My original holiday plan was for Caroline and I to go skiing in Heavenly, on the South of Lake Tahoe, as we had done the previous Winter. Sadly, a particularly nasty sore throat put paid to that idea, but doing the best we could to salvage the situation, we had to make do with a week in New York, a place we'd always wanted to go to. Poor us.
Rather than trying to interpolate my blurb with the pictures, I thought I'd try putting the photos elsewhere.
We arrive in New York's JFK airport, in Brooklyn, East of Manhattan Island. Thanks to the wonders of time zones, we leave in the afternoon, and arrive in the afternoon. Customs and all that is surprisingly low key, grim, and generally uninviting. Mould leaking from the ceiling, that kind of thing. It made Heathrow practically inviting. Anyway, we take a taxi to the Natural History Museum, which is dead close to where we're staying. The journey into Manhattan is fixed price (useful trivia, eh?), and... it starts off quite dull, seeing fairly dull housing backing onto the big road we're on, American traffic jams (woo), but then... Manhattan island. Our first glimpse of skyscrapers. Much 'oooh'ing.
Having been dumped at the NHM, we proceed to try to find our hotel. This should be made easy by NY's grid system. In fact, for most of midtown upwards, it is surprisingly difficult to get lost. However, the road our street is on, 79th Street, appears to be pretty much the only discontinuous street. We walk along, and then it disappears! Fortunately, it reappears a few streets South, and we quickly find our hotel. It's gently peeling in places, but pleasant enough. The web reviews noted it as quiet, but we hear banging and construction works. The floor below is being renovated. Happily, the builders work sensible hours, so given we were out most of the days, and sleeping at night (shock!), we had very little trouble with that source of noise.
Once settled down, we go out for supper. NY time, it's early. For us... practically midnight. We go to Rosa Mexicano, as recommended by our shiny Time Out guide. The place was busy, we got drinks, waited, got a table and ate. We were tired and under-ate, but the food was pretty fantastic. I'm no expert on Mexican food, but yum. It was a shame not to be able to eat more (big starters were probably a slightly silly idea, in retrospect). The Chihuahua cheese probably caused strange dreams, but it was very tasty. The lamb shank I had... er, shanky? I'm not sure what Caroline had - something tortilla-y, perhaps?
We walked back and zonked off to bed. The walk to and from Rosa Mexicano was pretty special, actually. Our first time properly walking around NY, through a fairly pleasant area, and with all the lights of night-time in a big city. Broadway looks pretty shiny, I get to see a tempting-looking American bookshhop. The grid system makes it sound like it's a pain to get anywhere, with all the road-crossing, but the traffic-lights are fantastic. It feels far more pedestrian-friendly than London, and very lively. Remarkably unlike Milton Keynes, which is nice.
Thanks to jet-lag, we get up early. The deli across the road from the hotel, while most likely very authentic, gives Caroline hygiene nightmares. So, round the corner to a coffee house, then, for a caffeinated, snacky breakfast. Next up, Central Park! We skirted round the park in our taxi ride the previous day, and one of the best things about the hotel is its closeness to Central Park. It is rather gorgeous.
Heading into the park, we wander around some gardens, before hitting Belvedere Castle, which is follytastic. To the North of that is the Great Lawn, which we duly circle. It appears to be converted to lots of baseball (softball?) pitches during the Summer. While circling the lawn, we discover the Obelisk. It's rather neato to find such an ancient piece of Egypt right in the middle of New York.
Further North in Central Park, we see the reservoir, which acts as a nice big body of water to jog around. We decide to circle it clockwise, taking the long way round to the Guggenheim. Halfway round, we discover the 'please run anticlockwise' sign. That might explain the minor scowls from a few joggers. Hint to urban signage experts: You might want to place this message in more than one place on a half-mile loop.
By this point, it's really quite cold, and we're pretty glad to make it to the Guggenheim. The exterior is all in scaffolding (hmm, concrete, great material), but the inside is still pretty darn neat. The exhibition is of David Smith's sculpture. To be pretty harsh, it looks like he died before he got really good, which is a shame. His later stuff was coming together, and you could really see the development. Interestingly, for sculpture, his work was remarkably 2D. It was quite fun to spot bits of his work in MoMA when we visited it later.
