New York City: March 2008

So, this Spring Break 2008 was a family trip to the greatest city on earth, NEW YORK CITY! Why NYC? Well, thanks to the new low cost airline called SKYBUS, we were able to purchase 6 round trip tickets for $20.00 each (plus tax and fees of course)! I know, unbelievable, but it is true...the $10.00 one way tickets really do exist...if you get them early!

First of all, we had 6 tickets because of Linh. Our Vietnamese exchange student, Linh, decided a month ago that he didn’t want to go. He said that he just didn’t feel like going anywhere since he went to Chicago with us in February....he really missed out!!! Anyway, the flight was short and sweet. We arrived early and picked up our new 2009 Nissan Murano at Enterprise in a jiffy. We always seem to get lucky with Enterprise, we get cars with 1000 miles or less every time we use them. And thanks to Jessica and Craig for the Enterprise referral! The airport is about an hour from the city, but look at the price of the tickets! Plus, we knew that renting a car would cost us as much as 1 one way ticket on another airline. Later we found out that there are trains from that airport to NYC and we really didn’t need a car.

NY NY, oh I love NYC. It has been a long time since I visited NYC. This was the first time with kids, too. We headed to lower Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge...passed a huge rally to free Tibet, and arrived at the Downtown New York City Marriott Hotel. It was only 2 blocks from ground zero. I love Marriott Rewards, if you are not in the program, you should be in it. We got lucky with the cheap plane tickets, but also with the hotel. We only had to pay for one night of our stay in NYC since we had enough points. I swear we paid more to park the car for 5 days then we spent on plane tickets and hotel rooms! As you guessed, parking is expensive in NYC! We really loved the subway. It is sooo easy to get around New York via subway, bus, or taxi. No cars are necessary in NYC!

SUNDAY:

We had "Easter" dinner in Hackensack, NJ because I needed to use the Maggiano’s Little Italy gift card that I had and that was the closest one to us. It is a great place for Lasagna, good Italian for a chain. I will tell you that the roads in New Jersey are annoying, confusing, and just designed bad. They have all of these lame U turns and no left turn signs everywhere. We always get lost or miss a turn when we are in Jersey...very frustrating to drive in that state. So, from the hotel, we walked down to Wall Street mainly to see the NYSE, Trump building, the famous Bull. Then we headed to the World Trade Center site and memorial wall. I am still shocked that the towers are really gone. The skyline just isn’t the same without them....you feel this emptiness when you look at the site. I remember seeing them vividly on my last visit to NYC. The memorial wall was very sad to look at and read....all of the police that died that day were posted on a poster near the wall. I think the most moving part of the WTC visit was walking past the ladder 10 fire station while they were returning from a call. The truck had the names of the firemen that lost their lives on 9/11 from that station. You just felt so sad and wondered which of the firemen that were waving at us were there on 911. From there we headed to the WTC subway station and made our way to Times Square. Times Square is crowded, bright, and as tacky as Las Vegas! This was the tourist mecca of the city. Though, Libby told Tom that it was so beautiful....she likes places with lots of lights! We barreled through the crowds to take the kids to the Hershey and M&M stores. On the way, there were lots of African American men wearing star of David headgear preaching from a book. I didn’t get a chance to actually listen to what they were saying, but from what I heard it seemed to be about religion and racism. I noticed a LARGE police presence that night. I asked one cop if there is always a cop on every street corner; he replied "Sometimes, but tonight there is something going on." Not sure what that meant but obviously nothing happened. Actually, the whole time in NYC, we noticed a lot of police on the streets and subway. We felt safe the entire trip....well, except when we had to turn around in Newark, NJ. That place resembles Gary, IN a lot...very industrial and dirty. We then had a very late dinner at NYC’s Pronto Pizza. It is one of those pick a slice and heat places. It was actually pretty good and cheap!

