Okay. New York. I really should have written about this sooner, but within hours of returning home I started getting sick with a cold, and even though it’s just a cold—and not even a particularly bad one at that—it knocked me on my ass. Maybe because I’m not used to being sick? My immune system is normally freakishly effective. I called in sick on Friday and it took all my energy to plow through the pile of freelancing I had to do over the weekend. Working while sick sucked, but at least I was able to lounge on the sofa while doing it. And after finishing each day’s workload, I sprawled on the sofa and watched Netflix and Lost DVDs, coughing and sniffing pitifully the whole way through, and occasionally moaning about how wiped out I felt. I wasn’t sleeping overly well, probably because of being stuffy and coughing, and I’m sure that didn’t help with my overall sense of exhaustion.
New York was great, though. (Pictures can be seen here.) We were only there for two days, but we did manage to accomplish everything we set out to do (with the exception of taking a ghost walk, since, oddly enough, none were being offered while we were there). This was actually my first time staying over in New Yawk; in the past I’d always stayed in New Joisey. Actually...now that I think about it...there was one night when I stayed in New York itself. It was my freshman year of college, when three friends and I spontaneously decided, at like 11pm, to drive to New York. We got there in the middle of the night and then we were like, “Now what do we do?” So we slept in the car. On a cold November night in the middle of a dodgy neighborhood in Manhattan. Yeah, makes no sense.
Anyway. On Sunday, June 3rd, my pal Susan and I took an 8am bus from Bethesda to New York, and it was a nice bus! Reclining seats, TV screens, a bathroom. I don’t know what I was expecting for $25, but it sure wasn’t that. Two hours into the trip we stopped at a huge rest stop in Delaware, and as soon as we hit the road again the driver started playing a DVD (The Pursuit of Happyness, which was so depressing it kind of made me want to shoot myself). We pulled into New York on schedule and arrived at Penn Station around 12:30pm.
We grabbed a cab to our hotel, the Larchmont, in Greenwich Village. It’s a budget hotel—very hostel-y and European (the toilet cubicles even have “WC” written on their doors)—but pretty decent. It was a great neighborhood, and because we required three separate keys to get from the front door into our room, we felt safe. The room was small, the bed wasn’t overly comfortable, there was a dead fly in our room, and I saw one or two bugs in the shower; however, we had air-conditioning (very important, because although it wasn’t overly hot when we were there, it was humid), they gave us robes and slippers, we had a TV and sink, and a cleaning lady replaced our towels and made our bed for us, so I have no complaints. It was affordable, after all!
After we got settled into our room, we walked off in search of Blossom, an organic gourmet vegan restaurant. It was much smaller than I expected, but still great (even though we were sitting next to two rich chicks who were casually blathering on about their exotic travels. (Yes, I was jealous.) After lunch we walked around Chelsea, the West Village, and Greenwich Village, popping into shops (including secondhand shops and a pet store run by a bunch of gay guys, where I bought cool souvenirs for the cats). We stopped for ice cream and did some people-watching while we ate it. By this point, Tropical Storm Barry had appeared and it was raining off and on.
We went back to our room, relaxed, and watched TV. Well, first we had trouble even getting to our room. We couldn’t figure out how to open the door to our hallway! We tried all three keys and nothing worked. Finally someone came along and we asked her for help. After watching her, Susan figured out that when turning the key in the lock, you need to pull the door toward you in order for it to open. It reminded me of my front door in Lebanon, where you’d have to push yourself into the door in order to lock and unlock it.
It seemed too pathetic to call it a night already, since we were in freaking New York (even if it was a sedate Sunday night), so we flipped through the guidebook someone left in our room and looked for something to do. We chose Bowlmor Lanes, a rock n’ bowl place in the vicinity of our hotel. I think I’ve only been bowling once in my life—as a kid when we visited family in Massachusetts.
It was a miserable walk to the lanes, since it was pouring, and once we got there, we were kind of confused by the whole set-up process. Eventually we figured things out and settled down to share a divine order of spinach-artichoke dip. The place wasn’t really hopping, thankfully, and the swank nightclub upstairs was closed, which was a relief, because I looked like a frizzy-haloed piece of hell and wasn’t exactly in the mood to mingle with hip, beautiful New Yorkers. The bowling itself was fun. Well, no surprises here—I sucked at it. I’m sure it didn’t help that I’m cross-dominant (although closing my left eye didn’t improve my game at all, so maybe cross-dominance really can’t be blamed for my lack of bowling skillz). The best part of the evening, aside from the yummy dip, was seeing all the bowling pins signed by celebrities who had bowled at Bowlmor in the past.
