New York, New York -- December 2002: Day 1 & 2

It turns out we could not stay away from New York for very long.  After scoring a deal for a ridiculous $150 per night stay at the posh Soho Grand Hotel, we decided to also catch Baz Lurhmann's production of La
bohème on Broadway.  We drove this time (after the train sat in Connecticut for an hour last time, we realized driving and training would be faster and cheaper).  We got there right around check in time only to encounter the wait from hell. Never, in all my life, has it taken me TWO HOURS to check into a hotel.  I think they were overbooked or something.  They started to hand out champagne in the lobby and I started to worry we were going to be late for our pre-show dinner.  When we finally got our room, it was small, but very tasteful and nice.  This was also the first time I saw a mini-bar with $8 Gummi Bears.  Come to think of it, this may have been my first mini-bar!  I don't quite know what I was thinking, but we didn't have reservations to any restaurant and after making some calls, we settled on Limoncello (now closed but replaced by the well-received Insieme).  It was a fast italian meal in a generically nice setting.  It was pretty good, but more planning would be smarter for next time.

Luckily, we got to La bohème on time.  I had never seen an opera before and this was a good introduction.  The stage set was very similar to the set of the movie Moulin Rouge.  It was the story and music of La bohème, but set in 1930's Paris.  It was funny to see the similarities between the plot and characters of Rent and this show. The show was beautiful and moving and I would love to see another opera.

Upon leaving the theater, we ran into Richard Schiff (again).  This was starting to creep us out, but luckily he doesn't notice us (ha!) and think we're stalkers.  We returned to the hotel and found the lobby and coffee lounge turned into a nightclub with DJs and $8 martinis.  We hung out for a while and people-watched.  The guy next to us was drinking Cristal and draped with women, but he did not look familiar to me.  I felt like we were going to get sent back to our rooms for being so uncool (I was wearing a $30 cardigan sweater from Petite Sophisticate for crying out loud!) but we managed to get sufficiently tipsy before sneaking away.

The next morning, we set off at 9 to roam the streets of Soho in search of some good eats.  We realized that everyone must sleep late on the weekends in Soho and nothing was open.  We ended up with blah bagels at a corner shop and headed to the Whitney Museum of American Art via bus (3, to be exact).  Soho was empty, but the museum wasn 't.  We took the elevator to the top of the museum and worked our way down.  They had a solid modern art collection with some Andy Warhol's and Jasper John's.  The special exhibit featuring "The Quilts of Gee's Bend" really stood out to us, however.  It was a collection of quilts made in a poor, rural Alabama, but many of them had spectacular, modern compositions.  It made me look at quilts in a different way.

After the museum, we went back down to Soho to check-out and grab some lunch.  I had a wonderful veggie sandwhich at Anita's.  The restaurant was empty, which I was beining to think we par for the course in Soho.  We then did some shopping on Broadway at funky Yellow Rat Bastard, where I scored a cool Paul Frank t-shirt, and Pearl River, where they sold every Asian import item imaginable, from dishes to clothes, food, and art.  After we had sufficiently shopped, we jumped in the car to head back home!

New York, New York -- June 2002: Day 4

Matt Lauer and Katie Couric at last!  We got out lazy buns out of bed and made it to the Today show.  We surprisingly did not get out of bed that early and still got a pretty good perch on Rockefeller Plaza.  It was a bit crowded when we got there, but people tend to file in and out, so we just kept pushing our way forward until we were second row back from the barriers.  Al Roker, Katie and Matt all came out to work the crowd.  Katie was very little, with very nice legs.  No good guests were on that day, so we didn't get to see anyone else in person.  It was interesting to see how the show worked.  If the anchors are inside, you're basically just standing watching the show on TV, which we could have done from the hotel.  But we had some good bagels after though!

