We checked out pretty early from the Airbnb.  Neither of the hosts were there so we left the key on the counter and took our luggage over to Michael’s.

Breakfast/brunch today was at Koyzina Kafe,

From there, we took an Uber to the interim Steinway Hall.  Michael and I were the last people ever to play at the last Steinway Hall, in the main room.  We played a 2-piano version of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.   I’m sorry that the video quality is so poor:

That first time, Michael played Mozart’s Rondo in D Major, also poor quality video 🙁

Fortunately, the new Steinway Hall, when completed, will have built-in professional recording.

Adapted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steinway_Hall:

That Steinway Hall (on 57th Street) was designated a registered historic and cultural landmark in 2001. The exterior featured a bas-relief of Apollo and a musical muse by Leo Lentelli located in the lunette above the grand window at ground level.

The main room, a two-story rotunda, featured high domed ceilings, handpainted by Paul Arndt. The interior design was appointed with marble and portraits of composers and concert artists. Some valuable paintings are showcased throughout Steinway Hall, by such renowned artists as Rockwell Kent, N.C. Wyeth, Leopold Seyffert and Charles Chambers. The main rotunda seated up to 300 guests and a small symphony orchestra. The showrooms were covered with wood panels for better acoustics. In the basement of Steinway Hall was a concert grand piano bank: an exclusive collection of Steinway concert grand pianos, maintained for the use in live concerts as well as for studio recordings by performing artists.

At the end of June 2013 Steinway & Sons announced that they sold the leasehold interest in the Steinway Hall on 57th Street for $46.3 million in cash.

The current, interim location is a rented building on the address 1133 Avenue of the Americas.

They will move to their new, permanent location in February, 2016

We got to our location faster than expected and walked around the block.  I was stunned when we saw Cafe Un Deux Trois!

Cafe Un Deux Trois has a special memory for me.  November 2, 2003, Michael decided to run the New York Marathon.  We went to NY to see him run.  (He finished in 4:21:57.  The average for males that year was 4:28:56).

From good-old Wikipedia:

The New York City Marathon (branded TCS New York City Marathon and formerly branded ING New York City Marathon for sponsorship reasons) is an annual marathon (42.195 km or 26.219 mi) that courses through the five boroughs of New York City. It is the largest marathon in the world, with 50,304 finishers in 2013. Along with the Boston Marathon and Chicago Marathon, it is among the pre-eminent long-distance annual running events in the United States and is one of the World Marathon Majors.

My best friend, Alice, and her brother (David) were living in Brooklyn and they decided to meet us in Manhattan on Saturday night.  Michael and a friend went to a comedy show while Alice, David, Tom and I walked around Times Square, just talking.  We turned down a side street and saw… Cafe Un Deux Trois.  We decided to go in to eat.

I remember nothing about the meal.  But, at the next table was Ben Gazzara,  Gena Rowlands, Peter Bogdanovitch and 3-4 others I didn’t recognize.  After about half an hour, Carol Kane came in, too.  It turned out that Ben Gazzara was in a one man show across the street which had just opened: Nobody Don’t Like Yogi.  All this made the meal very exciting.  

For the last several years, every time we’ve been near Times Square, I’ve looked down the side streets for this restaurant and never saw it again until this day.

A very nice memory of Alice.

When we got back to Steinway Hall, the doors were opened and we went up to the recital room.  A friend of Tom’s came to listen, too.

Michael played Partita II by Johann Sebastian Bach

Our duet this year was an old Christmas favorite, Fantasia on Greensleeves by Ralph Vaughan Williams

After Steinway Hall, we went to Tony’s di Napoli for lunch, Then rested for a bit at Michael’s.

We planned to go to a museum but were running short of time so we walked around Battery Park, took a picture…

Took a picture of the Wall Street Christmas Tree at dusk:

Then we picked up our stuff at Michael’s, took the subway to Penn Station and headed home, exhausted.

Walking today: 4.19 miles, 6 flights of stairs

Where the pictures were taken (I didn’t take pictures everywhere and Tom didn’t have his phone):