New York is Thatta Way, Man: Just Another SaUD Miracle Review- May, 2010 (Part 3)featured

This one’s going to be VERY photo-heavy…hope you all enjoy! Also- Blogger is giving me issues with the comments (I hope it’s not giving any of you problems, too!) and it’s not letting me respond to anything. So I am reading them…I just can’t respond back until this Blogger issue is resolved.

I woke up around 8:00 am and Mom and Stephanie had already grabbed breakfast for us at Cosi. Stephanie wanted to get an early start because she had booked us on a city tour and we wanted to see as much as we can since this was our designated tour day. The plan was for us to do one tour today, one tour the next day since the tour we were on offered many different tours and we had two-day tickets, but we wanted to get in as much as we could today since we were forecasted for rain the next day. We planned to do one tour, head back to the hotel to take grandma out for lunch and then head back to Times Square or something of the like to walk around. Later that night, we planned on doing a night tour to see the city lights. A quick peek out the window showed the sun shining over lower Manhattan- perfect sight-seeing weather.

The three of us walked over to the PATH station and were greeted by the morning rush…and a fresh pile of vomit on the ramp. Not the way you want to start a morning. The trains were packed to the gills. Like…nose-up-to-the-back-of-the-person-in-front-of-you-if-you-don’t-have-a-seat-sardines-in-a-can-packed. Even on the most crowded rush hour express train I’ve been on in Chicago, I’ve never been on a train this packed. It made for an uncomfortable ride, but you grin and bear it…and clutch your purse tightly.

We got off near Times Square and walked over to Madame Tussauds to pick up our tour tickets. The line was out the door and we ended up waiting more than a half hour to pick them up. There are many tour operators in New York. Stephanie ended up booking us with City Sights NY for their All Around Tour, which included all of the various loops (the downtown tour, the uptown/Harlem tour and the Brooklyn tour), a night tour, admittance to the Museum of the City of New York and a Circle Line harbor cruise for $54 a person. You can do any or all of these (we ultimately did two of the tours), over the span of two days (I believe as our tickets were), but the value really can’t be beat. We debated between this tour (a hop on/hop off bus) and a guided tour and we ultimately decided on the hop on/hop off because it gave us more control over what we saw and when and would allow us to be more time efficient by not making stops at places we didn’t care to see. The beauty of a hop on/hop off is that you can get off wherever you want or not at all…you can see it all from the top of the double-decker bus. We didn’t really plan on getting off anywhere (except for Strawberry Fields, which I was adamant that we stop off at) and it ended up being a really relaxing way to see the city.

After we got our tickets, we walked to the designated stop to get on the bus for the downtown tour, which would take us past the theater district, Carnegie Hall, the Winter Garden, Times Square, Macy’s, the Empire State building, the Flatiron district (and building), Union Square/Ladies Mile, Greenwich Village, SoHo, Chinatown/Little Italy, St. Pauls Chapel, Battery Park, the South Street Seaport, the Lower East side, the East Village, Kip’s Bay, the UN building, the Waldorf Astoria (which I still plan on staying at one day) and Rockefeller Center before dropping us back off in the theater district. Our tour guide wasn’t that personable, but he had great knowledge of the city and I found the entire tour fascinating. New York really does feel like a bunch of smaller cities contained within a larger city, each having a different vibe. I found many differences between NYC and Chicago (beyond the obvious). Like in Chicago, we don’t really have flower markets out on the streets, whereas I saw many lovely flower shops on the street corners in New York. And we don’t have street food in Chicago, either (which is really so unique and fun from a tourist’s standpoint). The sun was out and it was a breezy 60something degrees out. Perfect weather for a double decker bus ride through the city.

After the downtown tour, since we didn’t feel like getting off anywhere and it went by quicker than we planned, we decided to do the Uptown Treasures and Harlem tour (which we had planned on doing the next day). That tour would take us through Times Square and the theater district, Columbus Circle, the Lincoln Center, Central Park and Strawberry Fields, the American Museum of Natural History, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Grant’s Tomb/Riverside Church, the Apollo Theater, the Harlem Market, the Museum of the City of NY, the Guggenheim, the Met, the Frick Collection, the Central Park Zoo, the Plaza Hotel and Winter Gardens. This was the plan: the tour would take two hours. Stephanie and I were going to do the tour and get off at Strawberry Field while Mom went back to the hotel to take grandma to lunch and we’d met up in Central Park and finish the tour. Stephanie ended up really liking the tour guide we had on the bus and didn’t want to get off- she wanted to do the tour in its entirety with him and then do it again and get off at Strawberry Field. I thought that was more complicated than hopping on and hopping off and then hopping on again. She won.

