"new york, new york... the city so nice, they named it twice... manhattan is the other name"
subject provided by michael scott (steve carrell) of the office.
alrighty then... so i was doing good at this, and then i went to new york and got behind, but i'm back now, and gonna try to get in the habit of it again. yer all excited. don't try to pretend yer not.
so yeah, i went on vacation to new york... with my family. that was, um, special. don't get me wrong, it was pretty cool... i love the city. but it was me, my mom, my dad, and my sister... *all in the same hotel room*. and everyone in my family snores... and out of them, i'm by far the quietest, most infrequent snorer. my mom and dad, in the same room, is like dueling chainsaws. luckily, after a couple of rough nights with very little sleep, i discovered that i had some earplugs in my toiletries case.
from now on, if i ever vacation with my family, i need a separate room from my parents. i just can't be in such close quarters with them for extended periods of time...
we managed to get to new york the night of what's already being called "the blizzard of '06". 27 fucking inches of snow in a single night... the second biggest in new york history. so basically, we were snowed in for most of our first full day there. and there was snow all over the roads for about two days afterwards... and new yorkers, apparently, don't know how to deal with/drive in snow, and the city itself clearly wasn't equipped to deal with that much snow at once.
we were staying in the theatre district, at the belvedere hotel. we were also really close to times square (it basically being the heart of the theatre district), so we spent quite a bit of time there, too.
let's see, i guess the best way to list the things we did would be point form (in no particular order):
- saw 2 shows, Avenue Q, which is pretty much sesame street on crack (puppets fucking, and a wonderful show-stopping number called "the internet is for porn"), and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
- double decker bus tours in the freezing cold with guides with heavy accents that we couldn't understand.
- lots of delicious new york city restaurants.
- The Guggenheim, which was featuring David Smith, an american sculptor who worked with all sorts of metal and steel. one of his series' was called "landscapes", and they were these three dimensional surreal landscapes, maybe a couple feet in diameter, and i found them really interesting because i found i could really get inside them and imagine looking at them from the inside out, as if i was actually inside the landscape (before i forget, a couple of the ones i really liked were "star cage," "cloistal landscape," and another landscape that had something to do with music).
- The Natural Museum of History, which has an entire floor dedicated to dinosaurs, and breaks them down by their progressive evolution, starting at the earliest, and following the major evolutionary developments all the way up to primates and man. it was really amazing to see, in summary, the way evolution progressed continuously from ancient aquatic animals to all the different animals we have in our world today.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art. had to go through that one a little rushed, considering how absolutely massive it is... and it's really difficult to navigate.
- went to Canal St. (knockoff designer purses, etc), and walked along the street with people whispering in my ear "gucci, prada, coach" and "you want rolex?". my sister actually got taken into some back room/closet with "designer" purses lining the walls. it was pretty sketchy, but she loved it. i got a pretty bitchin' superman belt buckle, which i haggled from $10 all the way down to $7.99 (seriously, the guy gave me the penny). fear my mad haggling skillz!!!
- saw some guy peeing in the subway.
- Macy's
- Times Square (and the giant Hershey's store there! mmmm)
- F.A.O. Schwartz
- met up with my uncle and aunt, who were visiting at the same time we were, for dinner in grenwich village, and then drinks at a jazz club afterwards (my dad and his brother drunk togtether is extremely entertaining!)
- a couple of NYC comic stores... which were interesting, but back issues were no fucking deal.
we spent all of our time in manhattan, and didn't venture into the other burroughs at all. we did hit most areas of manhattan though... uptown, midtown, soho, grenwich village. we even went through harlem on the bus tour (my parents weren't so hot to stick around in harlem). pretty good considering we were there for about 5 and a half days during a huge snowfall.
a couple of notable eating experiences were the carnegie deli, where i had a club sandwhich that was must have weighed close to two pounds, and was almost as high as my head, and also serendipity 3, where i had delicious frozen hot chocolate, and a huge caramel sundae (wasn't feeling too hot after all that in one sitting O_o).
