From our hotel in Soho, my boyfriend and I walked down through Chinatown down to Brooklyn Bridge station. Upon the advice of a local NYC friend, we didn't walk from Manhattan to Brooklyn, though ("you just get a view of Brooklyn, which is stupid! Stop, turn around, take a picture, stop, turn around, take a picture! No! Take the subway to Brooklyn, then walk back to Manhattan! You get to see the skyline the whole time!").
We walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and took in the Manhattan skyline and the Manhattan bridge. It takes at least half an hour. The pedestrian walkway is divided into a lane of bumbling pedestrians, and a lane of pissed-off cyclists who are annoyed with the bumbling pedestrians that keep creeping into their lane. Here I am on the bridge. In the background is the spot where the World Trade Center would have been, right to the left of that tallest building.
After resting our feet, we took the train to Times Square in order to buy tickets for a Broadway show. The crowds of people are maddening but it's sobering when you realize you are one of those maddening people now. At least we were not as maddening as all the girls getting their pictures taken with the Naked Cowboy. The TKTS booth line is not as bad as it looks, though. We were in and out, "Memphis" tickets in hand, in less than 20 minutes.
For lunch, we killed time until the show by getting sushi around the corner at Aoki. They had a $11 3-roll lunch special. Awesome!!
Later, we saw "Memphis." This review, from the NYTimes, summarizes well the highs and lows of the show. I loved the set design, with its impressive scene changes and multidimensional elements, the dancing, and some of the less formulaic parts of the script. The music didn't terribly impress me, though, as I have yet to be won over on 1960s revival numbers.
Even though it was the 4th, we passed on the fireworks show this year, so I can't recount that for you all. After resting up at the hotel, we went out later to enjoy a dinner at a French bistro, Bistro Les Amis. I had some roasted duck with cranberries and wild rice, which I liked, but boyfriend did not like his Lamb Shank because "it was too much work to eat." I can see that. The thing practically had antlers.
We sat outside on the patio. We were also sitting next to an older guy who sounded exactly like Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. At one point after he had paid his check, he said to his rather reticent date, "These lights! I can't stand these lights! It's so hot out here! I feel like I'm roasting like a chicken under these lights!" I think he must have been very angry about this, because what happened next was that his date's wine glass broke when he slammed his fist on the table. They got up quietly and left.
We left early the next day to take the bus back to Washington. By the time we got back, I had finished the first two novels of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, a series which I am quite enthusiastically devouring. I had a great trip; at the same time, I was glad to be back in DC. Going to NYC makes me appreciate the comparative cleanliness of the DC metro. (If you've missed the ads that take a jab at the NYC metro, well, they mention that the DC metro doesn't have housecat-sized rats unlike "some other cities.") Until next time, New York, I'm still a DC girl.
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