New York, New York
Griffin in Times Square
This is really long. Probably two people will bother to read it. There are pictures. Some of them are inexplicably smaller than the others. Damn you Photobucket.
Here follows the account of Griffin and his adventures in New York City.
My family and I spent last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in New York City and I thought I’d tell you all about it. The occasion was my cousin Kara’s graduation from NYU, but that was mostly just an excuse for most of the Van Malssen clan to take a trip.
My mother, father, sister, and I left Charlotte around 9:40 Thursday morning and flew to Atlanta. We took a rather round-about route because that way the trip would be free through credit card miles. We got to Atlanta about an hour later. It was an exceedingly short flight: the pilot came on the intercom and said, “We’ve reached cruising altitude and now we’ve begun our descent into Atlanta.” We saw downtown Atlanta from the plane. I picked out the Georgia Dome and wanted to drop something heavy and damaging on it. We spent a couple of hours in the Atlanta airport. My sister bought the most recent Nick Hornby book, A Long Way Down. She seems to be enjoying it; I’ll have to steal it when she’s done. It struck me how strange airports and layovers are. You’re in a different city, but it doesn’t feel like you’re anywhere different than you’ve been for the last several hours.
We finally got to New York around 3:45 and took a taxi into Manhattan. It was pretty neat seeing in person the place I’ve seen in countless films. We drove past the Empire State Building and it looked small and I was disappointed. We stayed at a Hampton Inn in Midtown on 31st Street near the Avenue of the Americas. The room was small but adequate. My sister and I walked around for about twenty minutes before it was time to go to dinner. We saw lots of stores and people and talked about which of us looked more like a tourist (I think I was the least touristy). Then it was time to walk to my Uncle Scott’s hotel, which was on 42nd St. near the Chrysler Building. We got there and the whole group eventually showed up. In attendance were Scott, his wife CC, my cousins Kara and Erick, Erick’s girlfriend Christy, my Uncle Mark and Aunt Trisha, CC’s two brothers and their wives, and my grandfather’s niece Janny and her husband Peter from Holland (THE MOTHER COUNTRY).
We all grabbed taxis and headed up to 90th St. to eat at a Peruvian restaurant called Pio Pio. Two of Kara’s friends and her boyfriend Dave joined us there. It was frickin’ awesome. Spectacular seafood salad, magnificent chicken, delicious sangria… the whole meal was one of the most fantastic I’ve ever had. After eating, the whole group crossed the street to go to a bar called Bar East. Played pool with my sister, my dad, and Peter (who’d never played before; they don’t have pool in Holland), watched the Yankees get beat by the Red Sox. Fun times, indeed. It rained a whole heckuva lot on our ride back to our hotel. Slept well.
Friday was the most activity-filled day of the three. Woke up, had some of the complimentary breakfast, and then my sister and I set off on our adventure. We took the subway south to Chambers St. and from there walked to the World Trade Center site.
World Trade Center
It certainly is a lot of empty space. Pretty amazing place to be. It was interesting to think about what once stood there and how much life and property was lost.
World Trade Center... now with more Fence!
I wish I had something more insightful to say about the place, but those were the thoughts that struck me while I was there.
From there we walked down to Battery Park, which is at the tip-end of Manhattan.
Griffin at the Battery
We looked across the river at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island but decided against the time-consuming boat rides to actually go to them.
Hannah at the Battery
Standing there made me want to watch The Godfather Part II again, which I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time anyway.
We turned north again and stumbled across the Museum of the American Indian and inside we saw some nifty Indian art, though I was disappointed that there was so much art and so little attention placed on historical exhibits. Leaving the museum, we walked past that famous Financial District bull statue and made our way down Wall St. and sat on some steps across the street from the New York Stock Exchange.
NYSE
It was kind of anticlimactic to actually see the building. It’s plunked down in the middle of much cooler and taller buildings, kind of hidden away in a corner on some street that still maintains its pre-automobile layout.
Griffin on Wall Street
The whole block was super-locked down and security-fied. You can’t really see him that well, but standing behind Hannah in this picture is a NYPD cop in riot gear sporting an assault rifle.
Hannah on Wall Street.
It is important to note that throughout all of this, ten minutes did not pass between my looking at the map and doing some good ol’ Boy Scout orienteering in a valiant attempt to find out where the hell we were. Our next targeted destination was Chinatown, which I claimed was north of Little Italy, but my sister correctly asserted that it was in fact south. We walked past the federal courthouse where lots of Law and Order stuff goes on. I didn’t see any of that, though; the season’s long been wrapped.
Hannah and the courthouse
We also walked past the Brooklyn Bridge which was cool to see. Eventually we reached Chinatown and it was a damn zoo. I hated it. So many people, so much congestion, such high levels of crowdedness. My sister was intent on finding a bootleg version of some fancy pocketbook and so we squeezed into several tiny tiny stores only to have her decide against buying one. I probably didn’t help, due to my strong desire to get the hell out of there. Soon we were on our way to Little Italy, where we ate at a pizza place and had good pizza. During our lunch, we saw Moby walking down the street on the opposite side. He was talking to a curly-headed blonde woman. Yeah. Moby. He was cool six years ago. I have two of his records. And I saw him and that was kinda cool.
After lunch we continued our quest-like trek northward into Greenwich Village, which was probably the niftiest looking area we visited. There were trees and cool shops and neat-looking people. We walked right by NYU and I saw the building in which I might have taken classes had I not wussed out and actually applied there. I think I would have really liked it there. Next we walked through Washington Square Park which has that arch thing that was in When Harry Met Sally…. There was a Jesus rally going on.