As well as seeing the current exhibition, we saw the permanent collection. It's not fantastic, but it's worth seeing. I think Caroline rather liked the Pollock. The Guggenheim has a good line in Kandinskys, and while I've never really got Kandinsky, this really showed me the range, and made me appreciate the artist a lot more. There was a rather nice Van Gogh, and a couple of irritatingly good Picassos.
It's now about (late) lunchtime. We head down to the Met for lunch, with a view to maybe looking around it later on. It's free with suggested donations, but they don't appear to have the hang of this, and since we can't be bothered to deal with arsey security guards trying to hide the truth without lying, we leave. If you want donations, try not to alienate your visitors, eh? As it was, we intended to go back, but the week was such a rush we never made it.
At this point, we're seriously hungry, so we check our handy guide, and go to the Lexington Candy Shop. This is, of course, a diner. In full retro, preserved glory (ok, it's less preserved than worn down, but in a carefully authentic manner). A burger-and-shake-style lunch later, we're back on the street and recharged. Travelling down Lexington, we made for Bloomingdales. Having made it to this Mecca of American shopping, we actually wondered around in a daze for a while, since we didn't really need to buy anything. We did, however, giggle at the price of the decent quality shirts. My theory was that the t-shirt has so successfully killed the shirt that nice shirts are way more a luxury item there than in the UK. That's just a theory, though.
Out of Bloomingdales, we made for Columbus Circle on the South-West corner of Central Park. This is a bit of a jumble of buildings around the circle, and inexplicably a bit of a tourist magnet. From here, we walked back to the hotel up Central Park West. We noted that some of the buildings facing the park were pretty pleasant-looking. Later we discovered that these building were basically celebrity central, and many had price tags with a digit more than I'd have thought sane.
Our evening meal was a bit of a cock-up, I'm sorry to say, although not exactly unpleasant. Looking for Monsoon, a Vietnamese restaurant, we found nothing but Rain, which looked closed and clubby. Giving up on our original Time Out-recommended plan, we ended up at a Chicago-style pizza chain. It was remarkably uninspiring, but a pleasant low-key wind-down after quite a first day wandering around our bit of the city.
We woke up and decided to go for bagels for breakfast. Very New York, yes? The book recommended H&H bagels as world-famous and only a few streets away. And... it really was a bagel shop. You want your bagel cut in half and filled with something? This is not the shop for you. So we found a diner for breakfast instead. It looked like you'd expect a diner to look like, it was packed, the staff were gruff, and the food was cheap and tasty. I had some kind of omelette with peppers and sausage or something, if I remember correctly. Caroline had pancakes. Big pancakes, with maple syrup. She decided not to order that with bacon. Silly Americans. Anyway, it really set us up for the day. The joint appeared to be owned by an intimidating-looking burly businessman, who from his phone conversations appeared to have fingers in multiple pies. He looked like he might have fitted in with the Sopranos.
Next up, our trip on the subway. It's striking how close the subway is to the surface, even to the extent of being able to hear it from the road. We eventually work out the machines and get onto the platform. Not too intimidating in the end, and almost pleasant if you're used to the tube in a rush hour. We alighted at Times Square, and looked around. Lots and lots of bright lights. Very impressive. There were also a huge number of police and their cars about. This was slightly odd, so we wandered away before getting caught in anything unpleasant. In retrospect, they could have just been there so that their exciting police car lights fitted in with the square. Or maybe not.
Anyway, we now had a chance to absorb a little more of midtown, and its collection of skyscrapers. We thought we were wandering West, but actually we were going East, and serendipitously we ended up at Grand Central. It looks gorgeous. While I've heard the US can't do trains, they certainly can do stations when they want to. Next up, we got our bearings properly, and headed West along 42nd Street. We finally made it to the West of the island, just in time for the 3 hour round-Manhattan tour. So, we got on board, and circled the island.
