New York City, NY

We keep going back to New York again and again, year after year, and we have no doubt that it’d be our favorite place to live - if of course we had an endless stream of disposable income. We’re not so privileged, so we spend a few days at a time discovering more and more wonderful things about the city that never sleeps.

New York City - Thanksgiving 2000

We wanted to go somewhere to get away for a few days, and a great friend of ours, Steve Farina, kept recommending New York City. Steve swears by this city, and we hold his judgement in pretty high esteem. This is one guy that’s hard to please, travel-wise, and he’s got great taste in food, too.

We watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade - on television, from the comfort of our hotel room. We did the Staten Island Ferry several times, the World Trade Center, Rockefeller Plaza, Little Italy, and our favorite, Chinatown. We both picked up a bunch of little items, and I got what I came for - a nice replica watch. (I was shooting for a Movado Vizio, but evidently they’re tough to fake, so I settled on a Breitling.) If we’d have had two more days, we probably would have spent them both shopping - or maybe an opera.

Dinner found us in Little Italy, and though I can’t remember the name of the little streetside cafe we hit, the food was harder to forget! We had great asparagus with parmesan for an appetizer, and things just kept getting better. I can’t imagine going wrong anywhere in this part of town.

We’ll definitely head back to NYC this year. My girlfriend didn’t get a chance to have a hot dog from a street vendor, we didn’t take in a show, and we didn’t see Central Park. (Well, we saw it, but from a distance.)

We used the Frommer’s book on this trip, and it was first rate. Anybody who travels without one of these books is an idiot. They give you all the inside tips on where to go, what to avoid, and how to pull it all off like a pro. Aside from hotels, things in NYC really aren’t that much more expensive than in any other major American city. Hotels are indeed killer - don’t expect to spend less than $150 per night if you stay in the city.

No pictures from this trip, sadly.

New York City - July 4th Weekend, 2001

Erika and I were itchin’ to get out of the apartment for a while, so we hopped on a plane for the Big Apple - specifically, Chinatown & Little Italy.

When you’re bored, and you’re near NYC, there’s nothing better than strolling through Chinatown. We were looking for sushi plates, but we couldn’t find anything that set us on fire. We went up and down Canal, and I just had to pick up another fake Breitling. I love my first one, but I wanted one with all 3 working dials. Erika killed me for not bargaining with the guy, but I was ecstatic to find this one for $50 - just $10 more than I spent for the first one.

We had lunch at the same cafe in Little Italy that we’d gone to last time, and we weren’t disappointed. We ordered mineral water, and when it came, the waiter grabbed our water glasses, emptied them right into the street, and then poured the mineral water. Erika was horrified, I was delighted. That’s the kind of character you don’t find anywhere else.

We spent the afternoon walking through Central Park - okay, wait, not quite true, lying around in Central Park. I was tired, and we plopped down on a hill to do some people-watching.

New York City - Valentine’s Day Weekend 2002

We never need an excuse to go see New York anymore, but in case we needed any, we were covered. This weekend marked our two-year anniversary, plus it was Valentine’s Day, plus I got President’s Day off for a long weekend anyway. This was to be a “high-brow” experience, involving the Museum Mile, a good hotel, and a few perks we weren’t used to receiving. Erika and I caught a flight up on Thursday and a hotel room at the Marriott East Side, across the street from the Waldorf Astoria.

As somebody who has spent a lot of time in “normal” hotels, it’s hard to impress me. We got a $85-per-night deal at the Marriott courtesy of Priceline.com, and what a difference it made in our trip. The 4-5-6 subway line, 3 Starbucks, and a Pizza Rustica all stand within a couple of blocks alongside our hotel, the W, and a lot of other first-class hotels. In real estate, it’s all about location, and hotels are definitely real estate. Spending the extra money to stay in Midtown was worth every penny, because it shaved a lot of time off our day-to-day traveling.

After getting a late start on Thursday afternoon, we finally got our first hot dogs in Central Park. We walked around the big Crate & Barrel store just south of Central Park (one of our favorites), but we didn’t want to trek all the way down to Little Italy for dinner. Our trusty travel bible, Frommer’s, suggested we chow down at the nearby Brooklyn Diner, but we opted for the Hard Rock Cafe across the street. Erika hadn’t been to any HRC’s outside of Houston, so we gave this one a chance.

