I took a trip out to New York this weekend, thought I would write about it. This was actually my 2nd time to the city, the last time being 2 summers ago (for a recap of that trip see here).
This trip was different in that it wasn't so much about doing the "touristy" things (not to say we didn't do any), since I already got to do a lot of that stuff 2 years ago. So I guess we tried to experience NY more as a normal New Yorker might, without having to rush from one place to another.
Some pictures and thoughts from the trip:
I really hate flying. One might have thought that as someone who flew on airplanes a lot as a kid, having taken more than a few 14 hour trips across the Pacific Ocean, that a 2 hour flight from O'Hare to LaGuardia as a grown man wouldn't be that bad.
Nope, I hate it with a passion. Maybe it's just that I'm bigger now and get more cramped in the airplane than I did when I was an 8 year old. But I think it's more than that. I hate rushing to the airport. I hate having to take off my shoes, coat, watch, wallet, cell phone, laptop, crack pipe, etc., and put them in the stupid little trays just to pass through security, and then having to reclaim all those things and put them back 10 seconds later. I hate waiting at the gate hearing some guy on the PA system call out the names of everyone on standby.
I hate how stupid people sit in the wrong seat, as if they're not gonna have to move 2 minutes later when the owner of the seat shows up, holding up everyone else in line in the process of reshuffling. I hate the smell of the air, I hate how they make you turn off your CD/MP3 players for 10 minutes after takeoff because they supposedly interfere with the cockpit communications (they most definitely do NOT).
Anyways, back to the weekend itself:
Thanks to my sister's hotel points, she reserved me the "suitest" hotel room I have ever stayed in. As the pictures show, there was the typical room with the bed. But there was also second room connected to it with a second bathroom, couch, desk, TV, and a pretty nice view (3rd picture - As you can see my photography skills are awful, I got reflections of my shirts sleeve and lamps in the room itself).
Probably the most "touristy" things we did were visiting a couple Seinfeld landmarks. The first picture is the restaurant that the Seinfeld cafe was based off of. Apparently after further research, it is also the restaurant that Suzanne Vega's song "Tom's Diner" is about (think opening scene of Christian Slater movie, "Untamed Heart"). The second picture is the soup restaurant that inspired the "Soup Nazi" episode. Unfortunately it was closed when we got there, but there were some flyers there with the picture of the "real" soup man, and he does look a lot like the actor that played him in Seinfeld.
Thanks to Olivia's cousin's recommendation, we had dinner at Peter Luger's Steakhouse, which many claim is the best steakhouse in New York. After eating there, I can't argue that claim, the food was really really good. I recommend it to anyone who visits New York and loves steak (be prepared to spend some significant cash though). For more information see here.
Walked through Central Park, something we did only very briefly last time. Unfortunately it was really cold pretty much the whole weekend, so we didn't spend that much time outside. The second picture is of a bunch of ducks. Kind of random, but I thought it was so cool how they kept diving under water to catch fish. I wish I could do that. There were also 2 baby ducks (you can kind of see one of them in the middle of the picture), and I must say baby ducks are so very cute.*
Spent a few hours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or as cool people call it, the "Met". The place is pretty huge, definitely bigger than Chicago's Art Institute. We only got through less than half of it before getting tired, and that's without looking very thoroughly at the parts we did walk through. One could easily spend days there if one was so inclined. We were not so inclined, although there was some pretty good stuff there. I wished I had some of those Chinese paintings on those cool scrolls, to hang at my house. That would be pretty sweet.
* The "Cute" Rule: I'm not sure if I came up with this rule myself, but I follow it. The only instances where it's okay for a guy to say something is "cute" is if it is in reference to girls, animals, babies, or baby animals. As far as I know there are no exceptions to this rule.