Three hours may sound like a long time, but it wasn't exactly tedious, s there was a lot to see. Down the West coast of Manhattan, we saw plenty of docks, going away from midtown and towards downtown. We passed Canal Street (somewhere below 1st Street, where, for some reason, they give the roads names rather than negative numbers), and Tribeca (triangle below Canal Street - they do have some silly names). At the downtown end of things the skyscrapers started up again, as part of the financial district.
Rather than looping around the Southern tip of the island, we veered away, towards the Statue of Liberty. The day was overcast (the journey was more than a little breezy and cold), so my photos of the journey haven't come out brilliantly, but we did get a rather nice view of the Statue (and also Ellis Island). This was going to be as near as we got to the statue, since it was still closed to the public. You can go to the island, but without climbing the statue that seems a little fruitless.
Toddling back to Manhattan, we passed the Southern tip, looping around the financial district, and its collection of monoliths (yes, I think that's oxymoronic). At just the right moment, we could see straight down Wall Street. Passing up the East coast of Manhattan, we had a guided tour of the buildings (including the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, as well as many hospitals). We saw Manhattan bridge and Brooklyn bridge, and, well bits of Brooklyn and Queens. We saw a cross-river cable car (last seen on Spiderman?) and various random little islands.
Approaching the North of Manhattan, it got a little more dull. The housing got less glamourous. There were plenty of turntable bridges. We passed along a little canal-like way with a silly Dutch name that separates Manhattan from the Bronx. A final bridge opened for us (we wave to the bridge operator) and we're back on the West of Manhattan. Coming back down, we see various pieces including the Cloisters. Yes, Americans really do import ancient buildings brick-by-brick.
Select parts of New Jersey are pointed out. Manhattan's combined sewage farm and park is pointed out (no, really! It's covered, with the park on top). Pretty soon we're back at our starting point, disembarking, happy and hungry.
For our very late lunch, we grab some rather gourmet sandwiches from a branch of 'Starwich' on 42nd Street. I had a darned tasty steak sandwich, which I enjoyed sufficiently to forget what Caroline ordered. Probably something foolishly vegetarian (certainly, in comparison to my steak sandwich).
At the intersection of 42nd and 5th is the New York public library. The gardens are pretty (if currently undergoing some renovation), and the building impressive. Inside, we learnt that: the inside is also rather nice, it was built on the site of an old reservoir, and that it is quite library-like. Having poked our heads (quietly) into the reading rooms, we pressed on.
Pressing on involved spotting the Chrysler building, and ambling towards it in awe. It's so much prettier than the Empire State building that it's unbelievable. Having had our fill of that, we wandered up a combination of Lexington and Park Avenues to 50th Street, where we briefly ferreted around to see the Rockefeller Center and the Radio City Music Hall. Tired, we subwayed home.
That evening, we finally found Monsoon. Turns out, I'd been on the right street, wrong avenue. So, excellent Vietnamese food. I had a ginger tea, which turned out to be interesting, but a little challenging to drink in bulk, and an otherwise most delicious meal. Highly recommended (again, well done Time Out).
It appears we were venturing further South as our confidence increased, as on Friday we visited the very Southern tip of the island. We came out in basically the middle of nowhere, next to a big road, but five minutes walk found us in Battery Park, from which we circled round into the financial district.
Getting up late and not eating until we'd hit downtown meant we had lunch a little before 12pm. Adrienne's Pizza Bar appears to be very popular with financial types, and come 12 the place was totally packed with the Friday rush. Well before then they were rushing out takeaway orders. Having said that, I can understand why. Their pizzas are tasty and filling. I think we only managed ours between us because we were quite so hungry, taking two meals in one sitting.
Post-lunch (or maybe post-breakfast), we kept going Eastwards, to the edge of the island, before working our way back along Wall Street. Not a terribly long street, but fairly interesting nonetheless. The mix of people did feel remarkably similar to Canary Wharf (certainly much more so than Park Avenue, which got pretty refined). We saw the NY Stock Exchange, but again, thanks to 9/11, we didn't get to go inside.