Hannah and Griffin in Washington Square Park
It was here that we began our long walk up Fifth Avenue, which starts at the arch. I’m pretty sure we saw the building from Ghostbusters. We walked 34 blocks from the park to the Empire State Building, which we decided to go inside.
Emipre State Building
There was a rather short line outside of the building, waiting to go inside, and I stupidly assumed that this was the entirety of the line and that we’d walk inside and get on an elevator. Of course I was wrong. Once inside we took an escalator to the second floor, which was completely dominated by long, soul-killing lines and ticket counters, complete with people yelling at those waiting in an attempt to sell special ticket packages and memorabilia. Then to the elevator. Which only took us to the 80th floor. Where there were more lines. Finally we were able to ride up to the 86th floor where the observation deck is located. Super spectacular view.
View south from the ESB observation deck
We really lucked out, because the weather forecast had called for absolute deluges of rain and nasty weather, but thankfully it missed NYC and went straight to Long Island.
Hannah and Griffin on the ESB
The view was amazing and I got to see the location of Kong’s last stand, though it looks completely different in person.
Kong was here
Hannah on the ESB
So, the Empire State Building is really cool, but if you go, be sure to get tickets online beforehand. It will save you some soul-killing.
By then it was nearly time to go back to the hotel and prepare for dinner. But first we stopped in one of the many H+M locations in the city and I was impressed by the niftiness and inexpensiveness of their clothing. I did not buy anything, however, because I felt it kind of odd to be trying on clothing at the time. So, back to the hotel to meet the parents, who actually did go to Liberty and Ellis Islands. Soon we were off on the subway to a restaurant on 51st street called Maria Pia. It was, obviously, and Italian place and it was quite charming and I had pretty good ravioli alla vodka and a cherry coke. After dinner, the old people had tickets to see Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane in The Odd Couple (they were not impressed). My sister and I were off to Times Square, which was yet another zoo, but a much more good-natured and non-threatening zoo than Chinatown.
Hannah in Times Square
Hannah and Griffin in Times Square (I have no idea why Hannah is always on my right in these pictures)
We went in Toys 'R' Us, which was way neato. There was a giant Jurassic Park T-Rex, a Lego Empire State Building complete with animatronic Kong, a Ferris wheel, and an mind-bogglingly large number of XBOX 360 Premium consoles just… sitting on the floor…. *drool* My sister and I tried to get our picture taken with the T-Rex, but the foreign man we gave the camera to didn’t really understand, it seems. Oh well. We still made T-Rex poses. Or at least I did. Hannah just looks like a total goob.
T-REX
The plan was to try to go see a movie, so we went into the Virgin Megastore because they had a sign outside claiming they had a theater inside. It was a neat store and I bought a t-shirt with the poster for The Birds on it which I like. They had shirts for cooler movies like King Kong ’33 and For a Few Dollars More but the actual shirts were silly looking. There was, unfortunately, no movie theater in the store. It was closed. We eventually found a theater but we’d decided that we’d only see a movie that we couldn’t see in Charlotte and the only interesting one, the Australian Western The Proposition, had already started. We walked around some more (our feet were murdering us) and made our way to Rockefeller Center where there was a nifty art display.
Rockefeller's bird houses
We tried to go to the top of the building, which supposedly has awesome views, but the guy at the ticket counter actually advised us against going up since there was some serious cloud cover going on. So we took the subway back to the hotel and went straight to bed and slept super.
Saturday Hannah and I woke up and went to some stores but it seemed weird actually buying clothes for some reason, so we left empty-handed.
Hannah on Saturday
We walked up to F.A.O. Schwartz on 59th St. It was kind of underwhelming, given the big to-do everyone makes of the place. They had some cool giant stuffed animals and big huge Lego statues of Darth Vader, Chewbacca, and Hagrid.
Griffin and LegoVader
But overall the store was lame and I have no idea why it’s so well thought-of. It was then time to take the subway all the way up to the Bronx for the Yankees game. The subway was insanely crowded and the stadium wouldn’t let me take my backpack inside (but women with huge purses are ok; fucking double-standards) so I had to check it at some shady bowling alley across the street. We met our father and our Uncle Scott at our seats and we watched the Yankees play the A’s. It was strange being an avid Yankee-hater right in their home base. Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter each hit pretty impressive home-runs. The A’s fans two rows in front of us seemed like they were having a great time. Baseball games seem like a pretty good place to enjoy oneself. I think I might try to become a die-hard Charlotte Knights fan this summer. We had to leave before the game was over; I still don’t know who won the game.
We rode the subway back to the hotel. I was so sleepy that I fell asleep standing up on the train. Cab to the airport, fly to Atlanta, fly to Charlotte. Great, great trip. There are more pictures, but I don’t know when they’ll be available since the rolls they’re on aren’t done. Stupid not having a digital camera.
I really think I’d love to live in New York. The ability to get everywhere you need to go without a car is very attractive. It’s just a damn exciting place. Who knows; perhaps I’ll end up there for some reason or another. One weird thing: every building is about five degrees too warm inside. And everyone walks around with thick coats and scarves on despite the temperatures being in the seventies outside. Oh well. Weirdo New Yorkers. But it really, truly is an amazing place in which I wish I had so much more time to spend. I love it. I want more trips to cool places.