Times Square at night kinda speaks for itself. It is advertising on the most grand, and garish, scale. But it just mesmerizes you while you are there, in it.
This one is sobering - a running ticker of the mounting national debt....
When we came out of FAO Schwartz, it was raining. It has cooled down quite a bit, and the rain was really nice. We walked a few blocks and then were offered a ride by a jitney driver. He just finished up his business degree and has a part time, summer unpaid internship at Citi. Interesting. I told him about a book I just read, House of Cards. Anyway, he took us over to the zoo. We felt bad having this "human powered" ride, but he said he does it for the money and the exercise.
The zoo at Central Park is really beautiful. Quite small, but lush with plants, poetry, and some really lovely little animal displays. We imagined that if the animals got out, they would be parading up 5th Avenue and migrating into the business districts, because they are literally only a few blocks away.
We saw a snow leopard:
A polar bear, who was pacing back and forth because I think they must feed him at 5 pm:
A bunch of turtles (for Kati):
A swan:
A show with the sea lions:
And a whole family of snow monkeys, including a very small and comical baby who was carried up and down the rocks by various family members. Here he is with mom and dad.
Today's activities in NYC involved the toys, the subway, the zoo, and Times Square at night.
1. FAO Schwartz and Barbie
2. Subway
3. Zoo at Central Park
4. Times Square at Night
LOMBARDI'S PIZZA
32 Spring Street
Soho/Manhattan NYC
Aug 11 2009
First, apologies to Dave, my Facebook buddy, because we were admonished this week to talk about things other than food. But this is my blog, not Facebook, and honestly, how can you go all the way to NYC, and then not talk about food a little bit?
Our day began with naps because we arrived at our acommodations at 7 am, after an all nighter on Virgin Atlantic. The problem with Virgin is it is too nice! The clubby lighting, the really nice flight attendants, the food and drink, and the on-board internet and TV/movies/etc. really deter you from sleeping. We got about 90 min of sleep in the 4.5 hour flight. We were surprisingly rested when we arrived at JFK, and found our luggage, got on the Sky Train, and got all the way to the Jamaica station from Brooklyn/JFK without incident. Then, we got on the right subway and got off and to our brownstone without getting lost. No repeats of the "three chocolate croissants" incident in Paris three years ago, and no rain, thankfully, though at 6:30 am it was already plenty warm.
So, we took a long nap, and when we got up at noon (9 am our time!), our singular goal was to get back on the subway and find the vending machine restaurant, Bamn! (Their exclamation point, not mine). We found the location, cleverly obscured in Google street view by a big Ryder truck. Perhaps that would have been our first clue, had the truck been in a different location.
Their website boasts amazing automat (vended) food, at low prices. Reviews on Google abound, and somehow, my eye skipped right over the entries that said "closed." So, when we finally found the address, it was a T-shirt shop/Vietnamese sandwich shop :(
We headed across the street to a nice Italian restaurant and had some air conditioning with our spaghetti bolognese and margherita pizza. This pizza was very good, though I would have preferred more basil. Thankfully, no fresh slices of tomato on it, and a nice firm, but thin, crust.
We did our day of sightseeing and then got ourselves back to Lombardi's on Spring Street for the real thing for dinner. There was a little bit of a wait (20 min), but well worth it. We had the caesar salad which had a really nice creamy dressing with a hint of anchovy. Claire had breadsticks, which we both rated 7 of 10. Okay, but I wouldn't order them again.
The pizza was fantastic! They deserve an exclamation point in their name.
I was going to just have plain cheese, so I could compare to my favorite NY pizza place in Berkeley, Arinell's. But I couldn't resist having my usual: pepperoni, sausage and mushroom. I am glad I went for the triumvarate of toppings. Claire was glad they had garlic powder and oregano shakers for the cheese pizza.
The crust was thin and baked to crispy perfection with blackened undertones on the bottom. The sauce was there, but not obtrusive either in flavor or quantity. The cheese was....well, it is cheese....on pizza. It appeared to be hand picked little pillows of cheesy goodness that made a nice cushion for the toppings. On the "cheese only" side of the pie, you could see the basil chiffonade mixed in with the mozzarella. Nice touch.
