A New York Thanksgiving

What a great day today was.

I usually think of Thanksgiving as being about being by a fire with family and eating Autumnal foods. But over the years I've learned to avoid travelling on that day and finding other ways to celebrate. With all the Jewish holidays, there are plenty of other times to be with family. (Besides, I'm going to Portland fairly soon for a few days.)

We've got a good friend from Portland here living in Washington Heights with whom we decided to get together. (I mentioned her in Preparing For Rosh Hashanah -- scroll down on this link.) So today U. and I took a bus into Manhattan, a subway to midtown and tried to explore a little of Manhattan in the afternoon while we waited for dinner. Sadly, it got much colder and wetter than we expected... later it even snowed a little. So we ended up just hiding out and getting work done in his office building up on the 20th floor. 20 floors feels high to me. My ears popped in the elevator.

At last our friend got off work... yes, she had to work that day. And the three of us went to a very fancy bar. How fancy? The Heineken cost $8.00. But what ambiance! It was this classy room that looked like an antique library with books high high high up on the walls. They could have been bricks dressed up as books for all I know, but it was awfully cozy. Don't know the last time I had a beer but it went straight to my head and I enjoyed it.

This made riding the subway afterwards an act of faith. This is the first time I've been on them without a map and just had to follow my well-practiced companions to make sure I knew where we were going.

At last we had dinner at Abigael's. Very very very tasty dinner. We didn't even have to decide what to eat with the exception of the entree, and of course as nice as the other dishes sounded, we had to get turkey. It was all a set Thanksgiving menu.The waiter ("Hello, my name is Aaron and I will be your waiter tonight") brought over his fresh pepper grinder and everything.

I've only eaten in fancy Kosher restaurants maybe twice before, so this was a real treat.

And again, quite the New York experience once we got the bill.

It was all worth it. My one disappointment about the day is more of a dread. It was SO COLD walking through the biting wind out there. We went to our friend's house afterwards and she loaned me an extra layer of clothes. But this, they say, is only the beginning. Thankfully I was wearing a new pair of boots. Our friend says that now I'm going to have to get a nice down coat.