I was able to sleep in this morning....not something I can normally do. We took our time getting ready and headed out at 11:30 to walk to Columbus Circle. We had a reservation at a restaurant called ROBERT located on the ninth floor of the Museum of Art and Design. I found it when I researched restaurants with a great views.
We strolled up Broadway, taking our time and gawking like the tourists that we are.
Columbus Circle has a very tall statue of Christopher Columbus with these words:
Joy and Glory
Never Uttered a More Thrilling Call
Than That Which Resounded
From The Conquered Ocean
In Sight of the First American Island
Land! Land!
In another section of the monument it credits Columbus with discovering America. I was surprised and wondered if there was any talk about removing the statue and/or changing the name of the circle. I did some reading on it when I got back to our room. It is controversial.
Across the street from Columbus Circle was this globe.
Linda and I researched this globe when we got back to the room. It sits in front of the Trump International Hotel and Tower. So we went to a restaurant for a view and ended up with a view of Columbus and a building associated with Donald Trump.
What we discovered when we were seated at our table was that one seat had a view of Central Park. I sat in that seat until we got to dessert and then we switched.
We each got the prix fixe menu. The food was not only lovely, it was delicious.
The Museum of Art and Design's current exhibition is called "Queer Maximalism." We were intrigued. After lunch we had a half hour before our next event so we quickly bought tickets and made a quick circuit of two floors of the museum. It was the work of Matthew Flower, known as Machine Dazzle, who has created costumes for a variety of performance contexts -- from street parades to cabarets. His work is credited with adding a new chapter to the history of queer storytelling. We wished we had more time to study these amazingly intricate costumes.
But we had "priority seats" to the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and did not want to miss the chance to watch him work. We lined up with the hundreds of other people who had "priority seats". We lined up at 3 p.m. and finally got seated by around 4:30. Paul Mecurio, a stand-up comedian, came out to warm up the crowd. He made us practice screaming, clapping and laughing on cue. Then he brought up several audience members to interview. He was excellent. He created, produced and starred in his one-man Broadway show called "Paul Mecurio's Permission to Speak". When he was done we got directions from the Stage Manager and then a short concert from the Late Show's Band. Then a Q & A with Stephen Colbert.
The taping began around 5:30 p.m. It was pure pleasure to be there and to hear Stephen Colbert's monologue. I wouldn't have made it through the isolation of the pandemic without Stephen Colbert and his monologues. We got to see two guests -- Jeremy Pope who recently starred in the movie "Inspection" about a gay Marine. The next guest was Danai Gurira, who played Okoye in "Wakanda Forever".
We got outside to discover a pouring rain. Linda and I are both very prepared travelers. We each pulled out our umbrellas. Linda's actually changes colors when it gets wet. We had reservations at a fine dining Mediterranean restaurant (Iris) just one block from the Ed Sullivan Theater where the Late Show tapes. We walked through the rain to another lovely meal. I ordered all the Mezze (appetizers) for my dinner. Linda got the halibut and we shared our meals. We dined on delicious hummus, olives, tzatziki (dotted with pomegranate seeds), whipped feta, roasted eggplant, sourdough pitas, and flaky delicious halibut on a fava bean puree. We topped it off with the Mediterranean version of beignets dipped in honey and chocolate sauce. It was amazing. Everything we have eaten in NYC so far has been outstanding.
We walked back to our hotel down Broadway making a stop at the local CVS for some drinks for our hotel refrigerator. Then we played cards to keep us awake until we could see ourselves on The Late Show. We were just dots in the audience. It was fascinating to see how they edited the final product together. They pulled out the part in which Stephen Colbert's phone went off in the middle of an interview. We fell asleep with dreams of more adventures tomorrow.
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