New York part two

Tuesday

We decided to begin our day at the Natural History Museum and we ended up spending virtually the whole day there! An astonishing place, we spent our time visiting the many dinosaur, animal and space exhibits, including he full size model of a blue whale suspended over two storeys of the marine life exhibit. The Hayden planetarium was incredible and the manner in which the animals were displayed was just beautiful, with each species positioned in its own mini exhibit made to mimic its natural environment. A truly magnificent museum, however, it did mean we never quite made it to the MET.

From the museum we headed into Times Square to get some food before seeing Book of Mormon at 7pm on Broadway. We decided to try some cheap options and went with pizza for $4 a slice. Thanks to Starbucks the internet suggested a little place just off the square where we had some of the very best pizza I've ever eaten. (It was the best - Andrew) (additional: It was called Patzeria Perfect Pizza)

Finally we arrived at the theatre and took our seats for Book of Mormon. It was phenomenal! Not only were the production values sky high but I've not laughed that much in one sitting for quite some time. The performances were incredible and the story, true to form, was utterly hilarious but also very controversial and I wouldn't be surprised if some people walked out. If it ever comes to Australia, we would see it again in a heartbeat. We decided to grab some snacks afterwards so we went back to Rockefeller centre and finished the day with tasty pastries and coffee.  A brilliant day.

Wednesday

Well, this was an interesting but complicated day. We had tickets to stand in line for the Daily Show and we knew we needed to get there early, so we decided to try and get cronuts back in SoHo and then head to the theatre in the lower west side. We found the Amstelle bakery again however they were sold out of  cronuts already so rather than waste the trip we decided to have a very fancy breakfast at Balthazar's. This restaurant is a very well known eatery and luckily they were able to seat us, though if it had been any other time I don't think we'd have had a chance. We had a very decadent brekkie of juice, coffee, sticky buns, crossiants, Christmas bread, cranberry loaf and rye. Really magnificent food but it's a once in a trip kind of thing as it was quite pricey. By this stage it was getting to around 12.45pm and we knew we needed to get there early, around 1.30ish for the 2.30pm handout, according to people who had been before. We did a little window shopping in SoHo and Tribeca and then began to make our way to the studio.

We underestimated the distance to the studio but still arrived at around 1.45pm when we were met with a line that doubled back and went around the block. This did not bode well. In conversations with others in the line, some were confident we would still get in whilst others decided not to bother waiting. After an excruciating wait we ended up missing out on tickets by about ten people. This was really disappointing and we were told to email the producers and explain our situation (only one more day in NY etc) and see if they could get us tickets for tomorrow. We were devastated BUT a man by the name of Ben took us aside an said that he had 4 tickets for tomorrow if we wanted them and if we gave him our email he could send them through. We gave him our details, thanked him profusely and just hoped he'd do as he promised.

At this point it was around 3pm, too late to try and get to the Statue of Liberty (which was the plan for tomorrow) and too late for the MET as well. We found a Starbucks as soon as we could to email the producers, thinking that Ben might not come through, and waited for a bit to see if anyone replied. More on that later...

We then decided to go down to the World Trade Centre 9/11 Memorial. It was an amazing sight to see how big the towers were and to see the new tower almost completed. It was a pretty emotional place and the memorial was a very fitting tribute.

As it was nearing dinner time by this stage we thought we'd try and go to Otto's, the Italian place Jo suggested, since we now had time and could look up the location. We headed back to the east end of 5th avenue and eventually found Otto's! There was a 45 minute wait, but figuring we might as well, we ordered some cheese and drinks to tide us over in the front bar. The cheeses (goats cheese, pecorino and another hard one) were lovely and each was served with its own accompaniment of truffle honey, spiced apricots and brandy cherries. A table eventually came up and we ordered peperoni pizza and the spaghetti and meatballs, which, I'm sorry to say, weren't that great. The pizza base was a little soggy and the peperoni tasted weird and the meatballs were just meh. The atmosphere was lovely, the music was great and there was good service but it felt like a slightly anti-climactic end to a somewhat disappointing day. We did some general window shopping for an hour or so and went back to our hotel.

Thursday - Last day in NY

Good news! Ben came through for us and he sent us his Daily Show tickets for our last day so we were able to get our hotel to print the information and we began our day early. Andrew had been given a list of places that apparently had good coffee, so we went on a mission to find one of them near 30 Rock called the Bluebottle. We tracked it down and also bought some pastries for breakfast and did have the best coffee so far in NY at the cafe.

Paranoid as a result of yesterday's failure to secure tickets, we went to join the line at 1pm and were very pleased to only find around 20 people there. We settled in for a long wait spent the time chatting and watching as the line grew and grew. By 2pm it was already doubled back and almost around the block again. Needless to say that when they started handing out tickets at 2.30pm we were very, very relieved to be in the first 35. With our tickets secured and sure of our instructions we had around an hour and a half before we needed to be back at the studio. It was a little warmer than previous days so we went for a stroll along the water before going to a pub opposite the studio to wait in the warm. Andrew finally got around to ordering a chilli dog, which he quite liked, and soon it was time to line up again NB: If you're ever going to go to a taping of anything in the US, be prepared for lots of queuing and airport style security, including metal detectors, bag searches and sniffer dogs - this happened both at Lettterman and Daily Show.

Finally, after more waiting we were in the studio of the Daily Show! We were both very excited and even more so when the warm up comedian explained that it was the last show of the year. This show would also turn out to be John Oliver's last show as well, so the taping was a little longer than we expected. John Stewart was funny, amicable and brilliant as always and he came and actually took questions from the audience prior to the taping. As it was John Oliver's last show there were a few moments where both men were clearly trying not to cry and it was really lovely to be there for that.

Following the taping we decided to go and do Top of the Rock which involves taking an elevator to the top (70th Floor) of the NBC building (30 Rock) and taking many, many, many photos. It was superb! The weather wasn't quite as cold as it had been, there was virtually no wind and being able to look over the city at night, straight at the Empire State Building and other famous landmarks was incredible. Both of us commented that it didn't feel real, and we were blown away by how magnificent the city looks from above. We spent around an hour and half up there, taking some video and photos, then we decided we needed some food.

I (Jess) thought that a fitting end would be icecream for tea, so I had a Ben and Jerry's 'Ron Burgundy - Scotchy Scotch Scotch' and 'Stephen Colbert's Americone Dream' hot fudge sundae. It was amazeballs. Andrew wanted some street vendor (yuk) food so a hotdog and pretzel in Times Square ended our last day in NY. We never found time for the Statue of Liberty, the MET or MoMA but that just leaves us things to do for next time. NY is a phenomenal city and one I could most definitely live in very happily.

Photo dump

Here's a link to all the photos so far:
http://s93.photobucket.com/user/tired_faith/library/North%20America%202013%20-%202014

NEW YORK CITY!

New York, New York!

Friday the 13^th

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 5^th 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 5^th 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 1^st 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.