MONDAY:

We had our "free" breakfast buffet at the hotel. I am so glad it was free because when I saw the bill was $75.00 I was shocked....that is insane for breakfast and it wasn’t that good! From there we headed to Bryant Park and Rockefeller Center via the subway. When we got to Rockefeller Center the today show was cleaning up the area....so, we didn’t get to be on TV! From there we went to see the JP Morgan Chase buildings since Tom works for them. Then to the beautiful Grand Central Station that you see in the movies. The architecture is amazing. The kids were hungry and we were ready for some Dim Sum in Chinatown. We decided to go to Jing Fong . You have to take an escalator up to the banquet room. It feels like you are going to shop, not eat. The Dim Sum is an astonishing $2.00 per plate at lunch time! Yes the plates are small, usually 3 pieces per plate, but this is NYC and it is cheaper then anywhere I have been for Dim Sum. With the prices so low, we were able to try 12 different kinds of Dim Sum. I think I was the only non Asian in the place, too! It was authentic and delicious, but I still think Tin’s Tea House in Cali is my favorite. Everything is California seems to have less grease....even the ethnic food has a California style of cooking to it. From Chinatown to ventured through the Tribeca, Little Italy, NOHO, and SOHO areas of the city. We even had Chinese food for dinner, AGAIN! We managed to get back to the hotel early enough for a swim with the kids.

TUESDAY:

This was the day I was going to meet up with my friend, John Scherry, who I attended Andrean HS and IUB with in the past! First we decided to go to the Children’s Museum of Manhattan in the Upper West side. It is free to all Chase employees. The place was a small and quick to see everything, but the kids enjoyed it. I was amazed by the amount of Nannies visiting the place with the kids. There were only a handful of moms and dads there. From there we went back to Rockefeller Center to get Nolan a shirt at Nintendo World. At this time in his life he is all about playing the Star Wars game on his DS. We got a late start that day so again he had Pronto’s Pizza in NYC. It was still fast, still good, and still cheap. I wanted the kids and Tom to have Gelato in Little Italy, so we went back that way. We stopped at Union Square on the way....a place that it used a lot for protests. The Gelato was okay, again my favorite was still in San Fran. They had more Italian flavors in San Fran....or maybe I just went to the wrong place in NYC. I did find the place via Google on my cell phone, not the best way to find "good" eating places. We spent time in SOHO and Little Italy that day before we met up with John. We met John in front of the Virgin record Mega store in Union Square. I did manage to find a public restroom in that store. As some of you know, public restrooms are hard to find in NYC. Anyway, there was a sign on the restroom door about how graffiti is bad, etc, but the funniest part is when you open the door after reading the sign. The bathroom has graffiti EVERYWHERE, on the mirror, walls, seat, door. John was a big help in the city. He knows where to go and how to get there fast. We went to the FAO Schwartz store and the 24 hour apple store for the kids. My favorite part of the night was going into Hell’s Kitchen and having dinner with John at Uncle Nick’s Greek Restaurant. It is a neighborhood with a lot of pride, good dining, and few tourists. I really felt like I was in NYC when I was in the Hell’s Kitchen area. The food was good at the place, John’s whole red snapper was the best meal at the table....it was HUGE. I should have taken a picture of it! We did get a real NYC experience that night. Earlier, we had the Happy Guy on the Happy Train. Basically it was a guy with crazy hair and a mirror talking to himself in a mirror about smiling and being happy on the happy train....very entertaining. And that night, after waiting for the subway train to come, a man finally told us that the 1 subway train was not working at this time, so we had to walk down to another station. There we were finally able to get on a train that took us back...I think we got back to the hotel at midnight because we got a little lost of the way back....since we drove to the upper west side we had to make our way back to the hotel at night.

Wednesday:

