NYC NOMS: Day 5 and 6 and 7

Day 5:

Wednesday morning Britton and I fought our way through the steady rain to the South Seaport TKTS booth to round out our NY experience with a broadway show. A friend recommended this location for the short lines, but you still needed to get there early. Summer=tourists=lines. So we finally made it into the tiny ticket booth, and being Sinatra fans, we went with Come Fly Away.

We were meeting Britton's sister at the The Met in the afternoon, so we made a stop by Grand Central station to grab some lunch. Being completely drenched by the rain, Britton may or may not have removed his underwear in the men's restroom and dried them with a hand dryer. Though the food court at Grand Central seemed ridiculously large, we settled on Cafe Spice, an Indian fast food place.

Chicken tikka masala, chicken curry, and mango lassies. Yum!

After lunch, we made our way over to The Met. This museum is gorgeous, and I could spend several days looking at every exhibit. Their Egyptian collection is extensive, and we also enjoyed the armory exhibit. I went completely nuts over the Italian and French decor section of the museum. Whole rooms from Venetian and Parisian palaces and hotels were removed and transported the the museum. It was simply magical.

The Met has thousands of Egyptian artifacts on display. This is just a few of the many.

For dinner we took the subway to Chinatown to have soup dumplings at Joe's Shanghai. THEY WERE SO DELICIOUS.

Scallion pancake. This didn't last very long.

And of course, soup dumplings. Britton shows you how to eat these little gems in this wonderful, though awkwardly long video.

SOUP DUMPLINGS!!!NOM

We closed out the night with Come Fly Away. There was no dialogue in this show, but various dance sequences set to the music of Frank Sinatra. It did not blow my mind, but it was enjoyable. We had seats in the front row, and the dancers were flinging sweat like crazy. We were terrified we would wacked with sweat during the first half of the show.

Day 6:

Thursday morning we hopped on the Subway for the long ride to Coney Island. Britton and I took a whirl on the famous Wonder Wheel while waiting for his sister to arrive from Queens.

For lunch, we ate at the original Nathan's hot dog stand. Britton was raving about these dogs, and they did not disappoint.

When Britton's sister arrived, we watched the all-girls Coney Island Freak Show, and afterward, had a freaky beer at the bar outside.

A view of Coney Island from the beach.

Dinner was at Katz's delicatessan. We grabbed a couple sandwiches, and as I was ordering my New York egg cream, I watched this Puerto Rican lady go completely bonkers on one of the carvers. Lesson learned. Don't separate a lady from her sandwich.

Hot Pastrami w/ half and full sour pickles.

Our next stop was the Empire State Building. As a child, I had seen Sleepless in Seattle a MILLION times on day time television, so the Empire State was the only very touristy item on my to-do list in New York. The lines were horrific, and the employees assigned to hustle us from one waiting room to another were loud, curt, and dressed in dull red. At one point in line they were shuffling people in front of this enormous camera for the token expensive we-were-here photo with the Empire State Building hovering in the background. Britton, his sister, and I decided we would pretend like we were flying, but when our turn came, the man yelled "SMILE!" and took the picture too fast for the three of us to get into position. The photographer laughed at the preview of the photo as we walked away. Later, when we saw the picture, I had my arm completely blocking my face and Britton's arms were partially raised. Britton's sister somehow managed to look like she was flying, but overall, a big fat FAIL.

Just spectacular views from the observation deck. We had to fight a million European and Asian tourists to get this unobstructed photo.

And this one.

It was chilly and VERY windy. In this picture I am holding my clothes on my body.

We bought a little magnet for our fridge that looks like this figurine. King Kong is like, "Who? Me?"

A lovely pitstop at Momofuku Milk Bar on our way home. On the left, a slice of grasshopper pie. Two pork buns w/ some sriracha. One container of cereal milk (which tastes just like the milk leftover from a bowl of frosted flakes.)

Day 7:

Friday started off with a tour of NBC Studios. We hung out with NBC interns while viewing the set of Nightly News with Brian Williams and SNL. After our tour, thanks to Britton's sister and Living Social, we got free froyo from Red Mango as well as a free SNL-themed t-shirt from the gift shop downstairs.

As I was devouring my froyo, I discovered this thing. It wasn't a computer...it was a big effin' table.

OOOOHH. Microsoft Surface. Britton was embarassed I was playing with it, but it had a virtual koi pond on it for goodness sake.

We also stopped by the Lego Store next to 30 Rock. BEST STORE EVER. There were lego depictions of different parts of New York, including statues from Rockefeller Center.

We also took a long stroll through Central Park.

I think this was a view from Belvedere Castle in Central Park.

Strawberry Fields memorial.

We three met Britton's friend at the Peking Duck House in Chinatown for dinner.

