From The (Occasionally Rainy) Big Apple

Greetings to all from New York City. Our train trip from Greenwich to Grand Central was uneventful. To tell the truth, there is not really a lot to see on this route. We caught on off peak express, so the trip took only 43 minutes. Arriving in Grand Central was rather jarring, lots of people spilling out of trains and being disgorged from Grand Central onto the streets of Manhattan. Getting a cab was easy, getting to our hotel, not quite so easy thanks to NYC traffic congestion and multiple construction projects and street closures. We were pleased when we got to the Loews Regency to discover our room was ready, so we got in and settled, had some lunch, and took a little stroll two blocks to Central Park and to get our bearings. Monday night we were picked by our good friends Gerald Calvin and his partner Frank Vanacore and we all dined at a restaurant on Lexington Avenue called Le Relais de Venise where the menu consists of salad, steak frites, and a variety of tempting desserts. The steak is tender and absolutely delicious in a mustard sauce. Our meal was wonderful and the company delightful.
Yesterday we made our way to a Barnes And Noble store (for those of you who don't remember, Barnes And Noble is a bookstore [Google "bookstore" if that word is unfamiliar to you]) as we had a couple of items we wanted to pick up, then took a cab to Columbus Circle where we ended up taking an electronic bike pedicab tour through Central Park as all good tourists to New York City do, and met Gerard for lunch. During lunch, the rains came, so we headed back to our hotel for a bit of R&R before heading off to dinner and Finding Neverland. We had a dinner reservation close to our theatre and when we got our cab at 5:15 were fairly certain we'd make our 5:45 reservation. Mother Nature, midtown rush hour traffic, and torn up streets all conspired against us to foil our plans, so we cancelled our dinner reservation, shortened our cab ride (which by this time was 45 minutes and counting and still probably about 15 minutes from our original dinner destination), and had a delicious dinner at a little Italian restaurant on 46th St about a block and a half from the theater.
Finding Neverland was a wonderful show. Glee fans will recognize Matthew Morrison as J M Barrie, and Cheers and Frazier fans will recognize Kelsey Grammer as Charles Frohman/Captain James Hook.
We really loved this show and recommend it to anyone headed to New York. There are some very magical elements to it. Today we move to our final hotel so our times of semi unpacking and repacking are waning (hallelujah) and see On The 20th Century this afternoon. Tonight we dine with our cousin Brian Stevens and his husband Michael. We are trying to low key Manhattan since we have been here on numerous occasions and have seen the sights before.
More later.