© 2006 John C. Beresford

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New York - March 2006

The story of how we came to be going to New York in the first place is a little out of the ordinary.  In July 2005 we bought a new TV and it came with the offer of two free flights to either New York or Boston.  As you may guess it was no ordinary telly, but a Pioneer 50-inch plasma. We chose New York.

Wed March 1

Horrendous start!  On the way to the airport I realised I'd forgotten my camera.  Nikki had hers so we decided to make do with one.  Our shuttle flight was only lightly booked, so we were bumped an hour on to the next flight.  When we arrived at Heathrow there were no baggage trucks available to collect the bags from the plane so we had another hour's wait for our case.  Finally caught the hotel Hoppa bus and were delayed yet further by roadworks on the A4.  Arrived in our room at 11:36pm knowing that we had to be back at the airport to check in at 6am.

Thu March 2

Up at 4:45 to catch the first Hoppa at 5:20.  Unfortunately everyone else in the hotel had the same idea and the driver declared the bus full when there were still 4 people in front of us in the queue.  Decided to order a taxi but naturally at that time of day there was a 30-minute (declared) wait, so we had to stand helplessly and watch the second bus arrive and scoop up those who had elected to carry on queuing.  Thankfully our cab turned up after only 25 minutes and we did beat that second bus to the airport in the end.  By the time we found the American Airlines check-in desks there was already a massive queue.  On top of that, the queue for security scanning was twice as big.  We finally cleared security at 7:35am just as boarding started.  A panic dash for duty-free cigarettes and a run to Gate 13 (eek!) and relax into our seats as flight AA115 pushed back on time at 8:20.

It was an uneventful flight punctuated with a meal, two movies (The Weatherman starring Nicholas Cage and Watermelon with Anna Friel and Brenda Fricker) and a "snack box."  While I'm on the subject of the snack box - what is that about?  In general, we found AA service (on both flights) appallingly bad but the snack box was the absolute nadir of service.  A cardboard box filled with so much salt- and sugar-laden food it should come with an international health warning.  Is it designed to keep you awake against the impending jet lag or something?  Jeez.

We landed at 10:40am New York time and avoided the usual scramble to get off the plane, which meant we were almost last in the queue for customs/immigration control.  It seemed to stretch on forever!  This was our first experience of "US-VISIT" - the new immigration control that demands an imprint (via infra-red, thankfully) of your left and right index fingers, and a digital mug shot.  The silver lining to all that queueing?  Our suitcase was waiting for us beside the carousel when we finally made it into the hall.  We booked a SuperShuttle bus from the desk (follow that link - I can thoroughly recommend their service, and you can book in advance once you have a flight number) and after a short wait our driver arrived to take us on a brief mystery tour of other Manhattan hotels for the four drop-offs that were ahead of us.  Fighting the mad traffic and freezing-rain-inducing -2°C temperatures on the freeway as well as the crowded lunchtime Manhattan streets got us to our hotel - the Lucerne at 201 West 79th Street on the upper west side - just before 2pm.

After we had checked in, sorted out the mix-up with the room (we'd asked for a smoking room and been given non-smoking) and unpacked it was 3:30, but with our bodies still on UK time it felt like it was time for dinner.  The hotel information booklet included a comprehensive list of local eateries, including those that would deliver to the hotel, but we felt like a walk so we strolled down Amsterdam Avenue to the Shining Star where I munched my way through a chili burger and a slice of New York cheesecake while Nikki made short work of a tuna melt, all washed down with a bottle of beer.

The Shining Star review that you'll find on the end of that link pretty much tells it like it is - we got the fast service, pleasant wait-people, massive choice on the extensive menu, great food (with the exception of the dill pickles which I found nowhere near as good as Mrs. Elwoods) - but for me the whole experience was made so much MORE than that, just because it was the first time I had ever sat in a REAL New York diner, surrounded by the few locals who were enjoying a brief refuge from a working Thursday afternoon in late winter.  I watched, through the window, as the Yellow Cabs passed in an unending stream and the snow fell the whole time we were there.  I kept thinking "this is IT, I'm really HERE!  Manhattan!  Wow!"

