Concrete Jungle

Hi, it's me Oren! Long time no post etc.

So we went to New York last week. Here is the city in all its glory, from up on the Empire State Building.

Northwest - Skyscrapers; Hudson River with Jersey City, NJ on the far shore.

South - Downtown and Financial District

East - East River, Brooklyn on the other side with Long Island stretching to the horizon.

North - More skyscrapers incl. Rockefeller Centre; Central Park; Uptown, Harlem, The Bronx etc. in the distance.

Our trip started with a nice early flight out of Heathrow, by far the most convenient of London's airports, and seven hours later we touched down in JFK. We had no real plan for what to do once we got in, and decided to get the train into Manhattan and make Times Square our first stop. It's a pretty cool place, but that's hard to capture in a picture without seeing all the crazy big video advertising screens in motion and everything.



We then wandered around the midtown area for a while, visiting the Rockefeller Plaza and Grand Central Station, before setting off on the long walk to our hotel on the Upper West Side, some 60 blocks away. It took a long time but it was nice to take in the atmosphere of the city, which you don't get by taking the subway. We looked in a bunch of cool shops along the way and ate hotdogs from one of the many streetside carts.

M&M dispensers, M&M store, Times Square.

Build-A-Bear, a create-your-own stuffed toy store, dinosaur department.

We were fairly exhausted by the time we got to the hotel, and with evening upon us we chose to get dinner somewhere nearby and call it an early night. While searching for somewhere to eat we passed Tom's Restaurant, which we were later informed was the diner which was used for the outside shots of Monk's Cafe in Seinfeld. Even as a fan of the show I would never have recognised it in the dark.

We settled on a Cuban restaurant and, as is the American way, our table was soon buried under a mountain of food - massive pot of paella, three-tier pork selection, black beans and rice, fried plantains and, since we were fortunate enough to be there in happy hour, several mojitos and margaritas. We were also treated to typically amazing American service from our nice waiter - fast, attentive and very friendly, all in the name of getting a big tip at the end of course.


The next morning we made our first visit to the nearby Metro Diner, which would be our breakfast destination every day for the remainder of the trip. They sure know how to do a serious breakfast over there, and I feasted on pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, ham, bacon, eggs and coffee.

I totally covered the whole thing in maple syrup too.

Well-fed, we went back into the city on the subway. An aside: the New York subway is kind of confusing, and we got messed over a couple of times by line closures that weren't very well advertised. Pretty dirty as well. Not as good as the London tube anyway.

Our destination, anyway, was the Empire State Building. There we bought city passes - a handy booklet that gets you entry to most of the city's major tourist attractions while saving money on admissions and skipping the biggest queues. A good investment I reckon.

You've seen the photos of the view from the top, and here we are getting bossed about by the wind (cf: Eiffel Tower photos).

Chrysler Building kind of visible in the background here, Ma!

We then visited the Museum of Modern Art. Didn't take any photos there but it was really good. The biggest name in their collection is Van Gogh's Starry Night, which was cool to see in person. We also went to St Paul's cathedral, the oldest in the city built by the Irish settlers. It's in stark contrast to the buildings around it but a nice piece of architecture.


In the afternoon we wandered around in Chinatown before settling in for dinner at a nice restaurant in Little Italy. We had some pretty great pizza and pesto gnocchi, but both of those were in my opinion overshadowed by the amazing bread and olive oil for appetiser. Incredible.

On the way back to the hotel we decided to stop again in Times Square to see it all lit up. It is a fairly surreal place at night with all the bright lights and screens at full effect and hundreds of people swarming around. Again, photos don't really do it justice, it's definitely something to experience yourself if you can.

We also discovered the huge Toys 'R' Us store there, which didn't actually have many interesting toys (am I growing up?) but did have some cool displays and statues.

Giant animatronic T-Rex

Superman w/ truck

New York's finest, the Spider-Man

More to follow...