Laura and Cecilia take on NYC

Laura and I spent the 2006 Victoria Day long weekend in New York City. We first talked about going to NYC back in our undergrad but the trip never occurred. Then this year I had a credit with Alaskan Airlines and needed to come up with an excuse to use it. NYC was the answer.

Laura and I met up at our hotel on Friday night (we flew into different airports) and then wandered down to Times Square to soak in the craziness. On Saturday morning we started our day with bagels for breakfast at Ess-A-Bagel. This spot was mentioned in my tour book and was only a block from our hotel. They had a crazy assortment of cream cheeses – I had raisin walnut. Then we decided to take the subway to the Upper West Side to go to the American Museum of Natural History. Other than my quick trip the night before this was our first experience with the subway. It took us way longer to get to our destination than it should have. We couldn’t understand the announcements being made over the intercom and whether or not they affected the trains we were going to take. In the end the subway we needed came to the opposite side of the platform we were expecting but we did get there.

When Laura came to visit me in Seattle two years ago we purchased a “City Pass” that gave us admission to a number of attractions. We decided to do the same thing in NYC and purchased our passes the American Museum of Natural History. We spent about 2 hours wandering around the museum. My favourite parts were the dinosaurs and the weather exhibition that had a map showing active worldwide weather for the past two months.

After leaving the museum we bought a take-out lunch from a small bakery near the museum and walked into Central Park. We spent about another two hours visiting the park. We entered the part at about W 81st St and exited at the bottom at E 59th St. The Park was great because the weather was beautiful. We then made a quick stop on Fifth Avenue so that Laura could visit FAO Schwartz and then hopped on the subway back down to Times Square. There we purchased same day Broadway tickets to see The Producers.

Then we hopped back on the subway and went uptown to the Guggenheim (#2 on our City Pass hit list). Unfortunately the Guggenheim is currently surrounded by scaffolding on the outside so we couldn’t really appreciate the architecture. The inner atrium was pretty cool though. The top 3 floors were closed for installation of a new exhibition so we could only view the permanent collection which didn’t take too long to see.

From there we headed back to midtown and had simple dinner at a cafe near our hotel. We then got distracted in a sporting goods store for a while and then made a quick trip back to the hotel to get changed to see The Producers. The show was great – really funny. I’m glad that I saw it live before I see the movie.

On Sunday morning we started our day off at the local bagel shop and then went to mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The Cathedral is pretty impressive. Then we headed downtown where we wandered around for a bit and visited Ground Zero. I was very moved by visiting Ground Zero. We then stopped by Century 21 which is supposed to be the greatest discount department store in the city. I’m not sure if it was because we were a little sombre from just coming from Ground Zero or what but neither Laura nor I found anything we wanted to buy.

The next item on our to do list was to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. We had our second round of subway problems on this trip. First, we had to backtrack 3 or 4 stops because the train we wanted to catch was not going to stop at the station we were at due to construction. Then when we did manage to get on an A train it switched over to the F line and we had to get off a little deeper into Brooklyn than we’d planned. So we had a bit of a further walk than we’d planned but we did manage to find Grimaldi’s Pizza which had been mentioned in my tour book as having some of the best pizza in NYC. The restaurant was small, cramped and noisy but somehow you believe that that’s how a pizza parlour in Brooklyn should be. We had fresh mozzarella, roasted red peppers and fresh basil on our pizza. This totally fuelled us for the 30 min walk into Manhattan. The views from the bridge were pretty impressive. The only downside was that it started rain about half way across the bridge. Fortunately Laura and I had our matching (well different colours) rain coats with us so we were protected.

We had planned to do a cruise of the Hudson and East Rivers on Sunday afternoon but the rain made us change our plans. Instead we headed to MOMA (City Pass site #3). I was very impressed with MOMA. Of course it holds such classics as Starry Night, Three Musicians and Water Lilies but I also really like the Architecture and Design section of the museum. We were pretty beat after MOMA so headed back to our hotel and napped for about an hour. Then we woke up and decided it was time for dinner. Most of the restaurants around our hotel were closed (it was a Sunday evening) so we walked down to Grand Central Station and had dinner there. We ended up eating at Junior’s which is known for it’s famous Brooklyn Cheesecake. So of course we had to have dessert – we went with the Chocolate Mousse cheesecake. Our slice was so big we couldn’t finish it!

We then walked down to The Empire State Building (City Pass stop #4) and went up to the 80th floor observation deck. It was very windy and cold at the top. I couldn’t actually hold my camera still with all the wind so none of my pictures really turned out. It was very neat to see all of Manhattan lit and spread out in front of you though.

On Monday morning we started the day with bagels for breakfast (of course) and then went to the New York Public Library. Unfortunately the library is closed on Mondays so we could only visit the outside. We did go to Bryant Park (right behind the library) which I thought was quite lovely. From there walked to pier 82 and went on our 2 hour semi-circle cruise (City Pass stop #5) of the Hudson and East rivers. From the cruise we saw the downtown skyline, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Washington bridges and the United Nations. I had really wanted to go on a tour of the United Nations but we weren’t able to fit it into our very full weekend!

After the cruise we took the bus back to our hotel, had lunch and then parted ways to our airports. I flew in and out of Newark so my trip involved taking the subway to Penn Station and then a New Jersey Train to the airport. I impulse bought a paperback copy of The Da Vinci Code at the airport and read 95% of it on the trip back to Seattle.

All in all our trip to NYC was a huge success. I feel like we really only hit the highlights so there’s lots more I’d like to see on another trip to the city.