By the time we got back to the hotel and collapsed in front of the TV, it wasn't long before we starting falling asleep, so at 6pm we gave up the struggle and headed off for bed.  I haven't slept in a 7-foot-wide bed since the last time I was in America.  Bliss.

Fri March 3

Having been asleep for the usual seven hours or so, we both woke up before 2am.  Even though we had a suite on the fifth floor, the road noise was still very noticeable, especially when the bin men turned up around 3am and reversed down the street for what seemed like an hour (beep...beep...beep).  They stood around laughing and joking at the top of their voices for a long time, too.  It's amazing how sound carries at that time of the morning.

Anyway we dozed for as long as we could stand it and finally got up at 6am.  The day was cold and windy (-11°C including wind chill) when we emerged from the hotel at 8am and set off to walk to Pier 83, which is on 42nd St.  Stopping off on the way for breakfast at Starbucks we arrived at the pier at 9:30 and bought two City Passes.  What a great deal these are - $53 gets you a 2-hour Circle Line tour and admission to the Sea, Air & Space Museum on the USS Intrepid; the Empire State Building; the Guggenheim Musuem; American Museum of Natural History; and the Museum of Modern Art.

We opted for the 2-hour "semi-circle" tour (mainly because the sailing times fitted in better with what we wanted to do), which left at 10am and sailed down the Hudson River, past Pier 60 where the Titanic should have docked and Ground Zero.  Our tour guide was both knowledgeable and entertaining, pointing out the new apartment blocks in Hoboken, on the New Jersey side, where Frank Sinatra grew up, and regaling us with the history of Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty and the Staten Island Ferry as each of these famous icons came into view.  Cruising past the financial district, we then turned up the East River, under the Brooklyn Bridge and sailed up as far as the UN building before turning back and retracing our path back to Pier 83, docking almost on the dot of noon.

The Intrepid is moored at the very next pier to the Circle Line, so that was our natural next port of call.  Unfortunately owing to the icy weather, the whole of the flight deck was closed so we didn't get to see the impressive collection of warplanes (although coincidentally we did catch a glimpse of it during the in-flight movie on the way back!).  It was an unexpected bonus to get up close and personal with a real Concorde though - donated by British Airways it stands proudly on a barge next to the Intrepid and visitors can check out the flight deck and discover just how cramped the "first class" seats are on this famous craft.  I'll never complain about lack of leg room again!  Below decks on the Intrepid, a schools symphony orchestra competition of some sort was in progress.  We caught the end of one performance and most of the next, both delightful.

Since Times Square is on 42nd Street, our plan was to walk straight over from the Hudson.  I don't know what I was expecting to find (it was enough to be standing in the place where my favourite rock band of all time sang on my favourite album of all time, that "the wall of death is lowered...") but a three-storey Toys'R'Us store with a ferris wheel inside it was definitely NOT what I was expecting.  After a quick look at the toys and games we headed South along Broadway, past Herald Square and Macy's, to Little Italy.  How little do you think Little Italy is?  No, it's smaller.  In fact it's SO small it took us the best part of an hour to find the damn' place!  All we had to go on was a map of Manhattan where the words "Little Italy" hung like a thin grey fog over an area vaguely to the North of Chinatown.  We wandered around Christie Street, Spring, Kenmore, Broome, Elizabeth, Mott.  Each time we thought we were getting close, we'd spot a gaudy sign with Chinese characters and assume we'd hit Chinatown and gone too far.  We did find it in the end.  A word to the wise: head for Mulberry Street and you won't go far wrong.  In fact we found a whole heap of nice-looking restaurants on Mulberry between Broome and Grand.  Having checked out the menus we finally decided on Benito's II (might have had something to do with the friendly patter of the greeter and the way he opened the door just as we were walking past) and sat down at 5pm with throbbing feet and legs.  Pizzaiola steak for me, Spaghetti Puttanesca for Nikki, and Tiramisu for dessert.  I'll leave you to Google the restaurant for yourselves - all the dinesite and tripadvisor reviews I can find are pretty old.  All I will say is (a) they do now take credit cards (!) and (b) I think if we'd looked around a bit longer we would have been more satisfied, but we were SO TIRED!

