good life: Good Life in New York

Upper East Side from inside The Met

Well a little over a month ago we managed to squeeze a few days of New York into a recent trip. It's somewhere I've always wanted to go and it was way better than I expected so thought I better actually write about it before it's a distant memory!

Maybe I was expecting a concrete jungle (or filled with mobsters and muggers!). Instead we found New York to be a vibrant urban tapestry full of 'interesting' and mostly friendly locals, something functional etched into every spare space and an energy about the place that's amazing.

New York is somewhere I've seen a thousand times in movies and TV shows, so it definitely feels familiar - like you know the place. (New Yorkers are all too happy to point out the spots for you if you can't figure it out for yourself, like where Carrie Bradshaw filmed Sex and the City and there's a sign at Katz's deli above the chair where Sally (as in When Harry Met Sally) had her famous fake orgasm!)

Street view from the High Line

In no particular order, here is the checklist of things we got through and some general impressions.

Out and about:

Walking along the High Line

Best walk: The High Line, an old abandoned overground railway line has been converted into a walkway that spans about 20 city blocks, this is the ultimate use of dead space. I wish they'd do something like this with Auckland's abandoned Nelson off ramp!

Central Park

Central Park: It really is as cool as it looks on TV. Talk about orderly. There is a road all the way around and you can only cycle one way.
Brooklyn Bridge: the other great walk. It really just has to be done, even if you only walk half way.

Selfie on the Brooklyn bridge

A Broadway Musical: OMG I didn't think I would like this! We saw The Book of Mormon, a brilliant comedy and worth checking out. You can put your name in for a lottery but because this show is new and popular, there were 10 seats for 200 people. Instead we waited in the cancellation queue and got some amazing seats at a much lower price.

Washington Square

We took most modes of transport while we were there, which was easy as. We mostly walked everywhere but most impressive was the cycling. We stayed in Chelsea at Hotel Americano, which was a fantastic and relatively reasonably priced place, and they had bikes for the guests. We biked all the way up the Hudson River one day and all the way around Central Park. You can rent bikes everywhere.

Museums and memorials

9/11 beam the plane went through in twin tower

New York has the best collection of stuff anywhere except maybe Paris. Each one deserves a reasonable amount of time so there was no way we could fit them all in. The ones we did:

Only at The Met

9/11 Memorial. Do you still remember where you were on 9/11? This will take you straight back. It's pretty powerful and there's nothing quite like the sense of place and perspective this gives.
The Met. It's huge! It's full of notable artefacts, exhibitions and famous paintings. We spent 2.5 hours there until closing time and that was way too short.
MOMA: If I had to pick, this was my fave. It was hard for me to comprehend that all of the Warhol's, Monet's, Picasso's, Lichtensteins, (etc, etc, etc) where the real thing, all in one place. There was so much to take in. The cafe served some of the best coffee in New York and is far removed from the average museum cafeteria bad food experience.

Marilyn at MOMA

Classic Warhol

Monet at MOMA - incredible

We cycled past the Gugenheim, but that and the Fick will have to wait for the next visit.

Food
This is a heavenly city for lovers of cult American food. The big ticket items live up to all expectations:

Hungry? Get your pastrami sandwich at Katz!

Pastrami Sandwiches: Katz's deli really is the best. We had a few others but Katz's was in a league of its own. With piles of pastrami on rye, pickles and a root beer it was heavenly.
New York Cheese Cake: We walked to Sarge's deli after our broadway show. The Rueben was great but the Cheese Cake was the main drawcard. The waitress got Al to have a glass of milk with it which strangely cut through the creaminess of the cheese!

New York Cheese Cake - Heavenly!

Bagels for breakfast: You gotta have the 'Schmear' (cream cheese) on a bagel. They are pretty awesome.

A New York staple at Murray's Bagels

Pork Bun at Momofuku Milk Bar. These were pretty yum and David Chan is world famous for these but you know, the bun place in Northcote Point would give it a run for the money.
The list goes on, but lots of great little places everywhere though two others of note would be the degustation we had at Le Bernardin, a 3 star Michelin Restaurant and the wacky foie gras soft taco with American Cheese we had at Earl's Beer and Cheese. OMG. Foie gras twice in a matter of days it both times were amazing.

Earl's Beer and Cheese in the Upper East Side.

Foie gras soft taco. So wrong but so right!

As for drinks, well I managed to fit in the compulsory Cosmo on the rooftop bar at our hotel. Very shee shee.

Compulsory Cosmo on the rooftop bar

Shopping
Stop me.... Oh what a pleasure. Well, let me qualify that. The big department stores you can take them or leave them quite frankly. At Bloomingdales I practically felt harassed as I think all the sales people are on commission. But the shops on the upper east side, e.g. Tiffany's and every designer around, were just beautiful. I actually loved Soho best though with lots of little shops in the side streets where I may have got a bit excited at DKNY and Dianne von Furstenburg.

There's just too much to see and do to get through everything, so in 4.5 days I thought we experienced a great cross section of the city. We didn't go up the Statue of Liberty but we could see it from lots of the places we went, and we didn't go up any buildings but our hotel's rooftop bar afforded some cool views, so we'll have to leave those for next time.

Well, New York, I fell in love. I could easily go back.