12/1/06 - Day 16
Feeling a bit shabby after the preceeding night's festivities, I went and found a greasy breakfast. Sean and I met up again, walked the streets, investigating shops. In the afternoon we had a rehearsal for that evening's concert, which was at the (Roman Catholic) Church of the Transfiguration, situated in the Chinatown district of NYC. A lovely building, adorned internally with "interesting" visions of the Holy Family done Chinese-style, providing points of interest! Sean and I decided to take a taxi there, as if we caught the subway, we would have had to take 2 different trains in different directions, and walked at least 15 minutes. The taxi idea wasn't too grand after all - the taxi driver at first didn't know the street where the church was on, and then once we explained it to him, he refused to drive the 7 or so blocks to the church because there "would be too much traffic". We jumped out and walked the rest of the way!
Apparently the rehearsal time had been changed from 5pm to 4pm after Wednesday night's concert, but I was unaware of this, and thus arrived much much later than I thought I would have been with the taxi fiasco alone.
The concert was lovely - the church packed out, and we had the services of Stephen Tharp as our organist for the evening - a very talented organist too, I might add! I first met him once in Sydney when he was visiting, many years ago, so it was nice to be able to meet Mrs Tharp on this occasion, who was pageturner for the evening.
My parents had just flown in to New York from Bermuda, following a 10-day holiday, and luckily their flight back to Australia wasn't until the following day, so they came along to the concert also. I hadn't seen them since before Christmas, so it was a bit of a thrill to see them in NYC of all places!
After the concert, John Collis (our host at the church) had organised a group dinner. The stupid restaurant tried to overcharge our table by 3 set menu meals, and after Sean argued with them, they agreed to revise the bill down (!?!) but for some reason, our table was very short in their payment of the bill, and I had to throw in $20, and two other kind souls threw in $20 and another $10! Thank you both! Total cost of dinner for two, within a group - USD130. Not cheap, and certainly not good value, as most of the Appetizers (what we in Australia call Entrées) were seafood (which neither Sean nor I can eat).
Taxi'd back to the hotel, and had a quiet night.
Apparently the rehearsal time had been changed from 5pm to 4pm after Wednesday night's concert, but I was unaware of this, and thus arrived much much later than I thought I would have been with the taxi fiasco alone.
The concert was lovely - the church packed out, and we had the services of Stephen Tharp as our organist for the evening - a very talented organist too, I might add! I first met him once in Sydney when he was visiting, many years ago, so it was nice to be able to meet Mrs Tharp on this occasion, who was pageturner for the evening.
My parents had just flown in to New York from Bermuda, following a 10-day holiday, and luckily their flight back to Australia wasn't until the following day, so they came along to the concert also. I hadn't seen them since before Christmas, so it was a bit of a thrill to see them in NYC of all places!
After the concert, John Collis (our host at the church) had organised a group dinner. The stupid restaurant tried to overcharge our table by 3 set menu meals, and after Sean argued with them, they agreed to revise the bill down (!?!) but for some reason, our table was very short in their payment of the bill, and I had to throw in $20, and two other kind souls threw in $20 and another $10! Thank you both! Total cost of dinner for two, within a group - USD130. Not cheap, and certainly not good value, as most of the Appetizers (what we in Australia call Entrées) were seafood (which neither Sean nor I can eat).
Taxi'd back to the hotel, and had a quiet night.
posted by Daniel at 7:36 am
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