DAY 2, MARCH 23, 2009

It was another cool sunny day when we finally left the hotel a little after noon to go to the top of the Empire State Building, which is a walk of only about three blocks from our hotel. Helen had never been up there. I THINK I was up there once – the memory is very dim – with Mark Siddall and Ed Baroch back in the mid 60s. It's not cheap. At senior rate, going to the highest as well as the next-to-highest observation floor, I think we paid $33 apiece. We didn't buy any of the extra tour packages offered. And it's crowded – a lot of waiting at that time of day. The corporation that owns the building must be really raking in the revenue. There are lots of purple-uniformed employees directing traffic. The views were very nice in all directions, and we took several photos. Helen was particularly interested in the three towering, black Donald Trump buildings to the north.

On the top there was a friendly guide whose job it is to answer questions. She pointed out various things for us that we asked about: the Trump buildings, the spot where “Sully” crash landed in the Hudson, the Chrysler building, and Staten Island and the route of the New York Olympics, which I ran once circa 1991. Originally from Hartford, CT, she had had a career as a ballet dancer. Then, would you believe, she was an instructor in the dance program at Randolph Macon Woman's College (now Randolph College) in Lynchburg, Virginia. Then she became a guide in the Empire State Building. At a community college in Queens, which she pointed out to us, she is learning sign language so she can be a signing guide for the deaf in the Empire State Building.

There was a group of seven friendly Buddhist monks, men and women, in their distinctive robes. We kept meeting them again and again, particularly as we kept doubling back in the waiting line. Thinking they were were from a foreign country, I asked them where they are from. Would you believe, they are from a temple in Seattle, WA, and it is near Microsoft. I told them we are going to Bhutan and have visited temples in Korea, China, and Japan. One of them told me he has been to Bhutan and Nepal.

We had lunch at Wendy's and learned we can use the wireless, essentially for free, at Starbucks, both on 5th Avenue. So we returned with the computer and got on the Internet.

Hans called us about 5:15 and, rather than take a Taxi, we walked about 19 blocks south, mainly on Broadway -- only about half an hour -- to meet him at Union Square, where there is a statue of George Washington and where an outdoor market was shutting down for the day. We went into a rather large organic foods/health foods grocery store across the street from the square and bought our supper, including hot dishes scooped into covered plastic plates. We took our food upstairs, which is an eating area with long family-style tables which you share with strangers and stools that keep getting reclaimed like musical chairs. It was comfortable, and the food and the conversation were great.

From there we walked a few blocks to an old, lonely, small theater and took in the very “different” movie: “We Peddle Uphill.” We arrived in a hurry, just as it was starting. So we didn't get a chance beforehand to look at the information about it that was posted out front. It's a series of vignettes -- maybe a dozen of them -- taking place in various states around the nation. I wasn't able to understand the messages at all. My bad hearing doesn't help, but I can't blame it all on that. I don't think Helen understood much either. I don't know how much Hans understood. Upon exiting, we were able to read what was posted about the movie. It's supposed to be about the “paranoia, injustice and intolerance” -- greed was mentioned too – that it said has characterized 2001-to-2008 (post-9/11) USA. Well, even knowing, I couldn't well relate some of the vignettes to that. One of them seemed more relatable to post-9/11 than all the others. It was about an initially very strong woman library director who dared to defy the Terrorist Information Act (maybe not the correct name) upon a late night surprise visit by two male investigators and returned to the library quite some time later as a vegitative person.

We returned to our hotel by taxi, and Hans walked to wherever he'd locked his bicycle and rode it to his apartment.

Bernie :-)