We were back on the subway heading to SOHO to take the kids to the Scholastic Bookstore on Broadway. It was great, it had everything you see on the scholastic book order forms that you get from school. They had a lot of cute displays, very kid friendly and fun for them. This time we were determined to try REAL New York pizza. We headed to Lombardi’s pizza. What I have been told is that this place was the first pizzeria in the U.S. and the birth place of New York style pizza. They still use a coal fired oven...not sure how good that it for you, but the pizza was good. I liked that they used FRESH mozzarella cheese, sauce, and basil. It actually tasted a lot like my homemade pizza. I did notice that the crust had a smoky taste to it....I guess that was the coal smoke that I was ingesting. Now it was time to walk off that pizza by walking across the famous Brooklyn Bridge. So, two weeks ago I was at the Golden Gate Bridge and now I am at the Brooklyn Bridge, I was starting to feel like the bridge lady. After that windy walk we head to Battery Park to see the Statue of Liberty. It was windy and a little smoggy, so our view was not that great. But, we saw her! The last time I was in NYC (pre 9/11), I got to walk up the many stairs in the statue and got a great view of the city. This time, the kids and I were not interested in taking the fairy to the statue and Ellis Island. My memory of the fairy/tour was that it was long and there were a lot of smelly foreign people on it. My nose can’t handle "funk" anymore. We couldn’t go to NYC without letting the kids see the Empire State building. Their interest in that lasted 15 minutes or less! Since my Vietnamese food experience was not that great in San Fran, I wanted to experience Vietnamese food in NYC. We went to Bowery street and found an authentic place called Nam Son. It was so nice not seeing Cha Gio called Imperial Rolls on the menu..and they were good! The Pho Bo broth was soooo awesome. The Bun Cha with grilled pork was the best ever! Izzy couldn’t stop talking about her love for it. I could not say the same for the Banh Xeo...it was awful....we make them better at home! Overall, I think the Vietnamese food is much better in NYC then in Chicago and San Fran.....actually it was the best of all of the Vietnamese restaurants that I have been to in the US and we have tried a lot of them! So peeps, eat at a good Vietnamese restaurant when you are in NYC.....it rocks. On the walk back to SoHo, we saw a very small Chinese hair salon on Elizabeth street. Tom, Izzy, and Libby had the cheapest and best haircuts ever at that place. They really took their time to make sure they looked good. I was impressed, I wish we could go there all of the time! Since the kids were being good a the haircut place, we decided to let them have Gelato again! So, it as back to SOHO for so so Gelato, but to the kids it was the best ice cream!

THURSDAY:

This day ended up being a full action "see the city one last time" day. We were leaving that night and I didn’t even get Linh or the kids NYC shirts. So, it was back to walking and seeing the Tribeca, NoHo, SoHo, Washington Square, Grand Central station, high end Madison Ave, Fashion District, Times Square, and upper east and west side areas again! I got my NYC shirts and even ran around looking for the SHALOM from NYC shirt for An (sorry An, I couldn’t find one in your size). Tom was determined to get the "recession special" at Gray’s Papaya for lunch. He saw a show on the Food Network about hot dogs and that was one of the places that they mentioned to go to for good dogs. Oh and if you were wondering, the recession special is 2 hot dogs and a papaya drink for $3.50. Again, it was another very NYC place that is fast, cheap, and good. So now we had to head back to the airport. We were a little fearful of NYC traffic at rush hour. The only problem we had was getting to the Lincoln Tunnel to get out of the city. We were stuck behind unaggressive drivers in NYC! Finally a guy got out of his car and told them what to do.....you know move up all of the way, run red lights, block the road, etc. You MUST be an aggressive driver in NYC or you will get nowhere! So, finally we got in the tunnel and headed out of the city without any traffic or problems. We even arrived to Newburgh so early that we got to visit on the famous diners of NY state, Johnny D’s Diner. We watched a show, again on Food Network, about diners in America and they mentioned NY & NJ, so we thought we should experience a NY diner. It was okay, great for the kiddies. The flight home was very late, but everything went very well.

I can say that I spent my whole time in NYC with the Beastie Boys " An open letter to NYC " song in my head. I think it was from the signs in the subway or hearing the names of the places on the subway speaker! I do love that song! So, the next time I am in New York I will not rent a car because parking it cost $50.00 a day and I will stay in Midtown Manhattan near a subway station. The kids said it was their favorite vacation....I still cannot believe in their minds it was better then the beaches of Cali and NJ and the lights of Vegas! I think they liked the subway the most. Why not, the subway has great musicians, crazy people that make great entertainment, and you can get anywhere in the city FAST! NYC still is one of my favorite places in the world. There is so much to do, so much to see, and as they say, the city never sleeps. Tom and I are ready to go back to NYC without the kids.....there is just so much more that we wanted to do that we could not do with the kids around.