New York, New York!
Friday the 13th
Wow, only just now have time to think, let alone
write. So after the utterly ridiculous 39 hour day (which was not
helped by the final flight being a 'budget' one, meaning five hours
at the end of a 33 hour non-stop day without a TV screen or food) we
finally arrived at our hotel on Central Park at 10.44 pm local time,
having left home at 7.50am that morning. I haven't ever felt that
exhausted before, to the extent that we got into our room and crashed
almost immediately. We're still getting small bouts of vertigo as a
result of the jet lag, but otherwise we're fine now. Friday didn't
really count as a night in NY.
Saturday
Woke up and decided to head outside where, it
turned out, it was snowing heavily. And it kept snowing all day –
the forecasters here called it a 'storm' but really it was just
constant snow with some wind. We weren't particularly fussed about
what to do, so we headed towards Soho and managed to serendipitously
find the Dominique Ansell bakery (home of the cronut) so we stopped
for breakfast there and had some lovely coffee, madeleines,
caramelised apple tart and double chocolate eclair. Amazing. Somewhat
revived we began to explore Soho and discovered some delightful,
quirky and horrendously expensive shops full of amazing clothes, nick
nacks and shoes. We were going to go into Balthazar's but it was
packed so we continued to wander when we then found the rice pudding
store unique to NY so stopped for some pudding before finding a
Uniqlo where we stocked up on pretty much everything from socks to
tops. By this stage we had wandered around in the snow for quite some
time, so our shoes were utterly soaked, meaning we had to get new
ones, so I (Jess) bought some cheap Merrel's from a huge outdoor
store and the exploring continued.
We traipsed through the city getting lost
regularly, but that was the blinding snow's fault more than our own
incompetence (that's the story and we're sticking with it) before
stopping at Century 21 for more shopping and ended our first day in
Chinatown with some sesame chicken, noodles and dumplings. It was
still snowing and by now we were exhausted so we made our way back to
the hotel by about 10pm.
Sunday
We were up and about by 10am and, as a result of
the snow the day before, we decided to walk virtually the entire
length of Central Park and then visit Time Square. Central Park is
opposite our hotel and, as we're basically in Harlem, we were able to
see most of it as we wound around the lagoons, small woods, lawns,
baseball fields and up and down the terrain (which is surprisingly
hilly) that was covered in around half a foot of snow. It was
spectacular. There were kids tobogganing, squirrels frolicking, park
rangers on horse back and there's even a castle in the middle of the
park! It's 894 acres, so it was a long walk, but we stopped for tea
and pastries at the little organic cafe in the park, then culminated
with Christmas markets at the downtown end where we had hot cider and
bratwurst.
Then we walked down to Time Square, passing the Ed
Sullivan theatre (Letterman) on the way and spying a number of famous
landmarks. We were naturally wary of the smiling gentleman who
stopped us but he explained that he worked for the Late Show and if
we could answer a trivia question we could get free tickets to the
taping tomorrow. The question was 'What instrument does Paul Shaffer
play?' and of course we both answered piano, earning us free tickets
to the taping! Very lucky to be picked randomly so we'll be seeing
two tapings in NY! We also went for a look see on Broadway and bought
tickets to The Book of Mormon for Tuesday night, so we've got the
next three nights booked up.
We then headed to 30 Rock and saw the famous
Christmas tree, took some photos, and then went on to 5th
avenue where we visited Saks department store – there's no
equivalent in Australia, think DJ's on steroids but fill it with
clothing and shoes that cost hundreds to thousands of dollars per
item. We continued wandering down 5th avenue, popping in
and out of shops, and we stopped for McDonald's before continuing our
long walk. We took some photos of the Empire State Building, though
we didn't go up it, and continued our walk. We were actually looking
for Tiffany's but we didn't realise how far down in was, so we
eventually decided to get some dinner. We tried to find an Italian
place that was recommended but by this stage it was nearing 10pm,
we'd hunted through Greenwich village and up from 1st
street, and decided to get some food in a local pub. The music was
good, the food was good (why oh why don't we have sweet potato fries
here!?) but the drinks weren't cheap. Exhausted again we went back to
our hotel, having covered over 100 city blocks over the course of our
day.
Monday
A beautiful, bright but stupidly cold day – we
decided to walk the high line (a 30 block section of abandoned rail
line converted into a garden/walking path) towards Chelsea. It was a
lovely walk three storeys up, giving an excellent view of the west
side of the city and even some long distance views of the Statue of
Liberty. We then went to the Chelsea markets for food and exploring.
They are awesome, very trendy hipster territory, but awesome food
(local organic of course) and some delightful little stores with
beautiful hand-crafted wares. We weren't prepared to spend $45 on
mugs or $80 on beanies, but it was great to see everything. My
favourite store so far is Anthropologie – I'd buy everything if I
could. We had the best strawberry milkshake, bought some bread and
pastries from Amy's Bakery and then we made our way to The Strand.
The Strand is a NY institution – three floors and over 8 miles of
books, both second hand and new, with one floor devoted entirely to
rare and old books. Freakin' awesome.
Then we had to get to Time Square for Letterman
which entailed waiting in queues a bunch. We got the tickets then had
sandwiches from Hello Deli (the famous deli just around the corner)
before queueing again for the taping. We were given many 'pep talks'
that basically amounted to 'always laugh, always clap, be as excited
as humanely possible and if you stuff around you'll be thrown out'.
The taping beings with an introductory video by Alec Baldwin which
has the tag line of 'laugh now, think about it later' which was
pretty funny, and there was a fun warm up comedian before the CBS
orchestra (who were brilliant) came on. It was an awesome experience.
Letterman came out before the beginning of the show and had a mini
q&a and he was personable and funny. The band is truly amazing
live, world class musicians and of course they play for the duration
of the ads. Will Ferrell was funny and surprisingly sincere and Chris
Cornell was great. We should make it onto TV for .3 seconds as the
camera panned around the audience. We were four rows from the back of
the bottom stalls on the right hand side if you're watching. It was
brilliant!
After Letterman we headed back to 30 Rock to see
if it would be less crowded as a result of the extreme cold, and it
was marginally easier to move around. We went and had a wander under
Rockefeller centre and ate some very average food before enquiring
about the ice skating. It was $39 pp or $105 pp to skip the queue so we
decided to give our very sore feet a rest and come back to our room
and try and get some of our experiences written up or when we can
actually put this on the blog. Tomorrow will be the Natural History
Museum, MET and Book of Mormon. We could live here happily.
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