We needed our strength as we were about to embark on a bike tour through Central Park in 100 degree heat.  We met up with our bike guide in Columbus Circle (this was the last excursion included in our tour package).  Our guide was a college-age Brazilian woman with a lovely accent.  She had a helper with her and they were smart enough to hand out water to all of us dummies who did not bring some.  We set off with a pack of soccer moms to tour Central Park.  I had no idea before our ride that Central Park was so huge, and had so much cool stuff -- carousels, ice skating rinks, castles, and Strawberry Fields (a section of the park, memorialized for John Lennon).  Our guide would point out landmarks, including buildings around the park.  When she told John Lennon's story, she pointed out how he lived in "Da Da-Koda" (The Dakota) across from the park.  She also brought us to "Ba-desda Therez" or Bethesda Terrace, where many movies were filmed, such as Home Alone 2.  It was not a strenuous ride, but it was so damn hot and were were dripping with sweat.  I thought we might melt away to nothing.  After we returned the bikes, we needed to cool off, fast.

We still had some more time to kill, so we went to the Central Park Zoo.  This was not a large or very nice zoo.  Some of the animals had gimpy eyes and they were damn hot too, so the polar bears were looking pretty pissed off.  The rain forest section was not a fun place to be.  Finally, we discovered the penguin cave.  Ah, sweet penguins.  It was a small little room, dark and about 30 degrees F inside.  We sat on the floor and just collected our thoughts.  School kids kept wandering through giving us dirty looks -- two sweaty old people heaped on the floor.  The zoo keeper lady asked us if we had any questions about penguins.  Our only question was how long we could stay before we got arrested for loitering.

After creeping out humans and penguins alike, we grabbed lunch at a little market and ate it in the park (we couldn't get enough, I guess).  After that, we did some souvenir shopping in Time Square, changed our clothes back in the hotel and caught our train.  We had to say goodbye to New York for the moment, but we knew we'd be back . . .

New York, New York -- June 2002: Day 3

Because of the marathon pace of the day before and probably too many cocktails at night, we overslept and never made it to the Today show.  Instead, we went to Lindy's and had a horrible, overpriced breakfast where the waiters bark gruffly at you.  At least we were sitting outside.

We proceeded as planned to the New York Public Library for a free tour.  It's little gems like this that I love.  Long before Carrie Bradshaw decided this would be a good place to get hitched, we explored this Fifth Avenue landmark.  The Beaux-Arts architecture is gorgeous, but we, of course, enjoyed the fun facts such as where Ghostbusters was filmed in the library.  There were so many nooks and crannies to check out, as well as exhibits and curiosities, it was worth the price of admission (ha!) and then some.

Because MoMA was being extensively renovated in 2002, they set up a highlights collection in Queens.  We decided our first NYC subway ride would be to check it out.  We someone boarded an express train (though we thought it had been marked as a local) and we whizzed right by our stop.  We were able to backtrack, fortunately, and get there in one piece.  The collection was like the museum's greatest hits.  Years after, we visited the remodeled Manhattan MoMA and it was ten times cooler, so I can't recommend that museum enough.

Monday seemed to turn into "Spot the Celebrity" day.  While near Central Park, we saw Richard Schiff (on West Wing at the time) carrying his daughter.  While on our way to dinner at Shun Lee Palace, we accidentally walked right through the set of a movie.  We were so busy gawking at the trucks and equipment, trying to figure out what was going on, that next thing we know, we're almost getting pelted by a rain machine.  We then realize we're standing next to Woody Allen, looking like a little flasher in his raincoat and hat.  He didn't seem to notice us, which was good, because I was afraid of getting yelled at.  The movie turned out to be the very obscure Anything Else, with Jason Biggs and Christina Ricci.  Oh well.  I don't think we made the final cut!

So, where was I? Oh yeah, Shun Lee Palace.  I had heard Howard Stern going on and on one day how this was his favorite Chinese restaurant in the city.  Luckily, it went along with the package deal we got through the NYC tourism site and we had $100 to spend.  The place was so different from Nobu.  Where Nobu was sleek and modern, Shun Lee was gilded and classic.  The waiters were the old school napkin-on-the-arm.  The restaurant was pretty empty at 7 p.m. on a Monday (we realized New Yorkers must eat after 8).  We knew spending $100 on Chinese food might be a challenge, so we opted for the splurge of Peking Duck and a sweet battered chicken.  The duck came out whole (they showed it to us, like a fine bottle of wine) and a team of waiters went to work carving it up.  They then made little roll-up from Chinese pancakes, scallions, and plum sauce.  It was so good and we ate a ton, but there was so much left.  We had a mini fridge in our room, so we figured why not wrap it up?  We spent maybe half of the gift certificate.  Next time, we should order way more for a picnic in Central Park the next day.