If you’ve been to a HRC, they’re pretty much all the same (except for the horrible one in Houson, which is now closed.) This one is no exception: bland memorabilia, decent food, and friendly service. This particular HRC is equipped with bathroom attendants, something new to Erika and I.

The next morning, while Erika got ready, I ran down to the nearest Starbucks to fetch breakfast. I put in my order, then stood at the bar with the two other customers. “Here you go, sweetie,” said the woman behind the bar as she handed a gray-haired man his drink. He turned, bumped into me, and brandished a huge smile, recognizing the stunned look on my face. I was completely astonished - it was Leslie Nielsen. Whaddya know, my first New York City celebrity sighting. Very nice guy. (And no, I don’t know what he was drinking.)

Erika and I were both touched by the events of September 11, and we wanted to visit Ground Zero. Despite our convenient hotel location, it took us an inordinately long time to get there, no thanks to a string of misinformed bystanders. You do NOT get Ground Zero tickets at the east side of Sixth Street. After a couple hours of running around, I convinced Erika to quit saving money by walking and start saving time by riding. That lesson alone made a huge difference in the rest of our vacation.

Anyway, we finally made it to Ground Zero around noon, tickets in hand, and it was a cleansing experience. The site isn’t what impacts you: it’s the heartbreaking memorials that have sprung up everywhere around the site. People have left their handwritten stories of loss posted up on fences, streetposts, walls, anywhere there’s space. We read story after story of children who lost parents, of parents who lost children, of spouses who lost the one person who meant everything to them. It’s frustrating, knowing we were powerless to stop it.

We walked up to Chinatown, talking about the painful experience, and did some shopping. We both felt guilty as we bought an Omega watch for Blake and gifts for our relatives and ourselves. The terrorists’ ignorance really sinks in when you walk through Chinatown: in order to show that the United States is uncaring, they took out perhaps the most caring and diverse city we have. Nowhere else on Earth have I seen such an embrace of diversity, and I see it on every trip, including this one: a German-speaking man trying to help a Mexican woman find her way through the subway system, for example. They can barely understand each other, and it’s almost comical to watch, but it all works in New York City.

Later on, we went up to the Museum of Modern Art and got more out of the gift store than the museum itself, since the museum was undergoing a major renovation. We went back downtown to Little Italy for another wonderful dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant, De Gennaro.

Saturday morning, we toured the Guggenheim, with its recent black interior paint job. I’m a Frank Lloyd Wright fan, having grown up in the midwest and near the Great Lakes, so I was excited to see his only New York City building. For some reason, I had no idea that it’s actually on Central Park, and it looks gorgeous juxtaposed with the trees. Their Norman Rockwell exhibit ranked among the best exhibits I’ve ever seen: I appreciate his comic style even more after this trip, and I even got Erika interested in it.

We took a long walk through Central Park, did some people-watching, and wound up the trip with a brief visit of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We were both tired of museums at this point, and we couldn’t stand more than a couple of hours in the Met. They’ve got a decent Roman collection, but after the Louvre, it’s hard to impress me with that sort of thing.

New York City - November 2002

We decided to fly up for a long weekend and celebrate our birthdays in the Big Apple. Erika did most of the planning for this trip, and she started by getting a room at the Millennium Hilton using Priceline. For once, we didn’t have horrible luck. It seems like every time I buy a room on Priceline, we have to reschedule the trip - and the bummer about Priceline is that there’s no changes, no refunds.

After putting up with a checkin line more typical for Vegas casinos than NYC hotels, we got up to our room. They had tired 80’s-looking decor, but everything was in good repair. The hotel isn’t near a subway station, so you incur $5-$6 in cab fare just getting to Grand Central or you have to walk 4-5 long blocks to get to the E/V subway stations.

Erika got us a table at Calle Ocho, a Pan-Latin restaurant on the Upper West side. The food was a little pricey, but worth it: fun, authentic food right down to the plantains & beans. The friendly waitstaff, lively upscale Cuban atmosphere, and loud salsa music made for a great night. I’d recommend it if you like Central American food. This isn’t Mexican burritos - I had a rack of lamb with ancho sauce, for example.