New York is one crazy city! It was everything that you think its going to be and a whole lot more. It was pretty cool when we arrived on March 17th to be able to check out the St Patrick Day parade down 5th avenue. Catching the red eye flight from Vegas the night before had its pros & cons. Pros - saved on a nights worth of hotel accommadation Cons - we were fitty tired during the day.... which just meant all of us ended up having a nap at various times during the day.
The hotel that we stayed in was down around SOHO - it was called sohotel, which was quite an original name. Kind of tucked away amongst all the dry cleaners and chinese stores (we were pretty much on the edge of china town). About a 5-10 minute walk to several subway choices, so getting around town was pretty easy. We bought ourselves a weekly subway pass (cost about US$20) and that proved to be the main method of transport for us during our week in New York. There was certainly lots of cool clothes stores, and some nice cafes around, so even though the room itself was pretty minimalistic, we all pretty happy with the choice. So, lets get straight into highlights then:
1. friday night - NBA! The Knicks were playing host to the Pistons. Seeing Cheah like an excited little school kid was pretty cool (Pistons are his favourtie team). Seeing the Pistons have 2 players ejected and then the Knicks winning by 2 made it a pretty entertaining game. I think I saw a few weeks later that the knicks had not won a game since that one.
2. Scottie and Emily flew down from Boston, and joined us for the weekend in NY. This was our first time meeting Emily, and everyone got on really well with her so that was pretty cool. It was good to see Salty again after a week away.
3. Seinfeld Tour - so Kenny Kramer still does these tours every saturday. We did book ahead, and it looks like it was sold out, so lucky we got in. I found it pretty cool - mainly the stories that he was telling about knowing Larry David/Jerry/etc... the actual tour itself didn't have much to it with it being 10 years since Seinfeld last aired, pretty much all the 'tourist stops' have closed down or changed names. That, and the show was actually filmed in LA. But we still got photos taken outside of Tom's restaurant with Kramer, along with trying out some of the soup nazi's famours recipies - I had the jamabalaya, and it was awesome! Lisa and me got stuck into the soup again later on in the week (they basically have started off a chain now of these soup stores).
4. Spamalot – our first sample of Broadway. I think it was a unanimous thumbs up as we walked out of this comedy musical. For any that don’t know, spamalot is loosely based on Monty Pythons search for the holy grail. Had a pretty cool cast in it as well (Hank Azaria, that guy out of Fraser).
5. Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island – was very cool to get so close to the statue. Although not as big as you expect it to be, once up close, it really is quite a stunning statue and becomes clear how it can represent so much to so many people. Ellis Island was also a bit of an eye opener, getting to understand exactly what the people migrating to the USA had to go through.
6. Numerous pizza stops – the food in general in NY was awesome. Typical American meals are just way bigger then anywhere else in the world. But that being said, to be able to rock up at 11pm (or 10am for that matter) and get a slice of pizza was a great feeling.
7. The 2nd Friday night, Cheah, Lisa and me headed to the NY Comedy Club (think that’s what it was called). It was free tickets from Kenny Kramers tour (you just had to pay for 2 drinks while in there). Had an awesome night with some pretty talented comedians (a few of them were writers for various tv shows – eg daily show, comedy channel, etc).
So, as you can tell, lots of things to see and do there (other things that we checked out included the United Nations, central park, Harlem, Grenich Village - there was an amazing place that we had breakfast at, rockefeller center - for amazing views, we headed to the top of the rock to see NY at sunset). And there was still quite a bit that we missed out on that could have been quite interesting if more time had been available. Having said that, we were very content with what we saw in the time, and one of the best things was being able to travel with awesome friends.
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