When we first decided back in July that we wanted to spend a couple of weeks in New York City last month, we knew we wanted to do things we had not done before during prior visits. That meant we didn’t need to go to the top of the Empire State Building, see the permanent exhibits at the Natural History Museum or Metropolitan Museum of Art, or gawking in Times Square.

However, finding out-of-the-ordinary things to do in New York City was a bit of a challenge. Our American Express Concierge service could only come up with a helicopter tour of New York City. And posts on various travel sites also didn’t elicit anything particularly stellar, except for one thing - a suggestion to get in touch with Context Travel.

Context Travel specializes in scholar-led walks of a number of “great” cities, including Rome, Paris, and New York. If only we had known about them when we were in Paris a couple of months ago… We had first heard of Context Travel in a magazine from American Express just recently, and thought they only covered European cities. They were highlighted as having helped director Ron Howard get a private tour of the Vatican and Sistine Chapel in preparation for the forthcoming movie “Angels & Demons”. So when the folks at Indagare suggested we check out their New York City offerings, we jumped at the idea.

Ultimately, we arranged four tours with Context Travel - I will go into those in another blog entry. But I will say all were very informative and educational, and we’re very glad we partook of the tours.

Another uncommon thing we managed to arrange through our contacts at Relais & Châteaux (where we are members of something called Club 5C), was a private cooking lesson with Chef Tony Aiazzi of the famed Aureole restaurant in New York City. And we also attended a presentation on cooking with liquid nitrogen at Astor Center. More on both of those later too.

We also managed to have dinner in the La Cave cheese cave at Artisanal Bistro, found a last minute table at Per Se (well, actually about two weeks in advance of our dinner), enjoyed dim sum and Peking duck in Chinatown, afternoon tea at The Peninsula’s Gotham Lounge and at The London NYC, Korean BBQ in K-town, and a few other culinary delights.

While we were looking for the more unusual experiences, we also did partake of the more ordinary delights of New York, including visiting various museums to see special exhibits, and a personal first for me - visiting the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. That was an especially emotional and moving day for me because of my roots as a first-generation American. We also caught an off-off Broadway performance, saw a couple of movies, and walked and walked and walked.

There also was business to take care of - we spent our first couple of days in New York at the New York International Gift Fair searching for new products to off in our on-line store at www.BonaireStuff.com. And I had a client meeting for my patent-related consulting business too.

All in all we had an excellent time in New York City. The weather was perfect just about all the time, we had a child sitter service available to us at our great hotel (we had two adjacent rooms at the all-suite The London NYC), and we ate very very well. The only downside to our trip was the markedly higher number our bathroom scales showed us upon our return.

I finally had a chance to sort through the thousand or so photos I took during our trip to New York City, which ended last Saturday.

You can view them locally on our site at this Gallery link.

Or you can go to Yahoo!’s Flickr service to see the photos.

I hope to get some stories posted tomorrow about our various adventures. For now, however, read the captions for each image.

There was little doubt in anyone’s mind that we could not last until October before traveling again, so today we find ourselves getting to The Big Apple - New York City.

We’re planning on about two weeks of vacation, Traveling Richters style. That means lots of eating out and exploring.

On the exploration agenda, we’re taking the kids to their first trade show - the New York International Gift Fair (NYIGF) in order to give them an idea how gift shop retailers find things to sell, as well as how wholesalers and distributors market their wares. We have a business reason in going too as we run our own on-line gift shop at www.BonaireStuff.com - we’re hoping to find some more interesting Bonaire and Caribbean oriented merchandise to carry in our on-line store.

We also have walking tours scheduled through Context Travel (www.ContextTravel.com) to learn about the Cloisters, the history of tea, ethnic cooking in New York City, and making chocolate. There’s also an off-Broadway show (Around the World in Eighty Days) booked. We’re also hoping to catch the Buckminster Fuller exhibition at the Whitney Museum, plus more regular forays to places like the Metropolitan Museum and the Guggenheim.

And then there’s the dining! We have dinner reservations for almost every night we’re in town at restaurants including Tabla, Le Bernardin, Per Se, L’Atelier des Joel Robuchon, Asiate, WD-50 (molecular gastronomy), a table in the cheese cave at Artisanal Bistro, and a few more goodies. We’re also trying to coordinate a cooking class at another top restaurant, and perhaps a demonstration of cooking with liquid nitrogen (see the post on The Fat Duck in England from a couple of months ago about what this is all about) one evening if we get the timing to work out.

I will try and post pictures and reviews here as best I can.

It’s fun when one doesn’t even have to leave one’s house to find adventure. Last night Bas spotted a very small critter on the floor in the hallway to our bedrooms. At first blush it appeared to be a millipede, but with magnification we discovered that in fact it was Bonaire’s extremely elusive Silver Snake, the only species of snake known to exist natively on the island. We captured the snake on a piece of paper and found a plastic Hefty plate to put him on to keep him from getting loose (and to provide good contrast) while I took photos.

