Fine New York Dining

Last Saturday was Julie's birthday. In order to properly celebrate her twenty-ninth birthday and to make up for last year when I was in Mexico during her special day, I decided to pull out all the stops and take her to Les Miserables on Broadway, followed by dinner at a really good restaurant. I had the tickets and the reservation.

Unfortunately, the Broadway stagehands had other ideas. One week before our planned show, they went on strike. Needless to say, they are not our favorite people at this time.

Thankfully, though, no one was striking in the restaurant business. We ate at the Gotham Bar and Grill. To be honest, I don't think that I have a refined enough palate to say anything other than the food was amazing! As an example, I ordered a seafood salad for the second course (there were three). It was delectable and the presentation was first rate as well.

I highly recommend it for those with a taste for the finer things in life and a flexible budget. Overall I think Julie enjoyed her birthday, despite the worker sabotage. I don't think my budget can stand another such birthday, but it was well worth doing at least once. I am open to suggestions for future celebrations; what ideas do you have?

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and....the codpiece!

Yesterday, Julie and I took the train into Manhattan to visit with my ex-roommate Morgan Williams and his wife Keara. They were in New York for job training and interviews. We met for breakfast and then meandered over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a quick sampling of the displays. I was particularly impressed by the Egyptian artifacts and art. In true New York fashion, they even had an entire Egyptian temple on display. Apparently, it was disassembled in Egypt and transported to New York, stone by stone. Although its presence is slightly disturbing (I mean, honestly, how does Egypt feel about this?), it was fun to stand next to it and feel like Julie and I were touring the desert west of Cairo. We even noticed some early 19th century graffitti carved into the stones of the temple. Apparently, people are the same today as they were two hundred years ago!





We also took the opportunity to view some authentic armor from the middle ages. Here is a picture of one that caught my interest.

Overall, this armor looks like a standard set of mid-16th century armor. However, if you look more closely at the middle of the picture, you will notice a piece of the outfit that protrudes in a rather interesting way. After some research, I discovered that this part of the armor is known as a "codpiece". As we all know, men in the middle ages wore tights as part of their daily garb. What I didn't know was that these tights were similar to modern chaps; they only covered the legs, leaving the rest of the lower body free and clear! This wasn't a problem for most of medieval history since the tunic extended well below the waist and provided the wearer with the required modesty. However, in the mid-16th century tunics became very short and, in order to maintain modesty, men began to wear the codpiece. Obviously, there were many styles of codpieces and the size was often dependent on how powerful the wearer wished to appear. Anyway, the armor of the mid-1500s mirrored the fashion of the royal courts and we now have this example of Emporer Ferdinand I's armor with a rather large, yet plain codpiece.

This is why I love New York. I learn new things every day!