A Night at the Opera

After lunch at Cafe DeLucchi (fantastic food by the way) we headed back to the hotel. Since it was only about 15 blocks we just walked back. This took us through Chinatown and being a Saturday afternoon it was very busy around all the fruit stands and little stalls & bodegas.

Once back at the hotel we relaxed for a while until it was time to get ready for the opera. Our room had 2 LCD flatscreen TVs and the Ritz actually had HD programming for them. It was pretty cool to watch hockey in HD. I want one. We watched some of When Harry Met Sally on Fri night on the DVD player in the room. When I went to use it I noticed that they hadn't connected the component video outputs (just the composite) so I couldn't use the progressive scan feature. Fortunately there was a DVD player under each TV so I stole the AV cable from the other one and hooked into the component outs on the DVD player. Whoever gets that room next is gonna be a bit confused when they try to use the other player. Heehee.

But I digress.

We got ready for the opera fairly early and headed down to the club lounge for some drinks. Apparently the original formulation of grenadine includes pomegranate juice. Since pomegranates are the new hot thing for trendy people true grenadine is becoming more popular. Why am I telling you this? Because it's what my fiance (wow, kinda can't believe I wrote that word) was telling me before we went for our drinks in the lounge and I assume it's why she ordered a Bacardi cocktail. Although I think she asked for gin and rum which doesn't seem to be the usual method.

We sat down and had our drinks and some hours d'ouvres (boy, does that look pretentious in writing). A roving waiter came by with this big caviar cart. I was sort of excited because I don't think I had ever had caviar before. I wasn't particularly impressed but that's probably more of a statement about the quality of the caviar that was being served than anything else. It just didn't seem all that special.

We headed downstairs to grab a taxi to the opera house. For no apparent reason, the doorman had the hotel's car service take us there for free in a pretty nice Cadillac Escalade. We were fairly early so we took a walk around the opera house and checked out what was on sale in their little gift shop. The War Memorial Opera House is a wonderful building and it's fun to just walk around and check it out.

The opera we saw was (appropriately) The Marriage of Figaro. Just fantastic. The woman playing the role of the Countess was a fairly famous diva, Ruth Ann Swenson. She was unbelievable. Often those roles seem to be played by high-pitched, too much vibrato sopranos but she was mellow and powerful and a real delight.

We arranged reservations at Le Jardinere, a little cafe behind the opera house, for a late supper. The food was amazing, topped off by an incredible chocolate concoction they called Venezuelan Chocolate Cake. I don't know how Venezuelan it was, but man it was good. Basically the richest, gooiest, densest underdone brownie ever. Yum.

Next up: bobbleheads and brushes with fame.