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06/23/2004: "NYC - June 20-21"

Starting from where I left off! We went to see Fiddler on the Roof, and it was excellent! Even Mike liked it...

The two leads who played Tevye and Golda were both Tony-nominated actors. Alfred Molina (Tevye) was in several movies - Chocolat, Maverick, and he will be playing the in Spiderman 2. After the play, we headed to meet Pete and Nina at an Asian Fusian restaurant in Times Square. We had to walk several blocks out of the way, because the streets were blocked off and the sidewalks were crowded with millions of people, all waiting to see Kerri Strugg carry the Olympic Torch. Dinner was good, as was the conversation and the sake! Following dinner, we took a cab (Mike's first NYC cab ride) to meet Raffi at "The Spotted Pig," a small dive-ish bar in Grenich (sp?) Village. As rumored, Raffi had a posse of about 10 beautiful ladies with him! :) We stayed for a bit, then headed back to Kristin's place in Brooklyn for some sleep.

We didn't wake up until 11:30 - so much for sightseeing on our 2nd day in NY! Instead we had lunch at Stage Deli (across from Carnegie Deli). It was delicious! Instead of bread or something to start, they brought pickles!! Yay! The sandwiches were humongous, and even Mike could only eat half of his. Even though we were stuffed, we ordered slices of cheesecake, which were also enormous (but yummy!).

After feeding our bellies, we took a car to the airport, and our flight left at 5:50pm. Let me just say that American Airlines sucks. No wonder the tickets were so inexpensive! The first thing I noticed was that it wasn't one of the "nice" overseas planes, with tv's, video games, etc, at each seat and the leg room is far from "enhanced." Then, we are informed that AA doesn't offer its passengers one free alcoholic beverage with the meal. Then, this is the kicker, about 2 hours out of Rome, the captain gets on the loudspeaker and says that no one will be allowed to go to the bathroom for the entire rest of the trip. Hmmmm... this is right after everyone began waking up after a night of sleeping, so I'm sure there were some people who had to go very bad. We are told that if anyone goes to the restroom, the holding tanks will begin to overflow, and the flight will need to be diverted to another airport. Lovely. Apparently everyone was able to "hold it," but I'm sure it was fun for everyone!