At the end of Wall Street we hit Trinity Church, and then went to the Financial History Museum. Despite sounding as dull as ditch-water, it was cheap (two dollars a head) and accessible (Caroline really liked it). If anything, I found it too accessible, since the current displays (the start of the Dow and a history of counterfeiting) lacked technical depth. But hey, making it interesting to normal human beings is probably good. The gift shop was also pretty good (bags of shredded money, anyone)?
From there, we headed back down to Battery Park, after a little Starbucks stop. It was very exposed and insanely windy, although there were some rather pretty views. Our next item on the itinery (brought forward by the fact we were freezing to death) was the skyscraper museum. The route was circuitous, made worse by roadworks (with the wind blowing grit like nothing else) and somewhat complex traffic structures. But we made it. The museum was doing an exhibition on green buildings, and to be honest I found it rather less inspiring than just walking around the city. Having said that, it was certainly warmer, quite interesting, and I wouldn't begrudge the time I spent there. I ended up buying a book on Manhattan skyscrapers 'cos, well, they're really cool.
Next up... yes, it's ghoulish, but it feels like it needs to be done. The World Trade Center does indeed have at its heart a very big hole. The site is incredibly understated, which really seems the right approach to take.
A subway ride to 50th Street takes us to the Museum of Modern Art, which has a late opening night on Fridays. What we didn't realise is that MoMA has a late and free opening night on Fridays, and hence the queues are enormous. We decide to skip it and do the Empire State Building instead. At this point it's still light, but by the time we've walked and queued, and got to the top, it's dark. Which, fortunately, is really the best way to see the view.
The view is fantastic. On the down-side, it's blisteringly cold and I can't take photos because it's dark and I haven't invested in a tripod or whatever. On the other hand, the view is fantastic. So, after a brief trip outside, we stand inside and stare out at the view. Which, by the way, is fantastic. Getting tired, we descend and go home.
That evening we go to Ouest, categorised by Time Out as 'American Creative', and by us as 'darned good'. This was probably the culinary high point of the holiday, as befits a late Valentine's meal. We didn't really go for pigging out, with 2 courses and no side dishes, but it was most yummy. Interestingly, this was the closest we came to a posh European restaurant in New York, although this was not immediately obvious from the front of the restaurant. I felt a little underdressed in a t-shirt, but America's remarkably laid back, so we seemed to get away with it, bunged up in the corner of a balcony, where we could spy down upon the (tidier) masses.
Had breakfast at the Manhattan Diner again, for our daily dose of, well, a combination of breakfast and the locals. From there we headed down to MoMA, for another crack. Once we'd got ourselves sorted, stowed our coats etc., we got underway on the two main gallery floors. And... gosh. There's some really good stuff there. I could spend ages rambling on about it, but I'll instead select a few high- (and low-) lights.
It's interesting seeing how the emphasis varies between different museums. We saw a lot more Kandinsky than you tend to see in London (unless it's all hiding from me). Van Gogh's Starry Night looks so much better in the flesh. Caroline's never been a great fan of Picasso, but I think this place changed her mind. She was awestruck by Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Me, I was impressed by the bredth of his work, managing to be impressive in so many styles. Having said that, he did some rubbish sculpture.
Similarly, I was underwhelmed by their Giacomettis (although they did have a rather cute dog), which is a shame, since I'm a real fan. As usual, Caroline avoided looking at the Francis Bacons. A good fraction of the most modern entries (mostly sculpture) were pretty uninspiring, but I enjoyed the Bridget Rileys. In a way, though, one of my highlights was a particularly understated little room, which modestly held some American gems: Wyeth's Christina's World has an amazing desolate feel, and Hopper's... very American?
We punctuated our tour with a trip to the cafe, only spoilt slightly by the spoilt kid at the next table (hint to parents: when they start to trash the table, you may consider discouraging them). From there, on to the special exhibitions. Spanish architecture was surprisingly dull. Lots of people wandering around, feigning interest, but I just couldn't get the expression right, so we had to leave. The other exhibition was Munch. 'Oh,' you might say, 'the scream man? I wonder if he's done any nice, happy pictures, or if it's all like that?'. To save you the effort, it's all like that. You get this real impression of why Scandinavians have such a high suicide rate.