.... the flight home was none too pleasant though. 7:30 am... out of fucking *new jersey*. so we basically had to be up at like, 4:30 in the fucking morning... naps were had when i got home that day.
and that was new york 2006! it's an amazing city... i'd love to be able to afford to live there.
alrighty then... so i was doing good at this, and then i went to new york and got behind, but i'm back now, and gonna try to get in the habit of it again. yer all excited. don't try to pretend yer not.
so yeah, i went on vacation to new york... with my family. that was, um, special. don't get me wrong, it was pretty cool... i love the city. but it was me, my mom, my dad, and my sister... *all in the same hotel room*. and everyone in my family snores... and out of them, i'm by far the quietest, most infrequent snorer. my mom and dad, in the same room, is like dueling chainsaws. luckily, after a couple of rough nights with very little sleep, i discovered that i had some earplugs in my toiletries case.
from now on, if i ever vacation with my family, i need a separate room from my parents. i just can't be in such close quarters with them for extended periods of time...
we managed to get to new york the night of what's already being called "the blizzard of '06". 27 fucking inches of snow in a single night... the second biggest in new york history. so basically, we were snowed in for most of our first full day there. and there was snow all over the roads for about two days afterwards... and new yorkers, apparently, don't know how to deal with/drive in snow, and the city itself clearly wasn't equipped to deal with that much snow at once.
we were staying in the theatre district, at the belvedere hotel. we were also really close to times square (it basically being the heart of the theatre district), so we spent quite a bit of time there, too.
let's see, i guess the best way to list the things we did would be point form (in no particular order):
- saw 2 shows, Avenue Q, which is pretty much sesame street on crack (puppets fucking, and a wonderful show-stopping number called "the internet is for porn"), and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
- double decker bus tours in the freezing cold with guides with heavy accents that we couldn't understand.
- lots of delicious new york city restaurants.
- The Guggenheim, which was featuring David Smith, an american sculptor who worked with all sorts of metal and steel. one of his series' was called "landscapes", and they were these three dimensional surreal landscapes, maybe a couple feet in diameter, and i found them really interesting because i found i could really get inside them and imagine looking at them from the inside out, as if i was actually inside the landscape (before i forget, a couple of the ones i really liked were "star cage," "cloistal landscape," and another landscape that had something to do with music).
- The Natural Museum of History, which has an entire floor dedicated to dinosaurs, and breaks them down by their progressive evolution, starting at the earliest, and following the major evolutionary developments all the way up to primates and man. it was really amazing to see, in summary, the way evolution progressed continuously from ancient aquatic animals to all the different animals we have in our world today.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art. had to go through that one a little rushed, considering how absolutely massive it is... and it's really difficult to navigate.
- went to Canal St. (knockoff designer purses, etc), and walked along the street with people whispering in my ear "gucci, prada, coach" and "you want rolex?". my sister actually got taken into some back room/closet with "designer" purses lining the walls. it was pretty sketchy, but she loved it. i got a pretty bitchin' superman belt buckle, which i haggled from $10 all the way down to $7.99 (seriously, the guy gave me the penny). fear my mad haggling skillz!!!
- saw some guy peeing in the subway.
- Macy's
- Times Square (and the giant Hershey's store there! mmmm)
- F.A.O. Schwartz
- met up with my uncle and aunt, who were visiting at the same time we were, for dinner in grenwich village, and then drinks at a jazz club afterwards (my dad and his brother drunk togtether is extremely entertaining!)
- a couple of NYC comic stores... which were interesting, but back issues were no fucking deal.
we spent all of our time in manhattan, and didn't venture into the other burroughs at all. we did hit most areas of manhattan though... uptown, midtown, soho, grenwich village. we even went through harlem on the bus tour (my parents weren't so hot to stick around in harlem). pretty good considering we were there for about 5 and a half days during a huge snowfall.
a couple of notable eating experiences were the carnegie deli, where i had a club sandwhich that was must have weighed close to two pounds, and was almost as high as my head, and also serendipity 3, where i had delicious frozen hot chocolate, and a huge caramel sundae (wasn't feeling too hot after all that in one sitting O_o).
.... the flight home was none too pleasant though. 7:30 am... out of fucking *new jersey*. so we basically had to be up at like, 4:30 in the fucking morning... naps were had when i got home that day.
and that was new york 2006! it's an amazing city... i'd love to be able to afford to live there.