this is fairly new, don't recall seeing it before the last year or so. Goes nicely with the giant snowflake that hangs over the intersection.

Henri Bendel is not one of our usual stops but Hirschfeld's dinner party grabbed our attention this year.

The artist at work -

The dinner table

And speaking of Holly Golightly - there she is, gazing uptown towards her beloved Tiffany's. Whoopi Goldberg in the background, of course. 

Continuing south - St. Patrick's Cathedral, under renovation

Next stop, Rockefeller Center

Just a few people here!

But we'll brave the crowds for one of our favorite windows - Teuscher Chocolates! Always the same every year, but we can't resist their chocolate!

Rockefeller Center Tree

Back on 5th Avenue. Empire State Building. With the new LED's, the red and white spire does a barber-pole effect.

Tabi! Mandy asked for a quick stop at the Bryant Park gift fair for a calendar she likes. 

Back out on 5th Avenue in front of the library. Patience (unless it's Fortitude, I assume they're named left to right as you face them but I'm not sure) decked out for the holidays!

Last stop before steak, Lord and Taylor. They also traditionally do miniature scenes, not quite on the tiny scale of Tiffany's, but animated, and with music.

This year they did something a little new, adding vintage advertising photos to the usual animated miniatures - it made for a very different effect, we liked it. 

And that was it for our holiday window viewing, 2013 edition - sometimes we've gone on down to Macy's but they tend to only do one new window each year (the rest, they switch back and forth between Yes Virginia There Is A Santa Clause and Miracle on 34th St.) and since it was getting on towards dinnertime by the time we hit Lord and Taylor, we decided we would call that the end of the window tour for 2013. 

Back to kayaking soon - looking forward to the annual Sebago Frostbite Regatta. Looks like it's going to be a particulary frosty one this year!