new york city - part 3

2007.8.30, Thursday

The Big Day had finally arrived for hubby. We went to a Yankees - Red Sox game. Hubby is a hugh baseball fan. We went to the Stadium 2 hours before game time, so we could see Monument Park in the Stadium. A new Stadium is being built across from this one, so it's very meaningful to see the park where the legends had played in.

We took the subway to the Stadium. Pretty convenient. I am not a big baseball fan, don't really understand all the rules. When we got the tickets off stubhub, we had a choice between the Yankees playing Red Sox or Tampa Bay. I picked the Red Sox game eventhough it's more expensive cause I knew about the long rivalry between the two teams. It turned out to be an important game for the Yankees according to hubby. Our seats wasn't bad. Behind home plate. We were at the top level in the box section. One level down would be better, but more $$$. The face value of the ticket was US$60, we paid around US$100.

I love the Yankee fans. I actually enjoyed watching the game because of them. They are a crazy bunch. The game was very entertaining. Two people were thrown out of the game, the Red Sox manager for arguing a call (Kevin Youkilis ran outside the baseline) and Joba got kicked out for throwing at Kevin Youkilis' head (intentional or otherwise). A drunken bitter Red Sox fan got thrown out of the game. 2 Home Runs by Robinson Cano. Pretty entertaining. If I lived in New York, I wouldn't mind going to a game once in a while. Way better than the Jay's games that I had been. Canadian fans are probably more reserved though, and all many Canadians are baseball fans.

The whole Yankee outing costed us around US$250.00. A big bottle of water was $4.50. Beer was $9. Didn't drink any beer. Couldn't pay that outrageous price to drink Coors Light!!! Yecch! Coors Light is yucky. Canadian beer is way better.

Taken from our seats. Seats are not as high as it seems from the pic.

Davis Schwimmer look-alike.

Eats:
Lunch - Hot Italian Sausage at the Yankee Stadium.

Dinner - Carnegie Deli. http://www.carnegiedeli.com/
The deli was very convenient for us. Right across from our hotel. We could see the deli from our room. The place was full of celeb pictures. This is a jewish deli. Not sure if we have something similar in Toronto.

We both ordered the hot pastrami sandwich, one order of matzoh ball soup and one order of french fries on the side. The sandwich is around $14. It's very expensive for a sandwich. But you could easily split it into 3 sandwiches. The Pastrami was tasty, and I liked the half sour pickles that they gave free.

The deli gave 2 kinds of pickes. The greener ones was the half sour.


2007.8.31, Friday

We had a leisurely breakdfast at the Europa Cafe. We were then off to the Metropolitan Meseum of Art to see the Temple of Dendur. Museum is too big to see it all.

Temple of Dendur.

We then off to the Guggenheim. The front of the meseum was in scaffolding. Everhwhere we went in New York, some buildings would be in scaffolding. I should have taken pictures and the theme would be New York in Scaffolding. I digress.

This is how the front of the museum supposed to look like.

Inside the museum.

One of the exhibits.

We then walked down 5th Avenue. Kind of hungry aroun 3:00pm, so we stopped for a pretzel. Right when we were buying the pretzel, we heard a loud bang, and saw that a Hummer had rear-ended a taxi. The hummer wasn't even dented. I felt sorry for the people in the taxi. Must be scared half to death.

We then went to the United Nations. It was an unplanned stop as United Nations wasn't on the top of our to-do list. Went on a 40 minute tour. Tours are being offered in different languages. Found out that the land where United Nations sit is not actually U.S. soil. That's why inside United Nations, they have their own police, post office everything. I was going to send a post card, but I was afraid to miss the tour, so I thought to wait after the tour. By the time we finished the tour, the post office was closed. : (

UN Security Council

Eats:

Breakfast - Europa Cafe

Snack - pretzel. Pretzel is too salty.

Dinner - Gahm Mi Oak in Korean town. We both ordered the oxtail and bone marrow soup. Very yummy. Our cheapest dinner yet. The soup was under $9.00. Come to think of it. It's not that cheap as we only had a few pieces of beef, some noodles and broth.

Oxtail and bone marrow soup

2007.9.1., Saturday

Home bound. I was sad to leave New York. Too bad that New York is not cheap, otherwise I can go frequently. There are still lots that we can do. We didn't get to do any night things as we were too tired after dinner. Maybe next time.

new york city - part 2

2007.8.28, Tuesday

We had to go to the Foods of New York Greenwich Village Tour at 11:00am, so we went straight to Greenwich Village. We first went to Washington Square Park. The park is near NYU. Saw lots of students there. Wish I had gone to NYU. What a cool place to study!!!



