The holiday club we are with (Classic escapes) gave us the opportunity of staying right in the heart of New York, just a street or two from Times Square. Already we're enjoying living in what feels like a movie with the sort-of-familiar yellow cabs, american accents, and high rise skyline that we've seen on big screens all our lives.
Determined to see as much as we can (and to find specific eateries that are hidden throughout the city), we have walked all over New York (well, Manhattan) and our feet are killing us. To be honest, they never fully recovered from trekking, snowshoeing, and all the other walking in the other cities! Each morning it's a matter of putting our best (swollen) feet forward... with the hope that our other one follows. A small price to pay, I guess, for an authentic adventure.
I love the combined energy of all the people milling around TImes Square. Everyone is expectant, as if waiting for something big to happen. And it did. Over and over again. I'm not quite sure what it was, but everyone kept taking photos so it must have been big.
On the side of the square is the largest Toys R Us store in the world. It has a moving life-size T-Rex and a big Transformer man.* In the Barbie castle there are twilight Barbie characters and wedding themed Prince William and Princess Catherine dolls. For a hefty $127.00 though!
[*Jahda's note: 'transformer man' means Optimus Prime.]
We found a way to get discount Broadway tickets for $22 each through youth-orientated 'Hip tix'. On Tuesday night we had a great time laughing at the wit and great acting in Don't Dress For Dinner and on Wednesday we enjoyed the singing and dancing spectacular: Anything Goes.
Both were fantastic, so we splashed out to see the 'hilarious' 'must see' Potted Potter (all Harry Potter books in 70 minutes) for $40 each and unfortunately felt let down! It probably would have been a great show at say the Melbourne Comedy Fest but it just didn't fit with witty, glitzy, perfected, Broadway.
In chatting about Potted Potter afterwards, Jahda mentioned a study he'd read which stated that Danes apparently are the happiest citizens. This is said not to be due to lifestyle or environment but rather that they have low expectations!
[pic: wall street tour]
The NY philharmonic orchestra plays for the public for free once a year on 'Memorial Day' weekend in a very large cathedral. On this occasion they played Debussy's La Mer: Trois Esquisses symphoniques and Tchaikovsky's Symphony no. 4 in F minor, op 36 for anyone interested. So we joined the queue and waited. By the time they were beginning to let people in from the long queue (an hour later than after we arrived) the line wound 3/4 of the city block. I discovered that it had turned another corner from us because I went to get some food and saw it on the way back. I picked up two roti for us which were wrapped around tasty indian fillings (like spiced roasted eggplant) with tomato and onion inside (note: must make when we get home) and on returning, discovered that the event organisers had handed out tickets while I was away and had refused to give out tickets to people who had left the line...
I tried to pick up one but had no luck, so we just held hands and confidently walked in displaying a ticket. Thankfully it worked. We heard beautiful music in the dimly lit atmospheric cathedral. At the beginning we chatted with a guy sitting next to us. We learned that he makes musical software that reads building plans (usually with the building plans of cathedrals) and makes sounds according to the patterns on the plans. He then turns this into a sound and light show and performs it for people. He also did this for a Korean temple recently.
Our week-long metro pass (unlimited) and the New York pass have made the week stress free and interesting. For us, removing the stress around whether or not an event/exhibit is worth its price makes travel a lot more fun and relaxed. We've gone up and down the city several times. I've listed some of our activities below:
- water taxi past Lady Liberty
- dialogue in the dark: experience NY like a blind person
- movie location tour (Beyonce's house, Bruce Willis' apartment [we went shopping underneath it the previous night!], 'Friends' apartment and other places in movies)
- Top of the Rockefeller center
- Madam Tussauds wax museum - we had a great time posing with the Obama's, Beyonce and 'Brangelina'.
[ Jahda with Michael Jordan]
- Ripley's Believe it or Not (all things odd and curious)
- Redeemer Presbyterian church (church tourism?) we got to see the place that we podcast a lot of sermons from and which has been of great help to us and some of our friends. Some challenging thoughts: "it's easy to attempt to avoid God by being 'good' and hiding behind our good deeds'; "as you do good things be careful because it is easy to find yourself with a bloated ego and a shrivelled soul"; 'the gravitational pull of our souls is the applause of others [acceptance, love]' The antidote: really restablishing who the real boss is draws us out of our self-centeredness and own self-importance. That may be why the Lord's prayer starts the way it does.
- walking in Central park
- Museum of Modern Art (other than about seven art works I can't say we enjoyed the experience)
- a guided tour of Wall Street and a visit to the 9/11 memorial (it will be better once they finish the museum, but the visitor's centre is good and the memorial is very unique and appropriate to the site).
- Natural History Museum... Wow.. Why did we spend the money to see north American animals elsewhere when the displays here are so realistic?! See the pic and be amazed..
- raw food cafe (really good all raw nachos with dehydrated crackers, nut-milk based sour cream, guacamole etc) and Jewish 'knishes' in East Village.
NY is also great for cheap touristy shirts (unfortunately our bags are already overflowing!); the largest 'large' pizza you've ever seen; straining your neck (to see the vertical real estate) and has the most mind boggling land use... How do they build a skyscraper on top of three levels of subway and mulitple levels of utilities??
The wisdom of a certain song comes to mind, "live in California but leave before you get too soft. Live in NY once but leave before you get to hard".
So we did. Next stop Rome...
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