Another food pitstop, at what felt like a cafe designed by The Guardian (I probably had wholemeal pasta or something), and it was down to the sculpture garden. This was sparsely populated, but excellent nonetheless. I think personal favourites were the Calder, and Picasso's goat. Nice.
MoMA done, we walked back home. Central Park at dusk, by the way, is pretty lovely. Having dined at Ouest the previous night, we tried Northwest. This was, as far as we could tell, a relatively new establishment, opposite the hotel. We ate relatively late, basically catching the second sitting, although by now our body clocks were more or less matching local time. While not up to the high standards of Ouest, it was pretty fun. In fact, the amateurish waiter added to the charm.
Sunday was to be our Natural History Museum day. We got up at the crack of midday, and went straight in to the museum for lunch. Well, almost straight in. The ticketing system confused us, but in the end it all worked out. Lunch was eaten in the basement, in some hall designed to extort parents. Screaming kids were everywhere, and the food was low-quality and over-priced. Stereotypical museum stuff. Once we'd got our lunch (I had something incredibly unhealthy. Dinosaur-shaped reclaimed-chicken, or something), paid for it, found a table, brushed child residue off it and eaten, things were looking up. Amazing what a full stomach will do. I think I even spotted Caroline doing that look where she's trying to work out how to sneak off with a particularly cute baby.
It was time to enter the main body of the building, pronto. The actual exhibitions were a wonderful mixture, from the purest stuffed-animal-in-a-glass-box experience through to the latest, greatest son-et-lumiere. A showcase for museum technology through the ages. We started, with a fairly modern section, on biodiversity. This nicely brought together environmental issues (some rather alarming facts), a huge display of the animal and plant kingdoms, and a mocked up rainforest. Neato.
The biodiversity hall lead to the aquatic hall, which had been our real planned destination. It's a huge hall, with the centrepiece filled with a giant model whale. The lighting gives the place an aquatic theme. All around the perimeter of the two layers, different species and niches are discussed. Given it's a fairly modern hall, and fairly popular with children, it might not surprise you to learn that the animals were a good mixture of the cute and the grotesque. Oh, and Caroline has banned me from relating the story of the sharks.
By this stage it was pretty clear how huge the place was, how it'd take days to do the place justice, and how we'd have to pick our fights. So, we identified Meteorites and Gems next. Shiny Things and Things From Space to please both the girls and boys amongst us. As we'd discovered in the biodiversity hall, the journey throught exhibition halls you weren't planning to look at can be fascinating.
We started with a fairly cheesy and old anthropology exhibition on the more obscure oriental cultures. But soon we hit an exhibition on birds of the world, which I'm guessing would be Caroline's subject on Mastermind. Arranged in cases were dioramas of various biomes, with their associated avian species. I eventually dragged Caroline away... to the Mexican and Central American section. There's something terribly alien about the Mayan and Incan gear. We're used to Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Chinese and multifarious other ancient cultures... but the Central American legacy is surprisingly creepy. Getting right close to such ancient and alien artefacts is pretty weird. Especially with the pair of big carved pillars leading the way to Meteorites.
Ok, that's not strictly true. Meteorites were round the corner and up the stairs, along a badly sign-posted route, but that's not the point. The meteorite exhibition was fairly modern, and well put-together. It had a fairly informative display, plus huge chunks of metal from space for you to touch! Cool. They had a short movie to watch, which we did, and then we went over to the gems. The gemstone and mineral section was like some '70s ideal of museums. For some reason, it was darkly lit, weirdly shaped, and everything was covered in carpet. Having said that, gems are pretty, and some carefully highlighting made the most of it. There was some educational element in there, but we carefully skipped that bit.