As you can see from the above photo, the snake is tiny - we put a regular pen cap near him to show the relative size. The Silver Snake (Latin name is “Leptotyphlops albifrons”) apparently can get up to 10 centimeters (four inches) in length, although we estimate this one at about 2/3rd that stretched out.

Above is a close-up with macro lens. You can make out the snake’s eyes. After the photo shoot, we released him into the front yard for his (or her) safety.

The book “Nos Bestianan / Our Animals - Curacao | Bonaire | Aruba” by Dr. Bart A. de Boer says these tiny snakes are very hard to find. We’d agree with that as this is the first one we’ve ever seen in our 11 years on Bonaire. They only hunt for a brief time at dusk (which is when we found this one), and are otherwise hunting under rocks. They apparently eat very small insects, including ants, termites, and insect larvae.

Anyhow, a very cool experience - a lot more fun and less hazardous than the scorpions we find with regularity (the scorpions sting with the same pain as a bee sting, annoying but not otherwise dangerous).

You may have already seen a few individual photos in prior cell-phone based posts below, but I finally got around to uploading the choicest photos from when The Traveling Richters went to the True Colors concert in Dallas last month. The True Colors Tour was conceived by Cyndi Lauper, using the title of one of her best know songs to help promote support and tolerance and understanding for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender relationships. Cyndi herself is married with a son, but feels very strongly that we should all just be able to get along, regardless of our sexual orientation (or religion) - something we agree with wholeheartedly.

To help the tour succeed even more, Lauper brought in a bunch of other major bands of the day as well as some newer talent - with a different mix in each city the tour visited. In the case of Dallas the line-up was Lily Haydn (whom we didn’t get to see or hear because we were at a Meet and Greet with Cyndi at the time), comedienne Wanda Sykes, Andy Bell (we had no idea who he was), Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and The B-52s. Carson Kressley of Bravo TV’s “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” was the Master of Ceremonies, appearing in different flashy outfits between sets - he must have had close to a dozen different ensembles.

The concert trip was a present to the family for their respective birthdays, as Linda is a big fan of Cyndi Lauper, Bas loves The B-52s’ song, Rock Lobster and thus wanted to the band perform, and Krystyana is just into music as a whole. And of course, Cyndi Lauper, Joan Jett, and The B-52s are all performers from when I got into music during college far too many years ago. In fact I saw Joan Jett in concert in Albany, New York in the early 1980s (I am thinking it was 1982). A darned long time ago, but good memories.

Our ticket package was the VIP Meet & Greet, which entitled us to front row seats, a photo opportunity with Cyndi Lauper, and a whole bunch of other goodies (we’re still waiting for the autographed t-shirts though). In the photo at right (click to see larger) you can see us with Cyndi.

The concert itself was a trip down memory lane for Linda and myself - over four hours of music and fun, and because we were front row, we had dance room too - we took liberal advantage of that with occasional rests (photo at left shows Linda and Bas watching Joan Jett perform).

Considering most of the performers were in their 50s, they moved well and hadn’t lost their respective sounds and touches. It was also the date of Cyndi Lauper’s 54th birthday, and she broke into tears when the audience started singing “Happy Birthday” to her.

But perhaps the highlight of the evening for us occurred after The B-52s performed their hit song Love Shack. Bas had danced up a storm during the song (we didn’t explain to Bas was a Love Shack was), with his ultra blond hair lit up like a beacon. At the end of the song, The B-52s’ lead male singer came over to the edge of the stage, got Bas’ attention, and then handed him (with my assistance) the drumstick he had been using to hit the cow bell used to give the song some of its interesting sounds. Bas was in seventh heaven - an amazing experience for an 11 year old to have the leader of a world famous band you love give you a “thank you” for showing your appreciation for their music.

Cyndi Lauper closed out the acts with a number of her most popular songs, as well as some new ones, and then most everybody got back on stage to sing the theme song, “True Colors”, together.

While we left with our ears ringing, we also left in high spirits, with a spring in our step, and thoroughly happy about having made the long trip to Texas from Bonaire. And while it wasn’t cheap, the next time we do a concert again, front row is the only way to go. Wow.

The photo gallery album for that evening can be found here.

The following day we headed to San Antonio for a private tour at The Alamo, and several more days of exploration and adventure in Texas. If I get a chance I’ll post more on our experiences, but don’t hold your breath waiting either.

We discovered recently that two of The Traveling Richters, namely myself and Bas, had our picture in a recent issue of Florida Travel + Life magazine. It was in the May/June 2008 issue (cover pictured at right).

The occasion of our inclusion was an article on page 107 by publisher Carolyn Pascal about Kids Sea Camp, a program which we first participated in during its inception in Curacao some years back with our friend Margo (the owner of the Kids Sea Camp program). Most recently, we spent Thanksgiving week in 2007 with Margo at Kids Sea Camp in Fiji. Carolyn Pascal (another long time participant) was there and snapped a picture of Bas and myself coming out of the water after a nice shore dive - a dive on which Bas, aged 10 at the time, saw his first ever shark while diving.

Below is a photo of the article page - that’s Bas and me in the upper right corner.