Washington Square Park




OK, back to the Food Tour. I first found out about this tour on Fodors. People seems to rave about it. http://www.foodsofny.com/greenwichvillage.php

It's not just a food tour, but with a bit of history and culture thrown in. We visited a cheese shop, 2 pizzerias, an olive oil shop, 2 bakeries and some others that I cannot remember now. We also got to taste the food. Had the best pizzas and italian fried rice ball. We walked around Greenwich Village with tour guide Mike. He told us about the history of the village, the buildings, local legends etc. At one point, we sat on the front steps of the house allegedly bought by Leonardo DiCarpio to then supermodel girlfriend Gisele Bundchen. Oh, we also visited this restaurant Palma. The restaurant has a farm house in the back for private parties. That's a picture of Mick Jagger there, so I took a picture of it.


Tour Guide Mike



Joe's Pizza has very crisp, thin crust. We each had a slice of cheese pizza. It was so good. True New York style pizza. Lots of celebs are big fans, like Ben Affleck and Kevin Bacon.


Mike Jagger's picture at Palma

All in all, a very interesting tour. Highly recommended.

We then did the Brooklyn Bridge walking tour. We took the subway to Brooklyn, and walked on the bridge from Brooklyn back to Manhattan. I made the mistake of looking down through the cracks, and it scared me. I tried not to think about it the whole time. It took us about an hour. Tons of New Yorkers walk the bridge. It won't be a bad walk, probably under 30 minutes. They probably work in Manhattan and live in Brooklyn. What a good way to get some exercise.

On the way to dinner, we saw a 2nd Subway musician. All the street musicians are suprisingly good.



Eats:

Breakfast - Bagel with cream cheese from a cart. Very New York.
Lunch - Food Tour.
Dinner - Mandoo bar in Little Korea. Good value. We had kimchi mandoo and pan fried mandoo.

2007.8.29, Wednesday

We went to the famous Century 21 to shop in the morning. I got a pair of Geox for $50.00. Great find. Hubby got something too. But we didn't stay long.

We went back to Greenwich Village to have lunch as we wanted to try the risotto at this restaurant called Risotteria. They served gluten free food. Not that I am allergic to gluten, but the food looked sooooo good when we were standing outside the restaurant during our tour. We just had to try it. We weren't disappointed. I had the calamari, roasted red peppers & olives risotto. Hubby had the shrimp, hot peppers & argula risotto. They were both good, different, but good. Boy, I wanted to eat the risotto again. Hope I could find something like that in TO.

We then stopped by Battery Park on our way to the New York Public Library. The park is so cool. It's an oasis in an urban jungle. The park has tables and chairs, so you can relax, read, eat or work if you want (tons of people with laptops). They even have a "library" of sort in the park. A quiet area specially for reading. They also have books in the area which you can read.

The public library is very impressive. I have seen the main reading room in movies. It's quite something to be inside though. We didn't stay long. We went to Grand Central Terminal next.

Grand Central is hugh and has a very impressive food court. I remembered watching a program on the History Channel, something about the Secrets of Grand Central. The show talked about a secret entrance in Grand Central that led to an underground train platform. Reportedly, President Roosevelt used the secret platform.





We saw another subway musician, Heth and Jed, after dinner. We liked them so much, we got their CD. Only $10.



Eats:
Lunch - Risotteria in Greenwich Village. Best Risotto.
Dinner - Comfort Diner. Good old burger and fries.

new york city - part 1

2007.8.25, Saturday

We took the train down to New York City. It was pretty convenient since we didn't need to go all the way to Union Station as it stopped right at Oakville. The train ride was long though, around 12 hours. On our way out, the train was delayed 2 hours. We didn't get to NYC until around 11:15pm. We had to call our hotel to make sure they didn't give our room out. So the journey was 14 hours long. Oh well. That's the price you pay for a cheaper alternative. Our two tickets only cost us $400.

The train ride was uneventful. Train was full. Rick and I had to sit separately from Oakville to Niagara. It started to rain an hour into the trip, around Hamilton. We had to stop at the border and got to walk around a bit. We arrived at Albany at around 9:00pm. We should have been 45 minutes away from New York instead of 2 hours away.