Back on our aching legs, but only as far as the subway at Broadway/Lafayette.  The ride back to 81st St. took less than 15 minutes and after a walk of only two blocks we collapsed in front of the TV once again at 7pm totally knackered.  When I counted out the grids on the map that we had covered that day, I worked out we'd walked eight miles.

Sat March 4

Nikki wanted to take me for breakfast at the famous Sara Beth's, but the one across from the hotel was closed for refurbishment (the replacement cookers and display cabinets were stood on the road the morning we walked past). They were trying to finish the work in time to open on Wednesday - our last day!  So it was back to Shining Star for bagels, cream cheese and lox (me) and pancakes with maple syrup (Nikki).

Replete from breakfast, we took the "1" train to South Ferry.  Owing to track work the train terminated at Chambers Street and we were transferred to a bus for the final few blocks.  We arrived at the Staten Island ferry terminal at 9:50am but at that time the ferry only runs hourly.  The 30 minute service starts at 10:30 so we had forty minutes to admire the new terminal building.  The day was too cold to hang around either on deck or on the island - all we wanted to do was go there and back to say we'd done it.  Nevertheless the security restrictions meant we had to disembark at the Staten Island end, walk down the exit ramp and around the terminal building, and queue up to reboard the ferry for the return trip.

After leaving the ferry we'd intended to do the Lower Manhattan Walk that we spotted in our tour guide, but somehow we managed to miss the turning for Water Street (which is in fact very close to the ferry terminal) and ended up at the South Street Sea Port shopping centre on Pier 17 - which was supposed to be about two-thirds through the walk and where we'd wanted to have lunch.  We had a quick look at the tall ships that were in dock and hung around the shops for about an hour.

Next it was time to visit Ground Zero.  To be honest I don't know what I was expecting.  Along with millions (billions?) of other people I will never forget exactly where I was and what I was doing when we first heard the news that a plane had crashed into the WTC.  I've often heard people say the same about the day President Kennedy was assassinated, but I was too young for that to really register as important in my world.  I guess in a way, for my generation, this is our "Kennedy."  Of course at the point of that first news, the full horror was yet to become apparent.  So I approached Ground Zero with an open mind but no clear expectation.  From the direction we were walking (West from Pier 17) there is a very obvious gap in the skyline.  Even if you weren't aware of exactly where you were walking in Manhattan you'd have a definite impression of something missing; of there being too much sky.

On one level, the site that we visited (pre-memorial) is just a hole in the ground.  No attempt has been made to pretty it up, indeed some of the mine carts used to remove the rubble are still there.  It is a scene of desolation rather than devastation.  Nothing moves except the occasional Metro train following the original route "under" the site, covered over now with green weatherproof roofing.  Around the site a high fence carries a cardboard chronology of the attack and lists the names of the lost.  The crowd gathered there was not large, but there was almost no talking as everyone humbly read the display and took in the enormity of the event anew.  We walked the perimeter of the site, passing on the West side through numbers 1 & 2 World Financial Center - a marble monument to Mammon - and the Winter Garden between from where, our Circle Line guide had assured us, we would secure the best view of Ground Zero.  He wasn't wrong.

The word at the time of our visit was that the memorial will be very simple.  Two lakes, each the same size and shape as the footprint of one of the towers, each filled to the brim with water to form a mirror surface.  A picture of calm serenity and reflection.  Plans for the "Freedom Tower" are, apparently, currently shelved (although I see on the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation pages that work has already begun on clearing the site - only a week after we came back).

