NYC – Thurs 10/8/10

We’ve just returned from four days in New York City and it was fantastic!  I was expecting it to be too much.  Too much people, too much noise, too much movement.  I had a few moments in which I needed a break, but overall it was just…amazing.  I do have to point out that our experience was aided in large part by the perfect weather.  It was never hotter than 72 degrees or cooler than 65 degrees (between the hours of 10:00 am and 10:00 pm).  We feel very lucky.

Since we take a lot of photos, the trip report will be broken up into days.  This post, of course, will cover day one – Thursday.  The only written notes I made were our meals, meal times, and sights in between.  So, photos and commentary will be punctuated by meals and meal times. 

Left Denver on a 7:00 am flight but we were excited on to be on our way:

Our flight arrived at La Guardia Airport at about 1:00 pm.  We took a shuttle bus to Grand Central Terminal. In the photo below, I’m on the floor down in the hustle and bustle of it all (good luck finding me).  The terminal is fantastic, a museum quality piece of transit infrastructure with beautiful light, and guess what, it has an amazing food concourse beneath the main hall.

Here is Sandy and a view of the main concourse:We walked the 20 or so short blocks to our lodging.  We stayed at a unique, hostel-like place called the Carlton Arms.  Upon reaching the check in desk, we were greeted by the resident cat:

This was the state of the cat most of the time we saw it, sometimes in different locations.  It was a very laidback feline.

Now, the Carlton Arms is a special place because “…every one of the 54 rooms and 4 hallways are painted or decorated by artists that came from all over the world, brought their craft and passion and transformed a rotten hole into a unique Manhattan site where the walls explode with color and art.”  That it does! Each room was painted/decorated by a different artist – this includes the bathrooms. Check out the photo gallery on the web site.  Our room was painted with kama sutra-type art, so we’re going to skip the photos.  However, this is a photo of the bathroom on our floor:

Also this is a creature painted on the wall in the stairwell on the way to our room:

First stop 3:30 pm – The Shake Shack

This is a burger and shake place.  There are several locations but we found the original – and an interesting location it is.  It operates inside of Madison Square Park (more about the park in a moment) and doesn’t stand out and isn’t garish.  Its somewhat small metal structure blended in well and made us wonder why we hadn’t seen something like this in other cities.

This is Sandy on the patio.  In the first photo he is waiting for his burger, fries and “shakemeister” beer, then, in the second, he’s even more happy because he’s got them!

Madison Square Park is a beautiful little park with a dog park, a fountain, large and old trees, lots of benches, the Shake Shack, and a reflecting pool with chairs and tables surrounding it.  This was one of several refreshing park oases we would find in NYC.  Here are two photos of the park that give a taste but don’t do it justice:

There was one strange guy.  In the photo below the guy was slapping the tree very hard, one hand at a time. When the trees finally attack, it is good to know that he is on our side.

Oh, and just on the edge of the park were two things: The Flatiron Building and a short-term street market (Madison Square Market).

The Flatiron Building is an impressive old building that is very slim and uniquely shaped. Per wikipedia, it was considered one of the first skyscrapers built and was designed by Daniel Burnham! There are lots of great photos of the building online but this is the one we took:

 

Here is a bit of detail on the building (like nearly all buildings in the city, this one was dotted with window air conditioning units):

Madison Square Market was your typical art market with food stalls, except the art was a bit better than I’m used to and the food was way more delectable.  Around 4:00 pm I ate at the Tanjore stall and had a vegetable samosa with channa masala. It was the best channa masala I’ve ever had.

In the vicinity of Madison Square Park is Eataly.  This place is new and is an Italian food-loving yuppie’s dream.  It’s really a large market with a butcher, a bakery, a place to buy fresh cheese, pasta, seafood, fruit and vegetables, etc.  You can also buy cookware, cookbooks, specialty beer, and, of course, has an attached wine shop.  There is also several restaurants within it. Online reviews said it was a palace to house the ego of Mario Batali…I cannot comment on that but I can say what we purchased was tasty, and often not symbolic of quality, the place was perpetually packed.  Here are some photo samplings:

Next we came upon The High Line at a lovely time of day – right around sunset.  I was expecting the High Line to be impressive but I was wowed.  An old elevated rail line was transformed into a relaxing garden and walkway in the city. It opened in June 2009 and it looks new but you can tell the city residents and tourists alike appreciate it. We took far too many photos here but really don’t capture it.

Sandy ascends the stairs to The High Line:

This is me with the walkway and some of the gardens in the background:

 

As you can see in the photo below, there are benches as well as wooden chaise lounges and they are well-used!

 

If you look closely at the bottom of the chaises below, you can see that the original railroad track has been preserved and some of the seats sit on wheels on the rails.  We thought that was creative preservation.

 

The High Line wends its way very close to tall, old buildings and some of them have eye-catching multi-colored windows.

The views are nice too.  Here are some interesting buildings we saw from The High Line.

Here you can see the glow of sunset on some other buildings as well as the Empire State Building in the back ground:

 

As you can see from the photos below, there are trees planted on The High Line.  Also, even though lots of people are visiting, there are spaces that are a little open.

 

I really liked this pocket garden showing the old tracks heading off into oblivion – gone but not forgotten.

  

6:25 pm Zemi for a cocktail and food.  We were getting a bit peckish after our sight seeing and popped into this cute Chelsea restaurant and sat adjacent to the sidewalk eating spring rolls, chicken satay, and scallion pancakes.  It was nice to be an observer and see the people and traffic of all sorts going by.

I was watching the way all the traffic moved and interacted.  This is especially interesting in NYC, not just because there are so many more people, cabs, buses, autos, trucks, etc.  It is because there are lots of bike lanes!  They are almost always on the left side of the road and are sometimes colored (green) and/or barrier-separated from traffic.  See my view below:

Afterwards we walked around randomly.  At around 9:00 pm we got a glass of wine at Cafe Condesa – a very small (and sparsely patronized) restaurant in the West Village.  They were overtly disappointed that we were sitting at the bar but still not having food.  It was uncomfortable and I don’t recommend it. 

The travel and early rise was catching up with us.  We took a cab to Eataly, grabbed some bread and a bottle of red wine and retired to our room.  See more on day 2!