So after we did our first loop of the uptown tour, we had to get off the bus, wait for a NEW bus and get on that one. It was a bit more hassle than it was worth- we should have just hopped off and then hopped back on. We stopped inside a nearby Starbucks while we were waiting for the new bus to grab some drinks and a quick snack. The new tour guide was…interesting. He had a crude sense of humor and was kind of polarizing. I could see many people being offended by his sense of humor. I didn’t really care- we were only on for a few stops.

We hopped off at Central Park West (I wanted to hop off at the Dakota…no dice with Stephanie) and called Mom, who wasn’t far off. We chatted with her until we found each other and then made our way over to Strawberry Fields.

I’ve got to say- I’ve been a lot of places and I’ve seen a lot of things. I’ve rarely felt as much serenity and peace as I felt when I was in Strawberry Field. There was a musician quietly strumming the guitar but even as people shuffled in and out of the area, that’s all that could really be heard. We just sat there for awhile, taking in the peace. It really was quite lovely.

We planned on hopping back on the bus and redoing the rest of the tour with Mom, but Mom didn’t really care for it since she saw everything she wanted to see on the downtown tour and since walking through Central Park was on my list of things I really wanted to do, we just decided to stroll through the park.

We walked for about 40 minutes…not really knowing where we were going. Well, Stephanie claimed she knew where we were going, but we weren’t getting anywhere anytime quickly. We were constantly peddled for pedicab rides (the big honking camera is a tourist giveaway, I guess), but nothing a polite (but firm) “No thank you” didn’t take care of. My blood sugar sunk really fast because I hadn’t eaten since 8:00 that morning and it was nearing on 4:00 pm. Luckily, I had a slice of cake I bought at Starbucks in my purse and I munched on that while we navigated our way out of the park. We ended up near The Plaza, an area we were familiar with from last year. We decided to walk back towards 7th Ave. and try to find some food.

We walked about ten blocks and found a bunch of delis. Since eating NY deli food was on Mom and Stephanie’s lists, we settled on the Benash Delicatessen. The restaurant was nearly empty, which was slightly uncomfortable, but the menu was big and full of offerings. It was also insanely overpriced (which didn’t really matter much at that point because we were hungry)…Mom and Stephanie decided to order a corned beef sandwich, which was nearly a full pound of meat, but also nearly $15 (plus a $4 split charge, which they ordered a side of fries to avoid…because the $15 was a la carte…but the side of fries was nearly $5. My cheese blintzes? $17.95. For three blintzes and a small side of fruit. We have amazingly delicious jewish deli restaurants on the north shore of Chicago and the same meal would have cost us $20 at home. Mom and Stephanie loved their sandwich. I didn’t care for my blintzes, so I boxed those up to take back to grandma and munched on the fruit and Mom and Stephanie’s fries, which were heavenly.

Since we were near the theater district, we decided to go back to Crumbs bakery to grab some more cupcakes to take back to the hotel and we saw a huge crowd outside the theater that houses Promises Promises. We thought maybe a matinee had just let out and people were crowding the stage door and we decided to go over and see if we could meet Cheno or Sean Hayes, but it turned out that David Letterman was filming a sketch where a bunch of crap gets thrown off the roof of the theater. He tossed a bunch of bottles of champagne, water and some other crap before we got there and we saw them drop a ton of watermelons and bouncy balls off the roof (we collected the balls as souvenirs later). Stephanie thought she spotted Alec Baldwin on the roof and a quick crop on my camera proved her right- Alec Baldwin was indeed looking down on us. It made for a cool story to tell my friends when I got back to the hotel.

We headed towards our original destination (Crumbs) and grabbed another Oprah cupcake for me, another Promises Promises cupcake for Mom, a red velvet cupcake for grandma and a carrot cake cupcake for Stephanie.

We were all exhausted and sore, so we hopped on (another very crowded) train back to Jersey City and went back to the hotel to rest. We were so tired that we skipped our night tour (which I really wanted to do because I wanted to see the Brooklyn Bridge, but that’ll have to wait for the next trip, I suppose) and watched TV in the hotel. I bought some more internet time and did some last-minute trip research. Stephanie and I got hungry around 9:30 and decided to walk over to Boca Grande, a mexican restaurant about four blocks from the hotel. I have to say…walking alone with Stephanie at night in Jersey City…I felt completely safe. The area is very well-lit and there’s always people walking around. There was no point that I felt unsafe.

The food at Boca Grande was really fantastic (and very reasonably priced). I had the fajitas and while they weren’t the best I’d ever had, they were really quite tasty. Stephanie had the beef tacos and says they were the best tacos she’s ever had. And Stephanie has had many tacos. She also ordered a side of beans, which she thought weren’t that great.

We walked back to the hotel and got ready for bed before putting on Letterman to watch our segment (we didn’t see ourselves, but it was cool knowing we were there). Mom, Stephanie and grandma crashed before Letterman was even over. I stayed up until around 3:00 am uploading pictures to Flickr and playing around on the internet. My sleep schedule was getting so messed up, but who needs sleep when you’re on vacation?