Arrived at the Wellington Hotel at around 11:30pm. The hotel reminded me of those hotels around Nathan Road in Hong Kong. Wellington is a 3 star hotel. Hotel is described as European. European therefore means small. The room was small and the hotel old fashioned looking. It was clean, so it was adequate. Bed was a double and mattress was not firm enough. However, location is great for tourists. It's in Midtown near Carnegie Hall. The hotel is near the action, but not right into the middle of it. Very convenient. Subways right outside the hotel. One stop to Times Square on the N, R, W, trains.

2007.8.26, Sunday

Something funny happened in the morning. Rick saw a lady showering at The Park Central hotel across from us. It's quite a funny picture. Imagine this: All curtains are closed except one with a woman showering, and she looked like an Italina mama. It's actually quite hilarious.

Off we went to Ground Zero first. The #1 train was closed at certain stops and we were instructued to take the shuttle. Without a transit map, we just followed the crowd and ended up at the Staten Island Ferry terminal by mistake. So we took the free Staten Island Ferry. The view on the ferry was nice. We could see Lower Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty, and Ellis Island. We walked to the Staten Island stadium and got to go inside as 2 Japanese teams were playing some sort of tournament game.

We took the ferry back to the Manhattan and went to Ground Zero. Ground Zero was a very big hole. It gives you an idea of the magnitude of the tragedy. No one was working in Ground Zero as it was a Sunday.

We went to Chinatown as it seems to be the easiest to get to without a subway map (we had our tourist book, but not a detailed subway map). I have been to Chinatown before. A madhouse that is. Hubby was surprised at how big Chinatown was. Some streets in Chinatown looks like Kwun Tong to me.

We then went to the Empire State building after lunch. I had been to the Empire State before in my prior visit to NYC, but didn't remember much. We got an audio tour included in our City Pass tickets. The audio tour was very detailed.

Vista from the Empire State building. You can see the Chrysler Building (the one with the distinctive crown).



We went back to Times Square afterwards for dinner. My feet hurt from all the walking.

Eats:

Lunch - Joe's Shanghai in Chinatown. New York City seems to be very big on 小籠包. They called it Soup Dumplings. The dumplings were very juicy and big and tasty. We also had Shanghai rice cake and Spicy beef noodles. They are so so.




Dinner - Havana Central in Times Square. Kind of expensive cause we had a drink each. $8 for a Sangria and $9 for a Mojito. We paid over $60 for our dinner and it's US$. Food was ok.

Mojito in the front and Sangria in the background.


Cuban style ribs and Ropa Vieja (shredded beef in a tomato based sauce).

Some more Times Square pictures.



I have not seen a flashier policy station.



A ferris wheel inside a Toy 'R Us. Go figure!!!


2007.8.27, Monday

Went to Natural History museum bright and early. We had to wait for the museum to open. Museum is too large to see everything in a day, let alone a few hours. We went to see the dinosaur exhibits and a short film Cosmic Collision at the Rose Center and Earth and Space (part of the musuem). If I lived in NYC, this is one museum of which I wouldn't mind being a member. Toronto has no good museums.



Also went to Central Park. On the way to the Central Park 72nd street entrance, we passed the Dakota where John Lenon was shot. Lots of famous people lived at the Dakota. An apartment in the Dakota is worth U.S. $10 million. Isn't this crazy? Even if I have the money, I wouldn't want to live there. It looks kinda spooky. Rosemary's Baby was filmed there. Enough said.

The 72nd street entrance to Central Park led us to John Lenon's makeshift memorial, Strawberry Fields.



Our next stop was the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). We walked down Fifth Avenue to get to the museum. And then I saw Tiffany's, and had to make a detour. Even Toronto has a Tiffany's, it's just not the same. I caved and bought a necklace. $$$$$$

Picture from Tiffany's website.

Saw this funny car on the way to MOMA.



We finally arrived at MOMA. Didn't like MOMA much. I am not an art person. I cannot understand and appreciate art. I can understand music, but art is something else. I especially cannot understand modern art.

Eats:
Lunch - Natural History museum food court. Chicken wings and fries. Shared a yummy chocolate chip cupcake with hubby.

Snack - Gray's Papaya hot dogs. 2 dogs and a papaya drink for $3.50 tax included. Hot dog is juicy. Cheap snack.

Dinner - T.G.I.Friday's. Worst dinner ever at the Friday's and the most expensive for the whole trip. We paid US$70. I didn't really want to go to a chain restaurant, but I thought since hubby had never been to a Friday's then we could give it a try. Boy, was I disappointed. My steak was ok, but the broccoli was clearly from a bag. Hubby made better steaks than Friday's. Should not have eaten in a chain restaurant.

My trusty comfy shoes:

All pictures from my little Canon A630.