NYC - Part 1

It's been a while between blogs... New York City will do that to you!

Day 1

We arrived in NYC on Friday morning. It was pretty overwhelming to arrive in a city this size after having been in Winston for five weeks. Since we had our (rather large) packs, we decided against the subway in favour of a yellow cab. As we had hoped, our cabbie was indecipherable, crazy and a menace on the roads. We dropped our stuff off in our B&B, a ramshackle converted warehouse in the East Village and stopped by one of the East Village stock-standard organic food hipster cafes on our way... somewhere... we hadn't decided yet.

We eventually chose Chelsea, arriving by subway. The Chelsea Hotel was pretty cool, not as grungy as the books would have you believe, and we just sort of wandered about looking at New Yorkers. We bought week-long metro passes so we hot-spotted around the area. It was perhaps the worst decision we could have made to check out Times Square at 4pm on a Friday when we haven't really done big cities in a while. An overdose of lights and people and spruikers almost gave me a melt-down until I spotted the MAC shop and got some retail therapy. Mark, realising that 20 minutes in a make-up shop was actually to his benefit in the long run, kindly went along with this. Then to the Rockefeller Centre, the Lego store (awesome), Magnolia and along Fifth Avenue.

At 6pm we met Fran and Kate (my former workmates and friends) at Rue B in the East Village for a drink. Fleur (another former workmate and current NYC resident) and a bunch of NYC pals, and Dean (ANOTHER former workmate) and his wife Hamsa arrived and we got to the serious business of catching up, followed by dinner. It was a really great night, and also a bizarre experience to catch up with old friends in a place like this!

Day 2

We got off to a bit of a slow start, which was helped greatly by a visit to Veselka, recommended by my workmate Nick (who is a connoisseur of pretty much everything). It's a Ukrainian cafe in the East Village and the potato pancakes and omelettes are incredible. It was a lovely walk in the sunshine to Greenwich Village, past Columbia University and into Washington Square Park (we thought it was weird that people were lying on the grass in bikinis when there was no beach or river anywhere nearby). As we were wandering along Bleecker Street, we saw a familiar face - former PM Helen Clark, who was in the midst of taking some friends on a walking tour (her husband told us it's her weekend job). On the way to see NYC's narrowest house, we spotted a Rhode Island number plate - which marked the final in the set of all 50 US number plates. Much excitement ensued.

I had a Gossip Girl moment at Grand Central Station, which continued on Fifth Avenue at Saks, Bendel's and Bergdorf's (where I got some new sunglasses). Mark's patience was rewarded at the Apple Store on Central Park.

Back to Greenwich Village to buy a bottle of rose and meet my very old friends Shiloh and Matt, now resident in Toronto. After an hour or so of catching up, we got some dinner at a lovely wee trattoria on Father Demo Square (Matt showed us Jim's pizzeria of Along Came Polly fame). The rest of the evening was spent at Cafe Wha?, where Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix first got going. We arrived to catch the tail-end of a comedian and then a really amazing covers band played until midnight - there were about 5 vocalists (all of whom were incredible), and about 10 in the band in total. The highlight was definitely the guy who was pretty much the real-life version of Bill Nighy's character from Love Actually. We said goodbye to Shiloh in Matt in Greenwich Village, with the Empire State Building lit up in the background.

Day 3 - Independence Day

Subway to Soho to meet Fran for brunch at Dean & DeLuca's flagship deli... which turned out not to do dine-in. So we went around the corner to a nice-looking cafe. We checked out the menu and pronounced it "fine" - only to be interrupted by a New Yorker who put us straight. Apparently this place (Balthazar) is not just fine - "Dinner is an incredible dining experience. Lunch is amazing" and then something along the lines of "Brunch will change your life". And we were lucky that there was no line because everyone was in the Hampton's for the holiday weekend. Balthazar was lovely, visually stunning, the food and coffee really were beautiful, but you'd expect them to be when the brunch bill came to over $90US!!

We headed to Fleur's Upper East Side apartment (I didn't think they made them this spacious or lovely in NYC - Fleur's a very lucky girl!), where we met the rest of the gang and headed to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx to celebrate the fourth of July with A-Rod and co. Baseball is really awesome, partially because the experience isn't just about the game, it's about the hotdogs, the crowd and the extreme Americana - and it was very cool to witness a really tight Yankees win in extra time. After pizza at Fleur's, we headed to Wall St, where (thanks to Fleur) we had the good luck to celebrate Independence Day by watching the fireworks with a bunch of mates at a rooftop party - 51 floors up! It was a very surreal experience, marred only slightly by having to say goodbye to everyone afterwards.

When we got back to our B&B, the owner's birthday party was in full-swing... her friends kept coming up to our floor to use the bathroom, the bass was pumping and we couldn't sleep. So we decided that, instead of lying in bed unable to sleep, we'd just leave for Boston immediately (at 2:40am) and sleep on the train.... which is how we arrived in Boston at 7:30am!