Our silence hiding mixed feelings, we walked back in the direction of Chinatown in search of The Peking Duck.  This proved much easier to find than Little Italy.  We approached it up Mosco Street, which is very steep.  So steep in fact that it has a handrail installed along the side of the buildings!  Nice touch.  And while I'm feeling positive, I should also mention that I've noticed one fundamental difference between New Yorkers and Londoners.  In London, no-one will catch your eye.  On the tube, on the street, wherever you are it's "face down or stare straight ahead and don't dare to look at anyone."  Really impersonal and, if you're not used to it, rude.  In New York, people will at least occasionally look your way.  They still don't smile much though :o)

In no time we were tucking in to our $35 buffet menu: Sizzling Rice Soup; Dim Sum; Peking Duck (there just being the two of us, we ordered half and were surprised and a little disappointed when it came sliced rather than shredded, and the pancakes were assembled for us.  That's half the fun!); Hot & Spicy Fish (served with the head still on! Yuck!); and fruit.

The subway journey back to the hotel was a bit of a magical mystery tour this time around.  We boarded the 6 train by mistake, changed at Grand Central onto the 7 and again at Times Square onto a 3.  Then we realised the 3 trains don't stop at 79th Street.  Luckily we were in time to get off at 72nd and wait for a 1.  Picked up two bottles of wine from the local liquor store so they can be well chilled for tomorrow night's Oscarfest in front of the telly.

Sun March 5

As befits Sundays, we had a very lazy start to the day: lounging about in our plush bathrobes drinking coffee and watching "Dreamcatcher" on the TV.  We ventured out around 9am for breakfast at EJ's Luncheonette - a couple of blocks up from the hotel.  Eggs, home fries and sausage for me; bacon for Nikki; all with toast and jam and really great New York coffee!

We headed off to Ellen's Stardust Diner at 51st and Broadway to meet the bus which was going to take us on the Manhattan TV & Movie Location tour.  We arrived really early (10:15 for an 11am start) and as it was way too cold to stand around outside we took refuge in Starbucks until the bus showed up.  The three-hour tour was a very welcome change from pounding the streets.  There's a very accurate review of the tour by Heather Cross at that link (she even had the same tour guide as us!).  The only thing I would add to her comment about the heavy slant towards certain films is that there was a bit too much coverage of "Friends" and "Seinfeld" - neither of which are particular favourites of mine.  It was interesting though that the bus would stop at intervals so that Kymberly could hop out and read the parking restriction posters that were in evidence all over Manhattan (especially in Greenwich Village) indicating that filming was about to take place in that location.  I guess this is how they keep the tour current, which is a good sign.

One of the highlights of the tour for us was a stop at Rice to Riches (or go here if you're not keen on Flash intros - although theirs is pretty good!).  This place featured in the movies "Hitch" and "Blind Date" and we'd actually walked past it during a movie of our own (The Hunt for Little Italy) and thought it looked "interesting."  Wow.  Fabulous puddings!  I was tempted into a large bowl of Cinnamon Sling, while Nikki made do with a regular bowl of Cappucino.  By the time I'd waded through mine, I began to wish I'd gone for the smaller portion too, especially as we only had a few minutes until the bus moved on.

The tour finished at 2pm.  We hadn't really planned anything else to do that afternoon and didn't feel like too much walking, so we headed off down to 42nd Street and through Times Square to Loews movie theatre.  We missed the start of the movie we really wanted to see - Underworld Evolution - and the next showing wasn't for 90 minutes, so we opted for Ultraviolet instead.  Ouch.  Big mistake.  What a crock of plotless CGI madness.

We picked up deli sandwiches & snacks on the way home (pepperoni & corned beef sandwiches, green salad, tuna salad, Pringles) and also stopped off at the corner shop for more booze, since the wine had inexplicably got started on last night.  Samuel Adams Cherry Wheat beer this time - yum!  Camped out in front of ABC watching the 78th Academy Awards coverage from 6:30 until 11.  First time I'd ever seen them live, or watched the full thing.

