Bright and early. Get up. Dress in nice clothes. Pretend that you don’t look as exhausted in selfies as you feel.
After just two hours of sleep, Katrina and I caught a cab to The Shakespeare, a British-themed restaurant here in the city, for breakfast and a viewing of the royal wedding. We were seated at a table with three girls who came into the city from New Jersey for this. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it was then when I looked around the room and realized that men were in a severe minority in that crowd. The royal wedding...pre-show(?) was playing on televisions throughout the restaurant. A waiter brought a plate of scones, muffins, banana bread, etc. for the table and eventually butter and jam to go with it (long after we were done eating the stuff from the platter). The wedding was fun to watch. More celebrities than I expected, but it turns out that Meghan Markle is a well-known actress, so I guess it makes sense. Obviously, I went into this wedding with very little information. We had to send in our entree choice earlier this week. I decided to just go with pancakes and was very happy with my decision. Small, thin pancakes with some blueberries and a cream drizzle. Perfectly light for an early morning with no sleep.
After the wedding was done and they had given us a piece of lemon elderflower cake (the same flavor as the cake at the royal reception today) in a fun gift box, we grabbed a cab back to the apartment and went back to bed. Those eyes say that they want more sleep:
Saturday. Take two. Round two. Part Two. We didn’t have a matinee locked down for today, but I got a recommendation from a friend earlier this week for a show called In & Of Itself. I looked into it and it had a lot of really great reviews by many different sources. So, I decided to give it a shot.
It was a magic show. You could say that it’s a play-meets-magic-show situation, but I think that still translates to “magic show.” I enjoyed it. I realized that I haven’t really been to a magic show before, which strikes me as odd considering how many magic shows, behind-the-scenes magic exposées, magic competitions, etc. that I’ve watched online or on TV.
When you walked into the theater, you had to choose a card from a wall of 1,000 cards with various designations on them. See the wall and sample cards:
Throughout the show, the magician, Derek Delgaudio, used these cards to ask for participation from various audience members. At the end, he asked for people to stand if they had chosen a card that “represents how they want the world to see them” or something like that. Honestly, I kind of zoned out for a minute and suddenly people were standing. Probably 50 people stood. Then, impressively, he went through person by person and named the card that they had chosen for themselves. All in all, I consider it to definitely have been worth the time and money.
Afterward, I met Katrina back at the apartment, we changed back into our fancy clothes from the morning and headed to the Upper West Side for dinner and our evening show, My Fair Lady, at Lincoln Center. Our plan was to eat at Parm, a regular favorite of ours that sells Italian food in a 50s diner-ish setting. The wait was a bit long for a table, so we decided to put our names on the waiting list and go to dessert first instead.
Key Lime Cheesecake from Magnolia Bakery is an absolute must on every trip and has been since we first discovered it. The bakery is only a block or so away from Parm, so it was time for that cheesecake! It was just as delicious as I remember it. I was so excited to have it that it didn’t even cross my mind to take a picture until right now when I’m realizing that I don’t have one. Dinner was unremarkable for me. I did take a picture, but it doesn’t look as appetizing as it was in real life, so it wouldn’t be doing anyone any favors to include it. It was chicken parmesan on a semolina roll (so a breaded chicken breast with mozzarella and marinara on a hamburger bun). We ended up finding a seat at the bar when we got back from Magnolia Bakery, which turned out to be a faster experience anyway, which got us to our show with plenty of time.
This revival of My Fair Lady was good overall. It had the largest set pieces I’ve ever seen on stage, including a unit for Henry Higgins’s house that rotated around to show various rooms in the house. I ended up having a hard time staying awake during this show, which definitely affected how I felt about it afterward. That’s probably more a commentary on my sleep deprivation than the show itself, though. One highlight is that we had an understudy for Eliza Dolittle, the lead role. Well, the highlight isn’t that she was on, but that we met her at the stage door afterward. We were almost the only ones still waiting by the time that she made it out and she was really happy to see us! It turns out that today was the first day that she had gone on! She did the matinee earlier, so this was only her second show in that role. She did so well. It was fun to chat for a few minutes with her.
Our night was almost over, but the option of a second dessert was put on the table. We decided that it would be Schmackary's, but Google Maps was telling us that we would arrive one minute before closing. Near closing time, they might be out of cookies too. So, we were taking a risk. After a quick subway ride and all but running many blocks to the shop, we made it with a minute or two to spare. The pickings were slim, but better than we’ve found at closing before and we both walked away with cookies with which we were happy. It is just occurring to me now that I also could have taken a picture of my cookies. Well, I guess we’ve learned that I eat desserts too quickly and with a single-mindedness that doesn’t allow photo time first.