Sunday, October 14, 2007

Introducing Some Culture Into David's Life

This Saturday was Daddy's turn to take David for a day on the town; well, Manhattan at least.

After being dropped off at the George Washington Bridge, we hopped on one of those shuttle buses to Manhattan. After a long trip on the A train, we found ourselves in the Wall Street area; a hectic bustling area during the week, but a virtual ghost town during the weekend. After a stop at Seth's office to give David a chance to keep up with the potty training, we headed down to Battery Park for the Seventh Annual Culturefest.

Culturefest features over 100 booths which present small slices of culture in New York City, from ballet to opera, museums to workshops, theatres to gardens, and parks to performing arts. Then, after working up an appetite, they had plenty of food stations on hand from NYC restaurants, featuring Indian food, Mexican food, French food and a dessert booth. (We ended up going to the booth that featured peanut butter sandwiches: (Peanut Butter & Co.) The funny thing is that I remember when this restaurant first appeared - almost ten years ago - and never thought I'd have any reason to patronize them. Because of David's particular diet, this turned out to be a life-saver.


We visited a number of booths, and David especially enjoyed making his own button in "The Studio Museum in Harlem," getting a rub-on tattoo in the "Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum" booth, watching the train in the "New York Botanical Garden" booth. There were many other booths which offered something for kids and David was moderately interested in these activities.


There were a two stages which featured various performances, and David wanted to stay through three of them, featuring Taiko Masala (Japanese drumming), Chris Byars Quartet (jazz) and The Smyrk (punk/grunge-rock).

After Culturefest (and a quick potty break,) David and Seth went onto the Staten Island Ferry for a quick boat ride to Staten Island and back. He liked the ride, but wasn't too crazy about staying outside with the strong breeze.


Once back, it was back on the train to Times Square. By this time, David wanted to ride on Seth's shoulders which wasn't particularly fun for an already tired Daddy. Walking to Eighth Avenue, the two made their way through the 8th Avenue Autumn Festival and back to the bus that would take them home.

David went to bed at his normal time, but Seth would be fast asleep first. How good it must feel to be young... sigh...

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