This place had FANTASTIC Peking duck, but I cannot vouch for the other dishes. The sweet and sour pork had pickles in it. Ew.

For dessert, we grabbed some free cupcakes (again, thank you Britton's sis and Living Social) from Butter Lane. I think this place is in "The Village" but don't take my word for it. I had a the banana cupcake with peanut butter frosting. Delicious. And Britton's sis gave the leftovers to a homeless man to spread the love even farther.

Video from the Lego Store.

NYC Noms: Day 3 and 4

Day 3:

Having finally gotten comfortable sleeping despite the ruckus of cars and sirens outside our penthouse suite window, Britton and I headed over to Chinatown (Manhattan) for the most highly anticipated restaurant on my NY vay-cay checklist. The place is called Big Wing Wong. Britton is quick to point out that the staff of Big Wing Wong actually worked at the original Big Wong, and due to a huge falling out, they decided to start their own restaurant a couple blocks away.

For breakfast, we ordered the soy sauce chicken (all white meat), roast pork congee, and a big sweet fried cruller. Everything was delicious, but the soy sauce chicken was my favorite - very tender and moist with an amazingly fresh ginger and onion sauce.

We hit the Modern Museum of Art that day as well. I am not crazy about modern artwork, but they do have many interesting impressionist paintings including Van Gogh's Starry Night and Dance by Matisse. Unfortunately, the museum was very crowded, so it was a fight to see some of the paintings and by the time we got to Piet Mondrian with all those ridiculous lines and boxes, I was ready to throw in the towel. Wikipedia calls this "Neo-Plasticism" a representational art form, but I am telling you that I scribbled that same cluster of boxes and lines on my notebook in my sociology class with glitter gel pens. (On top of that, I just visited the Salvador Dali exhibit on later works at the High Museum in Atlanta, and Dali thought Mondrian was a total goober. I agree.)

There was also a neat exhibit called Rising Currents which demonstrated possible solutions for maintaining or recovering lost waterfront around New York City due to rising sea levels.

My favorite painting in MOMA was Henri Rousseau's The Dream. Very daring and colorful.

For dinner that night Britton hurried his sister and I through this seemingly unmarked door on fifth avenue and up this narrow flight of stairs to a very dark and lounge-y restaurant called Mad for Chicken. Light and crispy chicken wings, some spicy, some garlic-covered, with a scattering of banchan including pickled radishes, cut veggies, and a creamy corn mix.

The wings were HUGE. And the three of us split a carafe of strawberry yogurt soju (which was DELICIOUS but very very pricey.)

Britton may have gotten girl-drink-drunk. He was sipping soju out of this shot glass.

To wrap up the night, we headed down to Bryant Park where Bonnie and Clyde was playing on a big projector.

Which reminds me that I have a confession to make. Sometime before dinner Britton wanted to run into the Apple store on 5th to look at phone covers. He told me to meet him outside in about half an hour, so I wandered into FAO Schwartz to kill some time. I made it through the stuffed animals without any major screw-ups, but when I arrived at the land of bountiful bulk candies, it was all over. It started with the yogurt raisins, and then the chocolate covered pretzels, and then they had those wafer mints you only get a baby shower and wedding receptions, and then ...oh goodness...and then there were the bulk pineapple gummy bears.

Within five minutes of walking into the store, I had accumulated almost $13 in candy. Oi. I was so ashamed, but also very high on sugar.

After the movie, Britton and I wished his sister farewell for the evening and walked over to Times Square which was lovely in a daylight-in-the-nighttime kind of way. Very vibrant and full of people.

Times Square also had a big toy store - Toys R Us. I hope they don't have a candy section!

Oh, and Andrew, that picture is for you. Dora the Explorer! Ay yiyi.

Day 4:

Slightly less rainy than Day 4, we headed over to the American Museum of Natural History. We ate lunch at the Shake Shack on the Upper West Side (no pic.) They made some great burgers and floats using fresh, local ingredients. We had to fight tooth and nail to get a seat, but it was well worth the wait.

We saw dinosaurs.

We dined on the universe itself.

It was a total blast! There are so many exhibits in this museum, it was impossible to see everything. I highly recommend the show Journey to the Stars in the planetarium narrated by Guinan herself, Whoopi Goldberg.

For dinner we met BFC, Britton's sis, and friend at La Luncheonette, a small and decadent french cafe near the High Line. The High Line was once a section of elevated train tracks allowing trains to travel directly into warehouses without running a risk to pedestrians. Due to increased commercial automobile transport, the tracks became obsolete. The tracks are now a quiet public park with foliage that resembles the wild flowers and weeds that took over the tracks long before the park was in place. It's a beautiful place to take a leisurely stroll.