New York City: The Last of the Vacation Narratives

From Boston, Jeff and I headed down to NYC, but stopped outside of the city in Norwalk, CT, where we were able to visit with my friend Despina and her husband Taso. They'd literally just gotten back from Greece, where they were married, so it was very generous of them to have us stay, but we were so happy to get to spend the evening hanging out with them. Especially since they introduced us to this amazing place called Chocopologie, where we went for dessert. Between the four of us we ordered some truffles (the dark chocolate truffle with burnt caramel and sea salt was phenomenal...we weren't convinced when the waitress suggested it, but we were sold after the first taste), chocolate beignets, and a sampler that included ice cream, mousse with ganache, a molten cake, and some kind of weird chocolate "butter." It was a delicious night!

The next morning we said goodbye and took the train into NYC, where we had a $19 hotel reservation and tickets to the Yankees. The hotel was a serious steal. It was a few blocks from Grand Central station, within easy walking distance to many sites, and the room was fantastic. Comfy bed, spacious bathroom, quiet, well-decorated, and with a cool lighting system that gave you control over every light in the room from one panel by the bed (one on each side actually). What more could you ask for? Lucky us.

Oddly enough the worst weather of the trip was in NYC, where it was kind of chilly and where it started to rain after the game ended. You'd think we might have been cool further up north, but instead the further back south we came, the more we pulled out our jeans and long sleeve shirts. Anyhow, we weren't going to let a little rain ruin our trip, so we put our rain jackets to use and set out. We first went to Chinatown, where I added three pashminas to my collection, and where we had dinner. The lo mein was great. I wasn't as big a fan of the beef dish--weird texture, I thought--but Jeff liked it. Oh well, now I know not to order that dish in the future.

The rain wasn't letting up, but we kept up with our walking, heading to the Brooklyn Bridge, which we walked halfway across for the view. I actually think it might have been a better view because of the rain. Kind of romantic if you will.




We then paid our tributes at Ground Zero, which is hard to fathom, especially since it now seems to be one huge construction zone. But there's definitely a hole in the horizon. And then we wrapped up our rainy New York evening with a stroll through Times Square, bathing in its neon glory, before cozying up in our nice, warm, $19 bed.

The next morning we had a few hours before we had to head out of town, so we first headed up to Central Park, where we wandered past the Children's Zoo, the Bethesda Fountain & Terrace, one of the ponds, and Strawberry Fields.

The Bethesda Fountain & Terrace was my favorite part of the park. It has a very Eastern feel to it, which was heightened by a man playing a lute, its haunting melody floating across the park.






On our way back to the hotel to pick up our belongings, we enjoyed a few slices of New York pizza and took in Radio City and Rockefeller Center.


Hardly enough time for NYC I know--what about the Met, the MOMA, SoHo, the Village, Fifth Avenue--but I'm certain will be back. There's just way too much to see. and the city is nothing if not intoxicating. I first saw NYC when I was 14, and at that time I said that I thought it would be an amazing place to live for one year. When I told Jeff this (before our trip), he kind of scoffed. He'd only seen NYC briefly as a child while waiting for a passport or something, and he was convinced he wouldn't like it. He assumed it would be too fast, the people too rude, money too important. But we weren't there long before he was saying that I might be on to something. NYC isn't somewhere I could imagine as home, but it's somewhere I would be interested in adopting for a year. There's just nowhere else in the world like it. The center of finance, the center of the arts, the center of literature, the center of everything. You can just feel the pulse of the world running through it. I'd love to have a year to just live that, experience that. Now I just have to figure out how to make that happen.

Is it just me or do you too wish that you had multiple lives to live? There's just way too much I want to do.