Tarkblog

Day 2 (Saturday) of our New York trip:

After a nice, but short, night’s sleep we met in the lobby at 9am for breakfast. Nobody really had made any explicit plans for the day (at least, for early), though there were lots of ideas. In order to provide some structure, I looked up some things that people had mentioned on the internet and got directions on how to get there so we would be prepared on how to do it.

We started walking towards Rockafeller Center in search of breakfast because I thought it might be neat to see what was going on there, and there were supposedly some indoor things to do (as the weather was slightly rainy). After many blocks of no success finding an open breakfast place, we asked a cop who pointed that there were a couple of places to eat across the street, to which we went.

We found the place he was talking about and were about to walk in when a person in our group spotted a bakery type place across the street that had lots of sweet rolls and whatnot in the window, and she motioned for us to go there instead. So we did.

It was a nice little place. Au Bon Pain was the name, and I’m guessing it’s a chain. I ended up getting a bagel with scrambled eggs and sausage on it and some coffee. Wife got oatmeal.

Breakfast was uneventful other than it was crowded, so there was a group of four women a table of 6 in back from me that had sat down when a husband and wife needing the seats decided to join them.

One woman was coming to sit down but the guy was blocking her way so she tried to squeeze behind him and in the process he noticed her and started to move back, and she spilled her coffee. Not bad…it fell on the floor and got his pant leg wet, but the top never came off the cup (a miracle if you ask me).

Anyway, he was not happy and wasn’t afraid to let her know. She did her best to apologize, but after he wasn’t very accepting of it I think she stopped caring. She just started conversing and whatnot with her friends while this guy still had a look of awe in his face. When his wife rejoined him, he loudly made sure she knew that he had coffee spilled on him (the culprit was sitting directly next to him) and he was goign to have to go back to the hotel and changes clothes and blah blah. Excitement.

Anyway, we walked past Rockafeller Plaza and saw them putting away the Today show equipment and telling the crowds to “go away” since the show was over.

We hit a subway and travelled to our first stop: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Now, neither Annie nor I were all that excited about it, because we’re not artsy people. But we went. It is the most mammoth museum I’ve ever been in. A suggested $15 donation (they can only “suggest”, because the museum is on public land) gets you in the door. We spent about 1 hour and 15 minutes there…and she and I basically never stopped walking between the exhibits. It is a huge museum. The only things I recognized were the Jackson Pollacks, and some of the stuff like van Gogh and Monet and stuff.

We left there and decided that we might hit the subway to Grand Central Station, then go back to the hotel to rest for those who needed it. On the way to the subway station we walked past Anthony Edwards (of ER and Revenge of the Nerds fame)…so that was kind of neat.

We got to the subway and went to Grand Central Station, which is also mammoth. We wondered around there and got some lunch. Highly overpriced and of mediocre quality. One guy got a chef salad and a cup of soup (keep in mind this is a food court) and he paid $18.

After this we decided perhaps we wouldn’t need to go back to the hotel but instead head south to Soho for Annie to pickup her race packet (she was running in a race on Sunday) and then to go the south tip of Manhattan and see about getting on the ferry to the statue of liberty.

We did these things, but the Subway didn’t go quite all of the way south as they were doing construction. So we had to get out and walk it. By the time we got there it was around 3:30 and some people wanted to be back around 4:00 to get a little rest before our dinner ressies at 6. So two folks got on the ferry to go out to the statue, and the rest of us stayed content just taking pictures from where we were (a couple of miles away, but it was still quite clearly visible).

On the way back, we stopped again in Soho for a little shopping. A couple of folks split off and did some clothes shopping - Annie and I went to the Apple Store. Very neat, and extremely crowded. There were easily 50 people in line to checkout. They had a huge auditorium running a class on using the Mac and I bet there were 50 people there watching.

We jaunted back to the subway and back to the hotel. We rested for a bit and met in the lobby at 5:30 for the couple of block walk to our restaurant…some kind of French place. The price was already fixed - you got an appetizer, salad, main dish, and dessert - and you got to choose from a large menu of what you wanted. I got the french onion soup, veal scallopini, and tiramisu (the latter two are italian dishes I do believe, but who’s counting, right?). Annie had marinated artichoke hearts, vegetarian raviolis?, and some kind of crepe.

We got over to the theater a few blocks away and watched the Phantom of the Opera. It was very well done, lots of neat effects and a nice story.

Back to the hotel, Annie conked out bceause she had to run in the morning, and the rest of us went to a brewery off of Times Square for some drinks. I thought the beer was mediocre (especially at $6 a glass). The place was packed when we got there (11:30), but was pretty thinned out by 12:30, and by 1:00 almost dead. They did last calls at 1am. That surprised me, considering it was basically right on Times Square - the busiest intersection in the world…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 25th, 2006 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.