Life in the Journey

Saturday we had the most wonderful day! We have been wanting to go to Shakespeare in the Park - productions by the Public Theatre put on in Central Park during the summer. As this is the next to last weekend and the weather was gorgeous, we decided Saturday would be the perfect day. Tickets are free, but you have to stand in line to get them, so we arrived at The Public Theatre, which is located near Astor Place, a little before noon to stand in line until tickets were distributed at 1:00. Afterwards, we had the most lovely afternoon - we ate lunch in Washington Square Park and then walked & shopped around the area before heading back to the apartment to get rested up & dressed for the show. While we were out, we walked right past Mo Rocca (from VH1's I love the 80s, 90s, etc.) filming on the Northeast side of Washington Square Park. Interestingly enough, we also ran into a guy we know from church (a freshman at NYU) AND, we ran into the man who originally hired Chris for his job with Software Architects before they became Sogeti (he is from Ohio, in town on vacation with his wife; they were eating outside at a little restaurant on McDougal St. which we walk right past to get to our house from the park). Crazy huh!? It's a small world, even in the Big City.

Well, back to the title of this post, the production we saw was A Midsummer Night's Dream. The play is largely set in the forest at nighttime, so Central Park a little after 8:00 p.m. made the perfect surroundings. The production was housed in the Park's Delacorte Theatre which is really nice and open-air, so you see the beautiful green of the park & can even see the tops of a few gorgeous high-rise buildings in the distance. The night was really clear & cool, and the whole experience was just so lovely. The play was really fun & funny. Apparently many actors make a name for themselves with the Public Theatre and many famous actors come back to preform at Shakespeare in the Park. We immediately recognized two of the actors last night, Jesse Tyler Ferguson (who plays Richie Velch on the TV show The Class) and Keith David (who has been in a million things, but Chris remembers best as Cameron Diaz's father in There's Something About Mary). Of course that's always cool, seeing actors on stage that you recognize from other things. All in all, it was another amazing night in a city full of such rich experiences! We are so grateful to be here and are definitely trying to make the most of every day!