Diary of a New Yorker: Last week in NYC & Cape Cod
My parents-in-law were in town last week. They mostly slotted into our schedule, joining on school drop-offs, walks in Central Park and our usual schedule of classes and appointments. But we also went out for dinner because this is New York and they didn’t come all this way to dine on my home-cooked food. This is what we did:
Monday
We crossed Central Park and went for coffee in Cafe Sabarsky, a Viennese cafe in German and Austrian art gallery, the Neue Galerie, on the corner of 84th and Fifth Avenue. It is my favourite place for coffee and cake and today, I had the chocolate and pistachio Mozarttorte. We parted ways afterwards: the grandparents taking the time to tour the rest of the gallery and I took my kid to her class, spotting Hallowe’en decorated stoops all over the Upper East Side on the way.
Tuesday
I was in a co-working space in the morning where a woman beside me was pitching post-partum vitamins “for that postpartum period where you forget to eat”. Never heard of it. Is that a new thing or is it American? “The post-partum period where you forget to eat” - definitely wasn’t around when I was having babies.
Wednesday
There’s an information sign in Central Park Zoo that says “When a group of mongoose leaves their dens to go foraging, they leave behind one adult to “babysit” all of the young”. After an early dinner in local neighbourhood Italian restaurant, Papardella’s, I was that mongoose and went home with the kids while the rest of the mongeese went to Dizzy’s Jazz Club at Lincoln Center. I didn’t mind. I’d been to Dizzy’s the week previously.
Dizzy’s has a much different look to Mezzrow jazz club, which I’d previously described here. Dizzy’s is bigger, more spacious, above ground and a window overlooking the New York skyline serves as a live backdrop to the stage. The music was amazing and at $40, so accessible. I need to go more often.
Thursday
The last time my in-laws ate in Tavern on the Green was when they visited New York on a child-free break in 1999. They had bumped into neighbours from home and wound up in Tavern on the Green where my father-in-law said he had his first and last Cosmopolitan, though I got the impression there may have been many Cosmopolitans in between.
The restaurant has been extensively renovated since but our waiter told us that the individual lights from the chandeliers they both remembered, had been repurposed to form the draping fairy lights over the outdoor patio, which are the romantic twinkling lights I always picture when I think of Tavern on the Green today.
Friday
We hired a car and the six of us drove four hours north to Sandwich, a small town in Cape Cod. Cape Cod is beautiful. It's famously beautiful, I haven't discovered a hidden gem here but everything is as you imagine it and it does not disappoint.
The Dawson's Creek theme tune played constantly in my head as we whizzed past trees in every shade of Fall, broken up by occasional bodies of water with little jetties and motorboats tied up. We passed through small towns with rundown gas stations and roadside diners with giant neon lobster signs, each claiming to have the best lobster rolls on the Cape. Everywhere had immaculately maintained clapboard houses, freshly painted shades of either blue, white or grey. Perfectly manicured gardens with posters announcing the resident’s politics on the lawn. American flags here and there.
On arrival, we went for pizza and beer, in Treehouse Brewing Company , which we ate at picnic benches outside, before moving to the Adirondack chairs lined up to face out at the sea.
I guess we are in Massachusetts, and dangerously close to Boston, but so far everybody here looks Irish and is called Kevin.
Saturday
Winter beach is my favourite type of beach. No spending all day, baring your skin, with zero shade, like a stupid sitting duck for the sun. No suncream mixing with sand. No reapplying your suncream knowing you’re going to burn anyway. No sitting down with no furniture. No expectation to get in the freezing, salty, gross and dangerous water. No sand picnics. No wet togs. No constant discomfort. No pretence that you're having a good time.
After a bracing beach walk, fully covered up, we stopped for lunch in Seafood Sam’s for a family platter of seafood. Deep fried everything, including scallops and oysters. It was delicious.
Afterwards, we drove to the very northern tip of the Cape and the town of Provincetown. The streets there were narrow and busy. It felt holidayish but also lived in. There is a sense of community that you can tell endures past peak season. We pulled in to Angel Foods for takeaway coffee and treats, which we enjoyed on nearby benches, overlooking the water. We continued on down Commercial Street, passing gallery after gallery, cute cafes and shops.
At the end of our walk, we picked up ice-creams in Lewis Brothers Ice-Cream and were quietly enjoying them as we sat in the window , watching the world go by. The world, that afternoon in Provincetown, included a group of drag queens on their way out for the evening. For context, as we drove into Provincetown, I read out a quick blog summary of the town that included the info that it was an LGBTQ destination. Every building we passed since we arrived flew rainbow flags and 99% of the couples we passed were same-sex. After the drag queens passed, my mother-in-law broke the comfortable silence with: “Were they MEN?”
Is this a grandmother thing?
I once watched the Late Late Show with my own grandmother and Mario Rosenstock came out, dressed as Joan Burton. Ryan interviewed him as Joan Burton, then, after a few minutes of OTT, hilarious and exaggerated interview with “Joan Burton”, Mario took off his wig, sat back and chatted as Mario Rosenstock. My grandmother turned to me, wide-eyed: “DID YOU KNOW THAT WAS A MAN?”
Sunday
After an American breakfast in the 6A cafe, we drove to Plymouth Rock and toured a replica of the Mayflower, the ship on which the Pilgrims arrived in 1620. According to the tourguide, 102 people were on board and while only two people died during the voyage, only half survived the first winter in the New World. I know which half I would have been in. I thought about how two nights before, I’d spent the evening trying to figure out the heating system and complaining non-stop about how I couldn’t warm up before finally, going to bed early, wondering if I would ever feel warm again. This was inside a modern home in October where the thermostat said it was 16 degrees Celsius.
The whole reason we were in Cape Cod by the way was because it has always been a “lifelong dream” of my mother-in-law’s to visit. “Lifelong dream” is how it is always described. I asked for the first time, this weekend, what had given her the idea in the first place and she said it was ever since she’d watched 2003 movie, ‘Something’s Gotta Give’, starring Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, which was set here. I can't explain why exactly, but it sort of took the romance off the whole endeavour for me. Maybe because I can remember 2003. I was an adult in 2003. I’d always assumed the inspiration was from a book or a film (that was at the very least in black and white) or from a glamorous childhood friend who had travelled there or a story she’d heard on the wireless, perhaps. Not a new release in Xtra Vision.
‘To assume is to make an ass out of you and me’, however, and filling in non-existent blanks has always been a problem for me in this family. It’s not infrequently mentioned, for example, that one aunt went to finishing school. Apparently, that was all that was ever said: “She went to finishing school”. I realise now that my own brain had added “....in Switzerland”. And for years I thought this to be true until someone, one day, decided to expand on the detail to include: “She went to finishing school….in Sligo”. IN SLIGO? The aunt was immediately downgraded in my mind from walking round the Alps, with books on her head, surrounded by minor European royalty to learning domestic science in Sligo, surrounded by nuns.
We stuck on the 2003 classic, ‘Something’s Gottta Give’ anyway and just a few minutes into the movie, Amanda Peet’s character tells Jack Nicholson that they are driving to her mother’s beach house in…the Hamptons. I hear a little gasp in the corner of the sitting room: “the Hamptons!”. I say nothing as I don't want to ruin the lifelong dream. A few minutes later, they are walking on the beach and the chat is all “Hamptons Hamptons Hamptons Hamptons” and my mother-in-law exploded in laughter “Oh my God… it’s in the Hamptons!”