Trip to NYC
January 22nd, 2008 Greg Corwin
My wife and I just went to New York City a couple weeks ago and it was a total blast. And not just because we didn’t take our kids with us, although I am sure that helped!
New York was place I have been to before, but as a child – I think I was a tween at the time (though we weren’t known by that label). It was nothing like I remembered, it was so much bigger. It didn’t change in actual size other than a few more skyscrapers, I am sure. No, it was bigger because I could really understand the immensity of the place.
We flew into La Guardia on a Friday afternoon and went directly to our hotel called The Flatotel. Nice place, probably renovated in the late 90’s with a really modern look (then). It had it’s flaws, but I would definitely go back and stay there again. The room was big and accomodations were very comfortable. It had a great bar in the lobby which was handy for sneaking back to our room with martini’s, and a restaurant which looked really good though we didn’t have time to actually eat there. The best part was that it was really centrally located – a few blocks south of Central Park, three blocks west of 5th Ave. and 7 blocks to Times Square.
We took a cab several times, but mainly because we were either in a hurry or just plain too tired because we walked practically everywhere we went.
We had a really full weekend planned too! Here are the highlights:
Friday
After we settled into our hotel room we went down to the bar and had drinks – Martini for me, Appletini for Samantha. Then we walked down Seventh into Times Square where we found an ultra-hip Sushi restaurant. After sushi, sake edamame and a pretty stiff bill, we walked over to the Booth Theater and saw the Broadway play The Seafarer. It had David Morse, Ciarán Hinds, Conleth Hill, Richie Coster and Jim Norton. David Morse was great (you may remember him from St. Elsewhere and he had a great role as an apocolytic madman in 12 Monkeys), and it was neat seeing Ciarán Hinds who played Julius Caesar in HBO’s Rome which gets my “Two Fonzi’s” award (thumbs-up). The other actors were good too, but it was notable that the night we saw it was Jim Norton’s 70th Birthday and after the performance the cast came back out onto the stage and had the entire house sing happy birthday to him. Neat. He played a few roles on Star Trek TNG (as Albert Einstein), and was even in a Harry Potter movie. He was really good and to think that he was up there on stage night after night at his age – that is really something!
Saturday
We got up early and met my good friend and Flash guru Ian Chia and his family. Then we walked 5th Ave from Tiffany’s (57nd St) to the Grand Central Station (42nd). From there we took the Subway to Battery Park, near the Manhattan Heliport where were took a helicopter ride up and down Manhattan, past Ellis Island and around the Statue of Liberty. Tres cool.
Although we didn’t plan on visiting the WTC Ground Zero we could clearly see the “emptiness†where the towers stood from the helicopter. I guess that we just didn’t want to gawk at hole in the ground and revisit that whole thing. Plus I think that if I saw anyone selling any kitschy “I stood where they were†t-shirts, I’d just get mad at the new commercialization surrounding that terrible event.
Right afterward the helicopter ride we took a short walk north past Wall St. and then grabbed a cab to the East Village (Greenwich) to meet a good friend of ours from San Diego, Rachel Perlman. She took us to a very bohemian café where we had some beers and caught up with her. The funniest part of this was that when I went to pay the café didn’t take credit card and I was cashless! How odd was that – a business in the largest city in the nation not taking credit cards? I mean, we have run into that here in KY, but NYC? Well, Rachel declared that “this was her town†and that there was no way she was going to let me pay anyway, so I was off the hook.
We had dinner plans with Ian and his three girls, so we headed back to the hotel (grabbed a martini on the way up to the room) and got ready. We met them at an Italian restaurant not far from their apartment and it was fantastic to say the least. The waiter was so stereotypical I almost thought he was acting. When I asked him to repeat the specials menu because I didn’t really understand him the first time, he boisterously shouted it out in an even thicker accent. As if to scold me for not listening to him the first time he said it. Funny.
We had a great meal with Ian and his family. We didn’t talk word one about work or even technology, which was really great since that it what he and I normally do over Skype and we really got to talk with them about everyday normal stuff – likes, dislikes, kids, wine, accents, politics, etc. The best part was just being able to be around the voices that have heard for years over the internet, and have a face match up with them.
So, you would think that is enough for one day, right? Nope. After dinner we grabbed a cab to the Blue Note Café, a pretty old and storied jazz blues club, where were we saw Delfeayo Marsalis http://www.delfeayomarsalis.com/ and his band play. Delfeayo is the brother of Winton Marsalis and and an outstanding trombonist is his own right. However, I have to say that Winton and Delfeayo’s other brother Jason in my view stole the show. He is the drummer and the small stage that they were playing on could barely contain this guy! He was so energetic and had such a bright neon green aura that he was practically his own two-hour iPod commercial.
We had quite a day.
Sunday
Sunday we slept in (no kids!) and had a leisurely breakfast at Au Bon Pan then walked down to the Empire State building where we went all the way to the top. Not just the 86th floor Observation, but all the way up to the 102nd floor. It cost more, but it was so worth it and I highly recommend doing it if you get the chance. It was a little smoggy and overcast, but it was really neat because I had always wanted to go up ever since the first time I stood in the lobby at age 13 and my Dad wouldn’t shell out the dinero for all of us to go up. Can’t really blame him, it would not have been cheap to take all seven of us up.
Then we stumbled into Korea-town where we had lunch – and had no idea what we were eating, but it was really good.
Spicy, salty, fishy, noodly.
After lunch our feet ached and we took a cab to Central Park. We started to walk around, but decided to take a carriage ride instead. Our driver gave us a great tour of the south side of the park and pointed out various landmarks – Yoko Ono’s building, Donald Trump’s building, where they filmed Home Alone (The Plaza Hotel) and Madagascar (the Central Park Zoo – did you know that was “filmed†there? 
). After the ride we walked around it a little bit and got a sense of how enormous it is and decided to come back with the kids just to spend two days just in CP.
We walked back to the hotel and along the way we stopped in the FAO Schwartz (the world’s largest toy store) and the Apple Store (just to say I did).
At this point we are practically exhausted. After short rest of the feet on the couch (of course, with martini’s and vino in hand) we headed down to dinner at Bond 45 for some great seafood and a final relaxing meal. During I asked Samantha if we got to do all the things she wanted to do and she said there was one last thing she would like to see – Elaine’s. She reads these detective novels where the main character at some point or another in the book has a drink or dinner at Elaine’s. Woody Allen or David Letterman fans may have heard them reference the restaurant too. So we went, and we had a drink at the bar, and even saw the restaurant’s namesake.
That’s it – we’re toast. We headed back to the Flahotel (what kind of a name is that anyway?) and crashed!
Quite a weekend. I may come back an fill in a few details here and there as I remember them, but there is one thing that stands out the most from the whole weekend. I remembered that I loved my wife. I mean, spending alone-time with her for that weekend really rejuvenated our relationship. It had been many years since were able to get away like that (really since the pre-kids days) and it did wonders for us.
I highly recommend it. Two Fonzi’s..