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...

Losing our sushi making virginity

The other morning I woke up having dreamt about smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels. This resulted in a walk to the local store and a tasty breakfast for Oren and myself. Yesterday however, I woke up having dreamt about sushi and faced a problem that wasn't as easy as walking to the shop.

You see, sushi is terrible in the UK. You cannot find the large sushi rolls, futomaki, anywhere which of course is what you see most in New Zealand. However, the Japanese chain by our work, Wasabi - does do a delicious tofu curry which I usually delight in once a week.

So yesterday I went out and spent about £10 on getting the neccessary ingredients, recruited Oren to get the salmon and used some leftover honey soy marinated chicken for the below results.

Taste wise - it was pretty close, the rice was a bit sticky but it seems that would be quite the art to perfect. The pot is going to need a lot of scrubbing. I can't wait to go to Japan and try all the new and interesting foods when we get there.

We had a lovely Christmas dinner, both our first Christmas together as well as the first one both of us had spent away from our families in the middle of winter. But that is another post for another day.

Snowy SW6

I thought the snow on Friday was pretty amazing when it arrived without warning and in five minutes had coated everything. However on Saturday morning, we woke up to this view from our bedroom window:

Of course we had to head straight outside, I have seriously never seen so much urban snow and snow so quickly.

You may remember our entry on the cemetery by our flat which we thought would be pretty amazing to visit and not too far that we would risk freezing or breaking our necks.

Oren wandered off and made a probably slightly inappropriate snow angel.

It was really interesting see the graves, angels and tombstones covered in snow. It's a fairly eerie cemetery anyway but the snow made it even more interesting.



I got to admire both the tree skills of a squirrell and Oren.
Then it was back home to the central heating.

Getting closer to the possibility of a white Christmas

Visiting the Leprechauns

On fairly short notice, Oren had two days off in a row in early October. Me being me, I jumped straight on Ryanair with a "WHERE CAN WE GO?!" attitude. My sister and I had booked flights like this before in 2007 and had ended up in Milan, Italy. However, Oren and I found ourselves in Dublin, Ireland for a Sunday - Monday jaunt.

We did the typical Irish thing which was to go to the Guinness Factory to experience a part of history and obviously drink a bit of beer. Out of sheer luck, the prepaid ticket machines printed out two tickets each so we got two beers - one which we got to pour ourselves. Obviously it's a life skill to know how to properly pour a Guinness and we even got a certificate for it.

I regret not getting a horse and carriage ride back to our hotel. I always see them everywhere and want to go on one. That night we went on a nearly 2 hour ghost walk around Dublin. We thought for awhile that we would awkwardly be the only two on it but an American couple also joined us. It an off the beaten track sort of ghost walk and we went to parts of Dublin that were scary if only for the fact that there were drunken Irish in tracksuits stumbling around. I'd highly reccommend it. While London is Buckingham stronghold, Oren found Dublin to be on his side.

The next day, we wandered our way around the sights of Dublin. We managed to find both our namesakes in the Dublin castle chapel:


We went to Christchurch Cathedral to see how it compared to home - I've never been inside the one in the Square, and we weren't going to pay ridiculous euros to go inside this one either. Oren managed to steal a sneaky photo of the inside while I gaped at the price.

Due to too much Masterchef we decided to find a nice restaurant for one of the days in Dublin. Thanks to my awesome googling skills, I had come across a Michelin star restaurant in Dublin called Pig's Ear which was near Trinity College. The assumption is that Michelin = overpriced but we got a 3 course lunch for €19.95. As a starter I had Butter Potted Crab with Spiced Mayonnaise & Melba Crisps and Oren tried Fried Hen's Egg with Clonakilty Black Pudding on Toast with Lentil & Mustard Dressing. Both were very delcious. We decided to be prentious only after this course and take photos:

My main: Lemon & Thyme Roast Breast of Chicken with Roast Potato, Crushed Spiced Swede, Toasted Hazelnuts

Oren's main: Silverhill Duck Leg with Butter Beans, Smoked Bacon & Cabbage, Orange & Sweet Garlic

Oren's dessert: A berry fruit crumble thing - complete with pop rocks! Mine was a bitter chocolate tart.

Overall the lunch was amazing and a steal for the price, there was no service charge either!

On the ghost walk our guide had taken us to St Michan's church and we decided to round off the afternoon there. Basically it is a very old church with a Viking foundation and has vaults constructed of limestone which has preserved the bodies that are entombed there. There are three mummies you get to view know as the Nun, The Thief and The Crusader and they are rather creepy. Some kids on the tour with us dropped a chocolate bar wrapper into one of the coffins. The Sheares Brothers are also there.

Then unfortunately it was back to Dublin Airport, Gatwick, a train to Victoria station and a bus back to our flat. I'd love to return to Ireland and hire a car and drive around when we have the time.

Our only planned trip now is Japan in April for 9 days. We both really can't wait and we got a good direct flight deal with British Airways from Heathrow - only a 35 minute tube ride from our flat. Seems such a novelty. It's also a relief to know we will have some proper sushi soon enough as sushi in England is terrible.

Hoping with Christmas approaching and snow forecast, we'll have some festive photos of Christmas lights, trees and some of the markets around London.