Monday 20 December 2010

NYC....

....is my new favourite place in the world (apart perhaps from my sofa with the Boyfriend and Elf on TV).

We were there for 5 days. In that time we did as much as is humanly possible.

It was -8 and really cold. Bone chillingly cold. But the good thing about New York is that there are coffee shops and cafes on every corner, between every street, in fact every other place sells some sort of caffinated beverage.

We went to the Top of the Rock (amazing, much smaller queue than the Empire State Building and you can look at the Empire State Building - you can't see it if you climb it!) and Grand Central Station, New York Library and Times Square.

We walked across Brooklyn Bridge and got the Staten Island ferry. We drank in a speak easy and ate in a diner. The Boyfriend drank buckets of beer and ate greasy chicken wings. I went to the Magnolia Bakery and re-lived Carrie's Sex and the City cupcake eating. We went shopping and saw Elf The Musical on Broadway.

We stayed with a friend, who is still a true Croydoner, but is also slowly becoming a New Yorker. He took us to some hidden gems (Whiskey Town - free shot of whiskey with every drink and truly delicious whiskey sours, PDF - old speakeasy hidden behind the wall of a rather scrubby looking hot dog stand, ESS Bagel - best bagel place in New York and when we went inside were accosted by a local asking us how we knew about the place and that we were lucky as it really was the best bagel place in the city).

We got the ferry to Ellis and Liberty Island (FREEZING) and saw the Statue of Liberty up close. And watched a very informative film about the history of New York immigrants and Ellis Island. We also went to the History of New York Museum (bit rubbish apart from the BRILLIANT film about the history of the city, starting with the Native American tribes that lived there, then the Dutch settlers, right through to the modern day).

We wandered through Chinatown and the Boyfriend nearly went to the Chinese McDonalds. We went for dinner in Korea Way (apparently containing the highest number of Koreans outside Korea). Dinner was a BBQ sunk into our table and platter after platter of raw, marinated meat and fish were bought over for us to cook ourselves. It was delicious and also such a novelty!

We wandered through Central Park, went ice-skating, but avoided the extortionately over-priced horse and carriage ride. We went to Bloomingdales (Bloomys) and had frozen yogurt and tried on stupidly expensive outfits. We visited wall street and saw the big bronze bull from the film "Hitch".

While the boys indulged in the constant sport shown on every TV in every bar I wandered the streets of Soho and Greenwich Village, trying on vintage one-offs and restraining myself from buying 101 trinkets. In fact it was the wandering of the city that were perhaps my favourite part of the trip. It is just the best city for that - not too big, easy to navigate thanks to the ingenious grid system and just FULL of amazing things at every step.

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