The view from our 30th floor room and aerie at the Intercontinental near Times Square. To have this clear view, this clear shot, all the way to the Hudson, well, wow is all I can say. One evening while Powell & Sabrina went out walking, I turned off all the lights in the room and just sat and watched the activity. Couldn’t hear any of the street noise as the windows didn’t open, but I enjoyed just looking at that vista. (And I must admit that I shed a tear that my darling DH wasn’t there beside me.) Powell upgraded the room for us, which was very nice of him to do! I paid for Sabrina’s and my trip, food, hotels, etc., and her mom and dad chipped in some money as well.
Before I do anything else, I need to explain why we took this trip. It wasn’t just a tourist thing with my granddaughter. Powell, my son, Sabrina’s uncle, works in finance, mostly with bonds and audits, and he travels to NYC and DC for a week of meetings every couple of weeks. One family get-together a few months ago, Sabrina asked him “so, uncle, what IS it you do on these trips?” He explained in some detail and then said “want to go with me sometime?” She said YES and I piped up with “I’ll go along as chaperone.” A trip was born.
At first Powell thought he’d just have Sabrina shadow him as he did his work, where he went, sitting in on meetings here and there, but I think he realized that wasn’t going to work. She’d be bored to tears part of the time, and for many of his meetings it wouldn’t be appropriate for her to be there. So, Powell decided to set up short meetings with people he knows in all walks of business. The purpose was twofold: (1) just the process of an “interview” or a “meeting” would be good experience for Sabrina; and (2) she would be exposed to a lot of different professions out there in the big world of business. She says she wants to be a large animal veterinarian, but I think Powell hoped he’d sway her to consider some other professions. She met with two people who work in Powell’s office in New York, one a young woman doing an internship, I think. The other a counterpart of Powell’s. She met with one of Powell’s customers, a woman attorney who has a 12-year old daughter and was just tickled pink to spend half an hour with Powell’s niece, talking careers. One other person is a DC lobbyist (in the water conservation area), one works for a senator, another is a higher-up with the Consumer Electronics Institute; his wife works for Homeland Security (I wished I could have been a little gnat sitting on Sabrina’s shoulder when she had that short tour and meeting).
At each and every interview (Sabrina did 8 altogether) she had to do a little presentation. The homework, most of which she did at home before the trip, was to research each person, find out where they grew up, where they went to school, what their degree(s) were in, what kind of jobs they’ve held, then she had to come up with 3 questions (unique to all 8 people) about them. So, for instance (and I’m totally making up this one), she would ask “so you did your undergrad at Columbia and got a degree in Math, but then you did your MBA at Yale in Economics. How or why did you transition into politics after you graduated?” She impressed all of them with what she’d done (almost all the background info was online – I think Facebook had a major presence in her homework – but the questions were really interesting) and all of the people were happy to talk about themselves and their career paths. She had to wear appropriate business clothes, which was a challenge. She didn’t have a suit, but did wear a black blazer over her very cute business-like knit dresses she and her mom picked out.
So, on her 2nd day of interviews she met a woman at Dean & DeLuca, the food store and restaurant (bakery?) near Times Square. Her uncle gave her instructions – after your meeting with this person, order two of these doughnuts and take them back to the hotel and give one to Grandma. She did exactly that. The photo at left shows two of them stuck together. You might not think these are anything special. You’d be dead wrong. Below you can see the munched-on version: coconut cream filled double glazed raised doughnut. OMGosh.
If you are ever in NYC and want a decadent treat, have one of these. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Now, I do like raised doughnuts over cake type, and I didn’t know that I liked coconut cream so much, but I DO! Whether these are available at all of their stores, I don’t know. This thing was incredible.
Sabrina had several things she really, really really wanted to do in NYC. First on the list was a stop at Tiffany’s. She’s not a jewelry person 
particularly, but she wanted to get something that said she’d “been there,” so on our last afternoon we took the subway (middle of the day, so she was willing to go!) and walked a few blocks of 5th Avenue. She bought a lovely necklace and ring by Paloma Picasso. She got advanced birthday and Christmas money gifts from several family members so she could do that, and Grandma chipped in just a little bit extra. And she wanted her picture taken in front of Tiffany’s. Ticked that one off the list. She also wanted to see Times Square at night (Powell ticked that one) and to walk in Central Park. Well, we had a difficult time with that one, although she and I walked on the outside of the park for a few blocks going to Tiffany’s. I told her she could go walk a bit in
the park and I’d park myself on a bench, but she didn’t want to go alone, I guess, and my foot was giving me lots of difficulty that day. But her uncle did walk her a bit into the park one evening, as I mentioned, but only about 100 feet. She wanted some New York pizza, so on one of the days we stopped into a proto-typical NY pizzeria – you wound through a line to get to the 4-5 pizzas they had on offer and you ordered one or two slices. They had a few other Italian specialties (spaghetti and meatballs) but we just got pizza and a soft drink. It wasn’t spectacular, but at least she had some there and could tick that one off her list too. We ticked them all, thank goodness.
Our last night in NYC we went out to dinner. Powell had asked me many months ago if there was any special place I’ve really wanted to go. Immediately, I said Gramercy Tavern. The picture at left is the little foyer area. In years past I’d tried to make reservations there, to no avail. They’re always booked. The travel agency Powell uses was finally able to get us a table, and yes, it was a very special dinner. They only do prix fixe meals, ranging from the vegetarian options at $70+ pp to $109 for the full enchilada. We did the full enchilada. It was glorious. We had several different kinds of meat and lots of vegetables, sides, an amuse bouche as well, a palate cleanser, and then a table laden with desserts, most of which we couldn’t finish so took them back to the hotel. Sabrina and I munched on those for some of the next day.
The dinner was Powell’s treat to us/me. Thank you, Powell!
There we are at the table. I think this was before we’d really hardly started eating dinner – we were about to dig into the amuse bouche, I believe. I lost track of all the courses we ate. I know we had lobster and duck as separate items. All of it was outstanding. Did I tell you that we had a celebrity sighting while we were there? My son recognized Tory Burch. I know her lines of clothing, handbags, etc. but I’d not have known her face at all. I never did ask Powell how he knew what she looked like. She was seated at a table about 10-12 feet away with a group of very well-dressed women. That was kind of fun!
This cute little thing was sitting on the podium at the front of the restaurant. It’s a little 6-pot “thing” that would hold little flowers in clay pots. In this case there were little glasses in each slot and they were filled with herbs and flowers. It was just so cute and fragrant!
Melynda
said on August 20th, 2014:
Very nice memories, to enjoy and retell. Nice!
Toffeeapple
said on August 24th, 2014:
I have finally managed to read all of your trip notes. What a super time you had with Sabrina and Powell. Lots of new memories for you to ponder on. xx