Mon March 6

Up around 8am, showered and out to the Manhattan Diner (2180 Broadway at 77th St) for breakfast.  Corned beef hash and home fries for me; Western omelette and toast for Nikki.  My God I could hardly move afterward, so the walk back up to 81st St and across to Central Park was more than welcome.  We entered at Hunter's Gate and enjoyed a fabulous walk through to 5th Avenue, past the Great Lawn and great views of the Beresford Hotel (woohoo! But it's no longer a hotel); tunnels; lake; and castle.  We had wanted to spend some time in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and were disappointed to find it closed for refurbishment, so instead we walked a little further South and spent a couple of hours at the Central Park Zoo watching the sea lions being fed, penguins, polar bears and exploring the very well stocked tropical house.

After Central Park we took the subway down to 34th St and entered the Empire State Building.  Our city passes allowed us to by-pass the long queues for tickets and head straight for the (much shorter!) queues for the elevators.  This was one of the highlights of the trip for me.  I remember gazing at pictures of the Empire State in my Children's Encyclopaedia back when I was six and it was still the tallest building in the world.  Even at that tender age I fell in love with its beautiful symmetry and grandeur.  To stand on the 86th floor observatory and gaze out at the Manhattan rooftops far below gave me chills that had nothing to do with the freezing March temperatures.  In deference to Nikki's active dislike of heights we didn't venture up to the 102nd floor, but I took my time over the photos to all points of the compass and later we browsed the gift shop and selected a set of NY wine glass finders exclusive to ESB as a memento.

Back down at street level, we took a short walk to the Museum of Modern Art, universally known as MoMA.  Our visit here was driven mainly by two things: to be able to say we'd been; and because our City Passes effectively got us in for free.  Not being a lover of modern art...no that's way too mild...being an active detester of modern art, I wasn't expecting to be impressed, and I wasn't disappointed.  I think between us, out of the approximately 25,000 works on display over six floors (according to the guide), Nikki and I found six we could say we enjoyed looking at.  Admittedly, we didn't see all 25,000 pieces, but at an average appreciation rate of less than 1% it didn't seem worth looking at any more.  Of the rest, some were shruggable, some were lip-curlingly awful and some had me actually laughing out loud that anyone would think them worthy of display in such a famous venue.

Strangely, the MoMA website includes in its Drawings Highlights section one of the works that we both loved: Untitled (Ocean) by Vija Celmins.  I couldn't find the best example of the mirth-creating drawings - a fetching series of purple swirly scribbles.  Perhaps it's one of those marked "Image not available."  A couple of examples by Ellsworth Kelly: Apples and Pine Branch come close to demonstating what I mean, but perhaps the very best example that MoMA has made available online is Pink out of a Corner from No. 1 of December 19, 1963 by Dan Flavin.

In my experience, modern art is one of those subjects that sharply polarises opinions.  Either you think it is one of the biggest cons on the planet, and anyone who buys it has, to say the least, more money than sense; or you believe that the line of the piece expresses the quintessential disharmony between the being and the not being (or some such twaddle), and that anyone who can't understand the artistic superlatives is no better than a small lump of prebiotic slime too much trouble to wipe of one's shoe should one have the misfortune to tread in it.  Rant over.  Never the twain shall meet.

Escaping from MoMA with relief, we headed off to Beni Hana's for dinner and were once more foiled in the search for culinary excellence: it was shut.  We caught the subway back to 81st St instead (more subway madness!  We found ourselves on the A train Express by mistake and just managed to jump off at 56th St and wait for a Local train.  If we hadn't, the next stop was 125th St!!).   We took refuge in Pizzeria Uno.  These places don't get a very good write-up on the pages I've found, but we had a lovely meal - Rattlesnake Pasta for me; nachos for Nikki - washed down with a brace of wonderful pomegranate margueritas.  Collapsed into the hotel at 7pm.