The toppings were really good. Very small diameter pepperoni, which allows for the edges to be all crispy and even a good part of the middle. The Italian sausage was sweet and tasty, and the mushrooms were there all co-mingled in, not falling off and dry.
I would give Lombardi's a 10 out of 10. Cash only and adequate service. They leave you alone with your pizza to just enjoy. And no refills on sodas, but they still charge $2. for a fountain coke.
The first place you go in NYC has to be the Empire State Building, right? We'd just been to Disneyland (California Adventures) and been on the Tower of Terror, which is a much shorter elevator ride, compared to this real-life adventure which, among all it's other features (height, view, etc) is a stunning piece of art deco architecture. I'd been there 30 years ago and not much has changed, except that the World Trade Center is not there any more and that is a poignant reminder of what the world has been through in the past eight years.
The Empire State Building has 102 floors if you go all the way to the upper observatory. We only went to the 86th floor deck, but still stupendous views. One sad note - you could see to the south the entire Hudson River, including all the rescue equipment for the recent helicopter/plane crash.
My favorite photo of the day was from here too. On floor 80, while we were queuing around yet again (ESP has 73 elevators, and we swear there were about 73 lines too) we saw this series of windows with frosted glass on the bottom. I guess they want to be sure you pay for and go all the way to the deck for the E-ticket views. These windows were very Rene Magritte to me.
Don't believe everything someone tells you. The tour guide on our open air bus ride today said that this building is the tallest apartment building in the world without any windows.
Claire and I spent all day worried for the people who live there, and who presumably pay sky-high Manhattan rents to do so. No windows to see this beautiful city??
I was so intrigued I "googled" it, and turns out we were taken for a ride! The building is AT&T's server farm or phone switching center (not sure which). The floors are 18' tall and are used to house computer or phone equipment that not only doesn't need to enjoy the skyline, but also benefits from not having any sunshine in the building from a cooling perspective.
Okay - I hope they didn't dupe us on the ticket prices for the tour too!
This trip to NYC is resulting in many photos, ideas, etc. so I'm going to post them separately, otherwise my post for today would be hellatiously long.
Here's an index of Day 1 posts:
1. Wrong Information from Tour Guides
2. Empire State Building
3. Architecture from Gray Lines Tour
4. Pizza! Pizza!
This is too cool. I'm on a Virgin America flight from SF to NYC and I am on the internet!
I took this photo using my MacBook Pro camera, then got on the internet and onto my blog here, and now created this post. How exciting!
I had some homework for the photo transfer class, since I will probably be at the Statue of Liberty on Saturday while class is taking place. The assignment was to get more photos onto the ProntoPlate substrate. This is a linotype material that is used to transfer images much the same as the gum arabic method on paper. So I figure - easy squeezy - since I'm feeling rather accomplished with gum arabic. With ProntoPlate - not so much.
The image making in Photoshop, and printing with fewer lines per inch on the laser jet all went well. The images on the ProntoPlate material came out of the printer looking great. I mixed up the ink according to directions and also wetted the paper, as per the usual instructions. However, the image transfer was pretty yucky. I am probably not mixing the ink quite right, though I figured out that I should take some off the brayer before putting the brayer to the plate by using the phone book. Two images - no good transfers.
There is learning in failure, but I will have to rely upon my friend Nancy, who is also taking the class, to see where I went wrong with these.
We'd purchased these tickets on the Grey Line for city tours on the open air bus and had to finish using them by today. They were really great as a way to see various parts of New York before setting out on your own on the subway or by cab, so I highly recommend them. 
Then we hopped back on Grey Line for the night lights tour. This took us over the Manhattan Bridge, which afforded a really nice view of the Brooklyn Bridge lit up at night, then back at the Manhattan Skyline from Brooklyn.
We saw Ground Zero under construction:
and I got more nighttime architecture shots, and some graffiti:
The weather has cooled off quite a bit today so we were much less tuckered out, though we ended up spending 12 hours "on the road" today.
