Before I forget, the restaurant that we went to on Wednesday night was called Tree and the recommendation to eat there was given to me by a friend at work. Great restaurant! Tree is one of those small neighbourhood restaurants that has really great food at pretty reasonable prices.

Despite the heat, we spent most of Wednesday walking around the SoHo and Greenwich Village districts of the city. These areas are just filled with interesting, funky stores and restaurants you could easily spend days wandering the streets checking out each one of them. If there was one place in NYC that I would want to live it would probably be the SoHo district. I’m sure that a million dollars or so could buy us a 500 sq. ft. apartment in this area.

By Thursday morning, the temperature had changed dramatically and it had gotten over 10-15 degrees cooler than the day before. While it had turned overcast, it became actually pleasant again to walk around the city and not be constantly sweating.

Wicked

One of the highlights of our trip to NYC was looking forward to seeing the Broadway show called Wicked. We had bought tickets for the show in Vancouver and last night was it.

NYC has so many theatres that you could literally see a different show every day for probably six months or more. We had both decided that we wanted to see Wicked but we had to decide from dozens of top-notch productions that are playing at this time. In case you aren’t aware of the story of Wicked, is about how the wicked witch of the west of The Wizard of Oz movie actually got to be wicked.

Without giving away too much of the story, it turns out that she really wasn’t wicked after all, just misunderstood.

Wicked was a fantastic show and our only regret was that we only bought tickets for one Broadway show. Wicked played at the historic Gershwin Theatre and it was a fabulous venue to see a show in NYC.

Getting Around NYC

Getting around the NYC area is made fairly easy by the fact that they have an excellent subway system. One of the first things that Barb and I normally do when we arrive in a city like NYC is that we purchase an unlimited, 7 day subway ticket. Not only is there the cost savings of getting an unlimited pass but it actually makes a big difference of what we do in the city.

When we’ve been in places where we only bought a book of tickets, we find that you’re always counting how many rides you have left and invariably end up not going somewhere because you want to save your tickets. Conversely with an unlimited ticket, you are free to go anywhere even for a short amount of time as it makes no difference to your cost. The end result is that you end up seeing much more of the city – which it’s really all about.

The Shopping

NYC is definitely one of the great cities of the world with respect to shopping. The size of the department stores in the city are astounding and with it a selection of products that is vast. We’ve spent 8 days in NYC and, while we’ve been to all of the mar department stores, we have realistically only put a small dent into the total amount of small, unique stores that exists throughout the city.

I compared notes with Barb about what her thoughts were about the shopping in NYC compared to other big cities that we have travelled to. Barb felt that for women’s clothing and in particular, shoes , the selection in NYC was as good as she has ever seen.

I had to disagree with respect to men’s wear. For me, Paris is still the number one city that I would go to to buy clothes. I think that the main reason for this is that most of the stores in NYC are heavily weighted towards American brands vs. European brands in Paris which I happen to prefer.

Realistically, it’s much easier (quicker and cheaper) to get to NYC from Vancouver than to go to Paris so there’s always those costs that have to be taken into consideration to get to stores in either city.

And Finally …

As I write this final section, we are in the process of packing up our suitcases as we return home tonight. We’ve both agreed that 8 days was just the right amount of time to stay here in NYC (for our first trip). We’ve seen lots of places, seen a great show on Broadway and been able to get a taste of what NYC is all about.

Perhaps more than any other place that Barb and I have gone to (except South Africa), we have had more warnings given to us on this trip than any other about “staying safe”. One of the things that we quickly became aware of even just after a few days here is that we never felt unsafe at any time. On the streets, in the subways or anywhere else it was just never a concern. All in all, the local people whom we talked to in the past week have almost always been pleasant and nice to deal with. Quite the opposite of the stereotypical rude New Yorker that many of us have heard about.

Given our positive experience on this trip, we can definitely see ourselves returning here again – perhaps many more times.

After we return to Vancouver tonight, Barb and I will be continuing our research for two more adventures that we have in the works over the next 12 months. One is a return to one of our favourite places and one to somewhere brand new. More details to come over the next few months.

Take care.

Baden

While there are tons of restaurants in the Vancouver area, there is hardly any that I could name that has been around since before the 50's. And those places that are that old, have been renovated and replaced and moved to new locations such that there's very little history. New York has all kinds of restaurant history.

Now, I've got to admit that some of the worst food that we've eaten in New York has been in those old, history-filled restaurants but that's a bit of a different issue.

In comparison, last night we had an amazing meal at a nice Italian restaurant called Sfoglia on Lexington Ave. We had to take the subway to get there (changing subway lines twice) but it was really worth it. Barb had made reservations with Sfoglia over email before we left Vancouver and it turned out to be a great choice.

As you might have guessed from the above picture, Barb and I spent most of the morning in a museum yesterday. It was the American Museum of Natural History and we had talked about going there after our walk in Central Park the day before. Over the years, we had been to many different museums in different cities and it always seems to only occur on the first trip to any city. The one exception to this rule is that we've been to London twice and I still want to see the British Museum one day.

One of the most interesting things that I liked about the Museum of Natural history (other than the dinosaur bones of course) was the dioramas of all of the different animals. They had a whole section of African animals which brought back a lot of memories of our African Adventure from a few years ago.

By the way, remind me to mention about our discussions about our next African trip.

Long after we had gotten back to our hotel on Monday night we had an idea to go up to the top of the Empire State Building. We had read that the observation floor was open quite late and in fact the multi-hour line-ups were quite a bit shorter at night. Since the Empire State Building was just down the block from our hotel and it was still nice and warm at night we decided to go there.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't get more touristy that going up the Empire State Building but we've found that sometimes you can't let these technicalities get in the way of a good thing and some places are just a must-see. This is one of them. Suffice to say that the panoramic views of the city at night are fantastic and the short line-up late at night made the whole experience that much better.

