New York City Trip - Day 3 and 4

Finally, today's post will recount the last days of my trip to NYC, days 3 and 4.

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. 

New York City Trip - Day 2

Today's post is about the 2nd day of my trip to NYC. 


My boyfriend and I took the 1 Train out of Manhattan and into the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx. It was my first visit to an outer borough. We met up with a friend of mine from college, who among other things, is a wonderful encyclopedia of knowledge about NY parks, buildings, and calling 311 to complain about trash maintenance. We all walked from the 242nd Street Station (the end of the line), past Van Corlandt park (which is bigger than Central Park), up to Wave Hill. Wave Hill is a small botanical garden that offers free admission on Saturday mornings. At the garden, we saw a man that I can only describe as the Pickle Man, and I would love to know his life story.  


Imaginary Re-enactment: 
"I went to the park today to have my daily pickle. I was hungry. This is what I order for lunch every day. I like to cut my dill pickle into three meticulous vertical slices. They have to be sliced at exactly 1/3 the volume of the pickle. I do this with a plastic knife. Slowly, I cut my dill pickle into slices. I enjoyed my vertically sliced pickle very much today."




I was amazed at Wave Hill beautiful indoor cactus and succulent garden. 

They also have a lily pond that is a favorite of my friend's. I enjoyed it, too. Lily ponds remind me of those 500 piece puzzles that are tricky because they have about 1001 not-quite-the-same instances of lily pads. This one was not like that though.

 We probably walked about 4 miles from the subway, to the garden, and back to my friend's apartment. We ate lunch at a deli in the Bronx called Cold Cut City. I think the name comes from the fact that they put enough cured meat on my sub to feed a small city. Or at least one of the boroughs. 


After our morning excursion, boyfriend and I were glad to rest up when we got back to the hotel. We had been exhausted. Later for that evening's entertainment, we found a wine bar called Cavatappo. If you say this very quickly, your friends might think you are saying "tapas," but you are not. So say it loudly. Cavatappo had cheese plates, wine, and thin-crust pizza. I ordered scamorzo cheese (if I remember the spelling correctly), and pear-and-gorgonzola pizza. I would make that again at home, I think. I particularly liked the chalk art on the walls. 


After dinner, we went to a comedy club, New York Comedy Club. For $15, we saw 6 different comics, most of whom were hilarious. The uncensored jokes cracked me up. There were some good jokes, although I keep this blog rated PG... so unfortunately I won't share them :) There were a lot of people of different ethnicities there, and boy did some of them get heckled. There was the big table of Asians ("hey, the karate kid over there"), and the big black guy sitting next to me ("Oh, and we got Kenan over here"). Point being, if you don't want to get heckled at a comedy club, just sit next to someone who is a more interesting race than you are, or for bonus points, an interracial couple, and the comic is sure to heckle them and not you.

Lastly, here's the Overheard in New York moment of the trip:

Gay man on the street: "I would SO be a lesbian for Queen Latifah!"

Stay tuned for tomorrow and my last post on my NYC trip (day 3 and 4). 

New York City Trip - Day 1

I took a trip with my boyfriend to New York over the 4th of July weekend. It was also our celebration of our "meeting each other" anniversary, so the timing was just right for a weekend trip. Today I will tell you about day 1 of our trip.

Before the trip, I spent a few hours at my favorite salon in DC, getting all sorts of spiffed up, with a new haircut and a pedicure. I'm not normally the type of girl who goes and gets "mani-pedis" (can you see me making a disgusted face as I say this?), so I enjoyed a chance to get pampered at the salon.

To get to NYC, we took a ride aboard the Washington Deluxe (which is not deluxe, but certainly is freezing cold) and exited at Penn Station in the mid-evening.

We stayed at a hotel in Soho. I thought it was a great location, probably the best location that we've stayed at during our past 3 trips to New York. I liked that we were in walking distance of lots of restaurants, bars, and other sights. (The hotel also had a smartly-designed glassed-in porch, on which I enjoyed my free breakfasts of cheese omelets every morning.)

Shortly after we got settled in the hotel, we searched for a place to eat dinner. I like using apps like Time Out New York, Yelp, or Urbanspoon. Searching for restaurants only when necessary makes going on vacation so much more spontaneous. We usually don't make a lot of plans in advance, because we like to just relax on vacation and not feel rushed like we're on a middle school field trip.

That evening, we ate at a Latin American restaurant, Ideya. What is the number one sign of authentic Latin food? Goya products. Latin people love their Goya. If Goya sold Adobo-scented deodorant, it would probably sell like nobody's business (except that it would be Goya's business, and they would have a lot of it). To put the Goya-love in perspective for you, this restaurant had a display case full of Goya juice, right in the front of the bar. For dinner, I had pico de gallo with plaintain chips, bacalaitos (fried salt cod, a Puerto Rican favorite), pork with rice, flan, and a coconut mojito on the side. While I can't scientifically put Ideya's claims of "the best mojito in the City" to the test, I can anecdotally agree to this, based on my sample size of n=1. Call it a case study in rum drinks, if you will.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's post on Day 2 of my trip.

Trip to NYC

Went to NYC for the 3-day weekend last week.

Highlights:
-Hotel in financial district. Overlooked Ground zero. We watched them move piles of dirt around.
-Walked around the Village, Washington Square Park, 5th ave, Madison Square park. Saw people feeding squirrels peanuts. Saw lots of dogs. Saw the empire state building.
-Got pre-dinner chocolate martinis at Ayza Wine & Chocolate (highly recommended)
-met up with a friend from UVA who showed us around the city (thanks!)
-was introduced to the lobster roll trend at Luke's Lobster
-saw union square, grand central station, the new york public library, including a nice exhibit on NYC maps (not as boring as that sounds)
-saw Avenue Q off broadway - hilarious!
-Took the (free!) staten island ferry to see the NYC skyline and statue of liberty
-walked around the lincoln center and down to columbus circle near central park

Lots of walking and sightseeing. What a great time! I'll be back this summer hopefully.