Tue March 7

We really have been jinxed on this holiday.  This morning while enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee in front of the TV, my glasses broke!  The screw fell out of one of the bridge pads, and the pad landed on my chest.  I guess you could say I was lucky not to lose it, but the screw was long gone.  Walked past an opticians on the way to breakfast but they didn't have the right size of screw and the only other optician in the district was shut, so the rest of the day was viewed at a slight angle: the left side of my specs being somewhat lower than the right.

Breakfast at EJs Luncheonette again today (we were so impressed last time! Today it was pancakes with blueberry and banana for me; scrambled and home fries for Nikki).  We intended to spend most of the day in the American Museum of Natural History today, but as it doesn't open until 10am we took advantage of the chance to enjoy another walk in Central Park.  This time we walked past the Dakota Building to enter the Park a little lower down at Strawberry Fields, and walked past Bethesda fountain and on through The Rambles.  Arrived at AMNH around 10:30.  We very much enjoyed the planetarium show (about the detection of other planets and the possibility of life on them) and then visited the Darwin exhibition.

The blurb describes the exhibition as "The most in-depth exhibition ever mounted on Charles Darwin" and I have to say the whole thing just blew me away.  I have been fascinated by evolution and genetics since the age of 10, and "On the Origin of Species" was required reading for my "A" Level Biology class, so this exhibition was close to Nirvana for me.  Actual fossil specimens collected by Darwin were on display alongside pages from his notebooks and an entire chronology of his life, as well as some live exhibits of animals displaying some of the traits that led him to develop his theories.  For the first time ever in my life I read an entire exhibition from start to finish.  We spent about two hours on 'Darwin' and I left feeling totally awed by the whole experience.

The wonder didn't end there - next we visited the Meteorites and Minerals & Gems halls, where I stood with my hand on the Cape York meteorite - 34 tons of metallic iron and nickel, estimated to be four-and-a-half billion years old - and Nikki got to see the Star of India sapphire.

After a quick trip to the Hall of Ocean Life (we were getting a bit awed-out by this time) we finally left the museum at 4:30pm.  The optician's was now open and my slanted view of the world was fixed in short order, and for no charge.  We stopped by Zabar's to collect the evening's dessert and once we were back at the hotel, ordered in deli from Artie's.  Brilliant, and Nikki's favourite meal of the trip.

Wed March 8

Last day.  We woke early, showered, packed and booked the SuperShuttle bus for the airport.  As it was our last chance to benefit from our hotel-supplied vouchers for Nice Matin (the restaurant next door) we breakfasted there.  It was OK - nothing special.  We checked out, stowed the bags and headed off for Macy's on the B train, expecting to be able to spend three hours or so browsing cool stuff.  What a disappointment!  This will make some of you laugh but we hadn't realised it's mainly a clothes store.  Boo!  Bought a couple of T's for my girls, a new exotic carrier bag with Macy logo for Nikki and a new kitchen timer, but we were done in about an hour.  Wandered back up 7th Avenue looking for a Starbuck's in which to kill some time but they were all either full or sans seating.  Jumped the subway back up to 79th and went for a coffee in Barnes & Noble instead, taking advantage of a couple of their free magazines.  Coffee finished, we returned to the hotel and hung around in the lobby waiting for the Shuttle to arrive which it did, on time, at 2:55.

Arrived at JFK around 4:30 and joined the long queue for check-in, and then security (where we had to remove our shoes for the first time).  There was just enough time to scarf a sandwich before boarding started at 6:30.  The flight was fairly uneventful: movies Aeon Flux and National Treasure; meal a really crappy lasagne with lemon cookies for dessert (what!?? Come on AA - you can do better than this!); then nothing - and I mean no drinks service or snack service: nothing - until 30 minutes before landing when we had another appalling "snack box" thrown at us containing some cream cheese, crackers, jam (?? crackers and jam. All praise to the Gods of Culinary Excellence) & shortcake biscuits.

Landed at LHR on time at 6:35am (the next day, of course) and transferred to Terminal 1 to join the Manchester shuttle flight.  More massive security queues but this time we were able to by-pass some of them because we had British Airways boarding cards.  Caught the 8:55 flight and finally arrived back home around 11am.