By Tuesday morning the weather had gotten quite a bit hotter (approaching 30 degrees) and my decision to pack a few pairs of shorts came in handy. We had decided to do a boat tour of the harbour today so we headed south (or in the downtown direction on the subway – going north is the uptown direction) to the financial district where the boats were for these kinds of tours.

The boat tour lasted about 60 minutes and was well worth it to be able to see many of the sights close up that have been in many movies over the years like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. There are some boat tours that last multiple hours but I think that the decision to do just one hour was the right decision.

A few more hours after the harbour tour were spent walking around in the Financial District around Wall street and the big construction zone that was the former World Trade Centre buildings. All in all we were pretty beat by the time that we got back to our hotel around 5PM and, after sleeping for a few hours, decided to stay in rest of the evening to recharge the batteries so to speak. Those 4 days of walking around the city were catching up to us.

It's early Wednesday morning as I write this and we still have four full days left in NYC. We still have lots of things on our list to see and do and Barb has reminded me that we've hardly put a dent into any serious shopping (there's only two shopping bags sitting on the floor of our hotel room).

I'll be posting the final episode of our Excellent New York City Adventures some time before we return home on Saturday.

Baden

Red Eye

We flew into New York City on a "red-eye" flight directly from Vancouver. Flying overnight has it's advantages – the biggest is that your make efficient use of time and you arrive in your destination early the next morning and the number of days that you are travelling are maximized. The big downside of course is that we almost always never get much sleep on the plane and we arrive at our destination pretty much still falling asleep.

However, the thing that usually helps counter all of this tiredness is the adrenalin of being is a new place. Similar to the wow factor, I call it the wow, we're here factor. Getting out and exploring a new city is what it's all about. There'll be plenty of time to catch up on sleep later on.

Our hotel in New York City is the New Yorker Hotel which is an art-deco style building that has been around since the 1930's but fully renovated (at least once). Our room is small but we've gotten used to that over many of the years but the main thing is that we're centrally located in mid-town Manhattan close to everything.

Within two blocks from our hotel is the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, and Macy's big department store. The biggest feature that we always look for in any big city is to be close to a subway station as we regularly use that mode of transit to get around and NYC has an extensive subway system that allows us to quickly get around anywhere in the city.

The weather was sunny and warm the whole day on Saturday and in the low 20's so it was perfect weather for walking around to explore a new city. The weather forecast for the rest of the week looked like a mix of sun and some rain so we're making the most of the good weather to get out and see things. We've already planned to be inside places like Macy's and stores along 5th Avenue when the weather starts to change. From what Barb has told me, a lot of time on this trip will be spent inside stores regardless of the weather.

Parks in the City

We spent most of our day today walking around Central Park. Walking around in the parks inside of cities is something that we have done in almost every place we have been to. Whether it's the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, La Villa Borghese in Rome or the Tiergarten in Berlin, walking through these parks (especially on a weekend day) when local people are out is one of the best ways to connect with a real part of a city's culture.

Central Park is so big that it's impossible to see even a large part of it in one day. Barb and I spent about 3 hours walking though it and when we looked on the map later on we may have walked through less than a quarter of the park. The park has many lakes where kids are sailing boats or people in row-boats but everyone just seems to be enjoying the good weather. A variety of different musicians or performers are seen as you walk through the park that draw one's interest as you stop and rest to just soak up the atmosphere.

Buying a small lunch from a store and spending a few hours in a city park is one of the best ways that we can recommend that you get to know a city. There'll be plenty of time for department stores later on but today it was all about Central Park.

We ended our first day in NYC going to Times Square and walking around. It was Saturday night and there seemed to be millions of people out tonight. While Times Square is somewhat touristy, it's a must-see place to go for no other reason that it's quite a spectacle to see all of the light displays that are around you in 360 degrees.

Just off of Times Square we found a restaurant called Tony's di Napoli that we stopped for dinner. They serve food in a "family style" which meant that one dish was going to server about 2-3 people so we only ended up ordering a single (very tasty) dish of spinach and lobster ravioli. In general we have found that portion sizes for meals in the states to be considerably larger than what we would normally see at restaurants, well, pretty much everywhere else in the world. It's something that we always thing about when we're eating out as the last thing that we want to get is a huge platter of food when we're just looking to get something small.

I'm writing most of this in our room on Sunday morning. we'll be up an about in a few hours and as of yet don't have specific plans for what we will be doing today. Over breakfast we'll know more and I'll check back in a few days.

Baden

We seem to have completely forgotten about our trip to Cuba last fall (which was actually the last time that we were at the airport). I guess the Cuba trip wasn't one of our more memorable adventures so maybe that's the part of the reason we had some trouble thinking about it.

But tonight we aren't thinking about Cuba or Germany – it's all about New York City.

For those of you who have followed us through many years of Excellent Adventures, you'll know that we have done almost no travel to the U.S. together. In fact Barb and I have only driven down to San Francisco, a few times to Seattle and once to Hawaii. Given how close it is for us to get to the states, you'd think that it would be a given that we would have done more travelling there.

The answer to this of course is that we fell in love with Europe when we went there on our honeymoon and kept going back and up until now have neglected our neighbour to the south.

We have a direct flight to New York tonight on the red-eye and will arrive early tomorrow morning just after sun rise. By the time that we get to our hotel we'll probably just want to go out and get breakfast and will have a full Saturday to explore the city.

I'll check in again soon after we've had at least a day or two of exploring the city.

Baden