After dinner, we thought a night time glance off of the Empire State Building would be fun.  We were thinking it would be empty around 9, before all the shows got out.  Boy, were we wrong.  It was sweltering hot and crowded as heck.  It felt like we had to wait in three different lines just to get in line.  After two different elevators and a set of stairs, we were at the Observation Deck.  Finding a piece of wall to peer over was hard because of all the people, but we finally got some space and looked out at the city.  It was beautiful.  We then bought an I Love NY shot glass for our collection.  It was time to call it a night.

New York, New York -- June 2002: Day 2

The next morning, we decided to start our day with bagels.  Since we were trying to catch the bus downtown to the Circle Line to Ellis Island and Liberty Island (one of our two excursions in our package), we figured the Dunkin Donuts in Times Square would bring us close to the bus stop and get us fed.  Ugh, what a mistake.  They were probably the worst bagels in NYC.  You're better off stopping at any old corner shop instead.  The day was already sweltering, in the 90s, but Times Square was a ghost town, so different than the night before.  After a speedy bus ride and a short walk, we arrived at Battery Park.

Battery Park was absolutely beautiful, an oasis in the middle of the city.  The breeze from the river was cool and refreshing.  Being immediately post 9/11, security to get onto the ferry was super-tight, but the line through a large tent moved rather fast.  Onlookers must have wondered what was going on as all the men exited the tent buckling their belts up!  The boat seemed to take forever to get moving and the top deck was painfully hot yet windy.  Finally, we arrived at Liberty Island.  It was surreal to see the Statue of Liberty looming large in front of us.  Because of the tight security, we weren't allowed to go inside, but we did by some tacky souvenirs.  This was probably the birth of our Tacky Souvenir Collection.  In this case, we got a small Statue of Liberty magnet.

The next stop on our little cruise was Ellis Island.  There was much more to explore here as we could walk the same steps as the immigrants that were processed here a hundred years ago.  Parts were emotional as well as I realized how many people once stood in the same spot we were and I think I might have found a relative in their database.  The island turned out to be way more interesting than I would have thought.

Somehow, after the boat docked back in Battery Park, we quickly hopped on a bus and made our way uptown to the American Museum of Natural History.  It was so huge, we could have spent a whole day there.  We saw all the large "stuffed" animals, which were really cool in a classic museum kind-of-way.  The squid and the whale, an epic battle in fiberglass, kind of freaked me out, though.  We enjoyed the "Culture Hall."  It was a mini Epcot Center with little rooms featuring the cultures of different countries (clothing, food, art, etc.).  No surprise, we really like the Asian exhibits.  We tried to look at everything in the Gem Hall, but it took forever.  The Star of India was also a little disappointing because it was so small.  We had a quick snack and made our way back to the hotel so we could change for our big dinner.

On the menu for that evening was Nobu.  I'm still not sure how I was able to get reservations, but it was a Sunday and before 7 p.m., so I think that helped.  We unfortunately didn't realize how bad the traffic would be trying to go anywhere downtown, on account of the Gay Pride Parade that afternoon.  So, we were about an hour late and I fully expected them to tell us to take a hike, but they were very nice and held the reservation for us.  Inside the restaurant, it was a lot smaller than I figured it would be.  We were seated towards the front, which was nice because we could watch everyone walk in.  Seated across the doorway from us was a rather peculiar woman.  She had giant hair and was nervously inhaling edamame.  I kept staring, which probably made her more nervous.  I then realized it was Beyoncé .  Wow, our first celebrity sighting!

