Where in the World?

Day 3

Sleeping in on Sunday was important to recover from all of our activity over the last two days. We made a leisurely stroll to E.J.’s Luncheonette at 447 Amsterdam Ave. This was a great diner with ample portions of food for a decent price. What a wonderful way to start the day.

After that hardy breakfast, we walked over to Zabar’s. Not only does their deli have everything under the sun, the top floor has aisle after aisle of kitchenware. I’ve never seen anything like it. We wandered up and down the rows of food and kitchen gadgets for quite some time. The Zabar’s website claim they have over 40,000 shoppers per week. Incredible!

We took the subway down to Union Square again and did some shopping for shoes and Levis pants. That activity took a lot longer than I had anticipated, but no worries as we found exactly what we were looking for. Next stop was Po Restaurant in Greenwich Village.

Very yummy. This Italian restaurant is a popular place. Fortunately for us, we arrived at a lull in activity. That meant we got the food delivered to our table very quickly. Everything was quite tasty. We had the White Bean Brushetta to start. I had the Po Panini which is a grilled chorizo sausage with goat cheese and onion marmalade plus a salad. Erica had the tilapia special. Very good. After our late lunch we walked around the streets and did some Xmas shopping and enjoyed the variety of wares being offered.

We wanted to end the day with an espresso and pastry from somewhere in Little Italy. After many streets of walking and endless searching we found a place called Ferrara Cafe. Oh my god! The cappuccino was perfect. I had a small cannoli and Erica had a pastry called a lobster tail. It was huge! What a great way to end a fabulous trip.

My travel advice for the day: Get out of your house and go see something you haven’t seen. It doesn’t have to be New York; just somewhere you haven’t been. Explore without planning too much. You’ll thank yourself.

Have a great day!

Michael

Erica and I spent the last 3 days in Manhattan creating adventure and exploring the never ending nooks and crannies of this endlessly diverse metropolitan city. I’m very new to the intricacies of New York City so it was wonderful to freely explore the streets and numerous shops. I found many similarities with London, where I lived for 18 months several years ago.

We stayed in the Upper West Side around 91st Street and Amsterdam. Erica had a great deal on an apartment from a friend that was 65% less expensive than staying in a hotel.

Day 1

I love photography so we took a subway down to B&H Photo. The store itself is huge with two floors covering every aspect of photography, video, astronomy and a host of accessories. Since it was Black Friday, B&H was packed with people. It looked like a feeding frenzy on a wildlife video. I’ll have to make a visit regularly as the store contains so much.

After the B&H tour, we walked around Lower Broadway so that Erica could find some wholesale merchandise for her store. We spend a little bit of time here and then walked over to the East Village for lunch. We ate at Quintessence Raw Food. It may sound strange to some, but the flavors were fabulous.

Next we meandered around Union Square and poked around a huge craft show. That was fun. There were lots of vendors with a plethora of wares for sale. A quick subway ride took us north to Rockefeller Center where we walked around for a bit and looked at NBC studios and the ice rink. The Christmas tree had been placed near the skaters but it was not decorated yet.

A short walk to Time’s Square took us to our destination for dinner, Ellen’s Stardust Diner. The waiters and waitresses take turns singing show tunes and other songs for the patrons. We had a great dinner and some wonderful entertainment at the same time.

Finally we went to an Off Broadway show called My First Time. Using stories from the website My First Time, four actors sitting on stools portrayed a humorous look at other’s first times (yes, we are talking about sex.). Very funny and well done.

Day 2

We started our day early with a cappuccino, croissant, oatmeal and some fruit. It was very cold outside and we needed some good food to help fend off the chills.

Our main objective for today was to explore as much as possible the massive American Museum of Natural History. We got there right when they opened and started our adventure with a tour of the butterfly conservatory. It was very interesting, informative and quite fun. They had many species of butterflies. I believe our favorite was called Queen of the Philippines. It was huge with a red body, read head surrounded by black and red wings. Wow!

We wandered up to the H2O exhibit and learned all about fresh water and the challenges we face now and in the future to supply clean water to humanity. Our next stop was the enormous mineralogical exhibit. It contained some stunning examples of crystals, minerals and the largest meteorite in captivity (34 tons).

Lunch was off campus at an excellent restaurant serving southern Indian cuisine the back to the museum for a planetarium show called Cosmic Collisions. The movie showed stunning images and video depicting collisions ranging from meteors on earth to galaxies colliding. After walking around the astronomy section, we ended our day with an IMAX movie called Dinosaurs Alive!. We were up close and personal with the 50 foot screen. It felt like we were there.

At this point we had our fill of the Museum of Natural History and decided to walk around Lincoln Center. We ate at Ollies for dinner and then ended our night with the movie, No Country for Old Men. Very intense film with some of the best acting I’ve seen in years. If you don’t like violence, don’t go see this one, but the acting was superb.

Day 3 tomorrow…………………..

Michael