From diamonds to stars. We went over to the other side of the building, which is space-based, and very modern. The exhibitions were mainly geared to making you feel very small, in both time and space. There was a giant ball used for comparing the scale of things, which seemed of middling effectiveness to me, and a big long history of the universe represented as a path. As usual, human history fits into a final hair-width, or somesuch. Perhaps this is how they fund such huge telescopes - "If you think about how big the universe really is, doesn't it just make you realise how small and insignificant a few million dollars really are?". They had a big funky (loud) high-tech cinema for showing off simulations of the big bang. It was fun, but you started to suspect that maybe they were really showing off the cinema.
Gosh, reading the last few paragraphs, I'm not sounding terribly positive about the NHM. It was actually very impressive and very fun. Maybe I'm just in a cynical mood today? Anyway, back to the plot...
Our final destination was the dinosaurs. They were pretty spiffy, really. Plenty of bones, arranged into the shapes of famous dinosaurs. Fantastic to think these were living creatures, wandering the earth so long ago that it's almost significant to astronomers.
We'd originally entered through the modern astronomy centre side entrance (it was marginally nearer our hotel, and it was very cold and windy that day), so we went through the main entrance lobby. Extra-special fantastic there, being everything you'd expect of a museum entrance lobby. The normal grand-marble feel, but with bonus HUGE DINOSAURS. These skeletons appeared to be too big for anywhere else in the building, and were mucho neato.
Crashing back to the hotel, we rested before Rosa Mexicano again for our final dinner in New York (a bit of pleasing symmetry, really). This time, however, we were prepared! We had their special guacamole, which was incredibly tasty for something basically made from vegetables (no prejudice here, oh no), followed by another gut-busting meal. I think our practice paid off, though, and we managed to stuff ourselves just that little bit more.
The day of our return journey. Caroline decided to temper her sadness with a bit of shopping, and I felt slightly safe knowing that the amount of shopping would be limited by the plane we had to catch. We walked down Broadway to Columbus Circle, and then skirted the south side of Central Park, over to... Tiffany's!
Tiffany's is surprisingly large, and full of enough shiny things to put the Natural History Musuem's collection to shame. We didn't look much at the glass or anything like that, concentrating instead on the jewelry. For some reason Caroline demanded to see the wedding and engagement ring floor. There were some very big stones there. It all must mean something, but I'm not entirely sure what.
As well as looking in Tiffany's, we window-shopped at many, many prestigious jewellers and designers. Sadly, nothing really caught our eyes, so we didn't blow our life savings. Instead, we headed south, and saw the Flatiron Building. It's very wedge-like, you know, and quite pretty too.
It was now about lunchtime, and we were hungry (we'd walked about 60 streets by this point), so we got out our trusty Time Out New York guide. The nearest place which looked fun was the Rickshaw Dumpling Bar. It made an excellent midday snack, with half a dozen dumplings served with a salad (me) or soup (Caroline). It was fast food, but done in such a way that made you wonder why fast food was normally unpleasant.
Lunch over, we started to pace our way back to the hotel, preparing for departure. A subway ride to Columbus Circle later, and we were having a horse-drawn carriage ride around Central Park. Presumably it's rather like the horse-drawn carriage rides of Vienna, only freezing cold instead of boiling hot (we had a nice warm blanket), which I'd failed miserably to organise while we were there. So, it was rather nice to do this one. There is something terribly nice about rolling through the park to the clip-clop of the horses hooves.
We made a final fair-well walk through the park, back to our hotel, where we packed up and got ourselves a nicely dodgy cab. There's something rather unpleasant about a cabbie who doesn't set the meter going. Fortunately, he was just trying to rip us off by using the same fixed fare going to the airport as leaving the airport (theoretically this journey should have been on the meter). Once we'd (or rather Caroline, and her impressively useful assertiveness) got this clear, it wasn't a bad ride, since the trade-off of paying a very reasonable fixed fee meant we didn't have to watch the meter nervously through traffic-jams. Instead, we could just look at our watches. Fortunately we had plenty of time. I even amused myself by spotting other cabs that had their lights marking them as 'vacant' while heading to the airport - it looked pretty common.
As I said, we reached the airport in plenty of time, so we did the normal faffing, with snacks and caffeinated drinks. Before I knew it, we were on the homeward journey.