After we ordered cold sake cocktails (of course) and the Omakase menu, which is basically a prix fixe menu, chef's choice, which is the only way to go when you're at Nobu. We worked our way through around eight courses.  First, was the melt-in-your-mouth velvety tuna tartare.  It was the best quality tuna I had ever tasted.  It was finely minced with onions, garlic, topped with caviar, and topped with a tiny Asian peach.  Next was a sashimi salad.  It had thin slices of seared tuna over mixed greens.  It was very delicate and somehow different from the first course.  Third was New Style sashimi: paper thin slices of fluke drizzled in grapeseed oil.  It was dynamite.  My favorite dish came next -- rock shrimp.  It was amazing.  Lightly fried and breaded, like a fancy popcorn shrimp, but so much better.  Broiled sea bass with miso was fifth.  It was a big hunk of fish, in counterbalance from all the thin sashimi.  The miso was sweet and flavorful.  Sixth, it was time for miso soup.  This soup had salty hot clams.  Our seventh and main course was sushi.  We each got five simple and pure pieces of nigiri.  It was nothing fancy or overly seasoned; just incredible fresh.  Last was dessert -- a delicious almond cake with green sour cherries.  It burst with flavor and was one of the best desserts I've ever had.

To cap our typical crazy day, we went to Flute for champagne.  It was a very tiny bar, draped in red velvet.  I was so tired I fell asleep just a little bit, on our cozy velvet booth, but no one noticed as we were the only ones there.  After one more drink back at the hotel bar, we were sound asleep, dreaming of woolly mammoths and lots of sushi.

New York, New York -- June 2002: Day 1

In 2002, we thought the "American" thing to do would be to boost the economy in New York City.  Also, we'd had been there alone, but never together and it was time to get out of the New England bubble.  So, we caught a train from South Station to Penn Station.  It was a scenic and low-stress way to travel, but took a lot longer than driving.  Being country bumpkins, it felt a little scary to be dumped in the middle of the city.  I had never hailed a cab before and was barely aware there was a long queue of people waiting for their turn. All of a sudden, we were zooming through Midtown.  Our destination was Flatotel at 52nd Street and between 7th Avenue and Avenue of the Americas.  We picked it because its central location, aesthetics (we were able to get a newly renovated room), and mostly because it was so darn cheap (we got an awesome deal through the NYC tourism site that included parking, hotel, two excursions, and $100 for dinner at a select restaurant)  Anyway, 2002 was before Tyra decided to house America's Top Model contestants at Flatotel and I'm sure the price has since been driven up.  At the time, the were in the process of updating most rooms from pastel eek to modern chic.  We had a fairly large room, big modern bed, modeled after Frank Lloyd Wright's work, and a rather large bathroom.  There was barely any service at the hotel, which had it's good and bad points.  The lobby wasn't loaded with beautiful people to stare blankly at you when you ask a basic question (like most boutique hotels), but there wasn't really anyone to ask questions.  It almost seemed like a bare bones commuter hotel, as some of the rooms included kitchenettes.  The one person behind the desk was usually pretty nice however.  They just weren't concierge material.

We were famished when we arrived, so we hit the first deli we saw, which happened to be Fluffy's Cafe.  Despite the cutesy name, we had some solidly good NYC deli sandwiches without the annoying crowd you would see at Carnegie Deli.  And, they were only around $3 each, which was the best part.  As we only had a few hours, we hopped in cab to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  The place was so huge, we could have used an entire week.  Instead, we just tried to hit the highlights, which, for us were the Temple of Dendur, Astor Court (with a Japanese Tea House), and the Frank Lloyd Wright room.  There was so much, we saw what we could and vowed to return another time.  We walked until our legs gave out and then it was time to return to he hotel for rest before dinner.

Looking for something quick and close to Broadway (where we would later be seeing Rent), we chose the Hourglass Tavern.  It was quick all right -- they kick you out after the hour-long hourglass on your table runs out!  I really enjoyed my meal, however.  We chose the prix fixe pre-theater menu, which starts with a huge loaf of sourdough bread and salads.  I had a vegetarian meal: polenta, ratatouille and dumplings in a hearty tomato sauce.  We were stuffed by the time we left and all for $20 per person.  I would highly reccomend the Hourglass Tavern if you want a casual meal, pre-theater.

We were so excited to see Rent on Broadway.  It was my favorite shows, but I had only seen the touring company in Boston.  We had fairly decent mezzanine seats, but with the size of the Nederlander Theatre, we felt like we were close to the action.  It was an amazing show.  And, an unknown Jai Rodriguez from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy played Angel.  The show let out and we were then swept away through Times Square with the crowd.  It was unreal -- it was eleven at night and it was a sea of people just moving forward.  We went with it soon landed back at hour hotel, exhausted from our first day.