A bowling pin signed by Michael Stipe!When we woke up on my birthday, it was still pouring. We first headed to the basement for breakfast. Obviously their definition of “breakfast” was different from mine (they only offered danishes, juice, and coffee). It was as bare-bones as you could get—even more bare-bones than the sparse layout offered to me by the Salvation Army hostel in Reykjavik. After “eating” (and yes, I use that term very loosely), we headed to MoMA via the subway.
We thought we’d have to hang out in a nearby café or store since we were so early, but to our surprise, the lobby of the museum was open and there was already a huge line of people waiting to buy tickets. In fact, the line was so long, it stretched out the door and just kept going. Since it was pouring, we opted to hang out in the gift shop instead of standing in the rain. Once the ticket counter opened, we joined the mind-bogglingly huge line out in the downpour. The line was so long, it was like waiting to ride a roller coaster in the middle of summer! It did move fairly quickly, though, I must admit.
The museum was fabulous. As I’m coming from an environment where most museums are free, I hated having to pay such a high entry fee, but what can you do? I was delighted to learn that photos were allowed in the museum (except in one special exhibit); however, flash wasn’t allowed, so my pictures aren’t as clear as they could be.
The only Chagall work on display: “I and the Village.”I was having some...umm...how shall I say this delicately? Let’s just say that I was having some gastrointestinal “issues” and was forced to spend some time in a bathroom. When I finally stumbled out of there Susan said, “You’re never going to guess who I just saw. Locke’s dad!” “WHAAAAAT!” I screeched. Turns out she saw the guy who plays Locke’s dad on Lost while I was stuck in the bathroom. I was so pissed. You can’t imagine how pissed I was that I missed an opportunity to meet—or at least furtively photograph—Locke’s dad because I was stuck on the fucking toilet!!!! I wish I could’ve said to him, “Will you pose for a picture with me? Please? I’ll let you steal my kidney if you do. I’ll let you push me out of an eighth-story window if you just pose for a photo with me and tell me how the hell the Others got you onto that island!”
Disappointment: I was looking forward to seeing Chagall’s painting “The Birthday,” partially because I really like it and partially because I thought it’d be cool to pose next to “The Birthday” on my birthday. Sadly, though, it was nowhere to be found. While the museum was careful to post a notice in several places alerting visitors to the fact that Dali’s most famous piece was currently on loan to the Tate Modern (rather ironic, considering I was just there in October, before the painting arrived), there was no word of what happened to “The Birthday” or Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss.”
After exploring every floor, we browsed through the gift shop again and also hit the MoMA design store across the street, as well as the gift shop for the American Folk Art Museum (the museum itself was closed), before heading back to our hotel.
We freshened up and changed, then walked over to Tea & Sympathy. The restaurant was much smaller than I expected, but still utterly divine. The pasty I got was even better than the pasties I ate in London last year! I also got sides of beans and mash and drank a fizzy Ribena.
Food of the gods. Susan had them bring out a candle in an amazing slice of warm ginger cake, and that gave me a chance to make a birthday wish. I was so completely stuffed from dinner, though, that eating even half the cake slice made me feel faintly ill!
Me, stuffed to the brim after my birthday dinner.It was a nice night, the rain had finally stopped, and the humidity was subsiding, so we decided to walk to the KGB Bar—the last stop on my birthday tour. The bar was pretty empty, minus some folks who seemed to be friends of the bartender’s. Some hipsters showed up later, too. There was no poetry reading after all—they’d been suspended for the summer. The bar was rather quiet and almost had a gothy feel, and I really liked it. I saw some great Soviet memorabilia on the walls and loved spotting a Lenin bust next to a bunch of liquor bottles on the bar.
Lenin and liquor.I got a Russian beer but was only able to drink less than half of it because I was so freaking stuffed from dinner.
So: that was how I turned 33.
On Tuesday morning, after “breakfast,” we turned in our keys, paid our bill, and headed to the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim via the subway. It was a bit tiresome, since we had all our bags with us, but once we bought our museum tickets (which had a reduced price because the building is being renovated), we were able to dump our bags in the coat check room. Pictures were only allowed in the lobby, unfortunately. It’s a grand lobby and I took many photos, but I wish I could’ve taken photos of the artwork as well—especially since the museum had several Chagall pieces!
In the lobby, looking up.
In the lobby, looking down.
Me behind a prism curtain in the Guggenheim lobby.By the time we arrived at Penn Station, we were really hot and tired and just wanted to collapse on a bench in the air-conditioned station. Except there were no benches—none that were free, anyway. So we each purchased something to drink at a little café place and sat in there forever, nursing our drinks and trying to cool off. We had gotten there very early and it was nice to have the luxury of crashing in the a/c before stumbling off to the bus.
The ride home was good. The DVD shown was…some Robin Williams movie. I can’t even remember the name. Man of the Year, maybe? We got back to Bethesda around 9pm, and, through a stroke of luck (or misunderstanding) got away with only paying $8 for parking instead $24. We were like, “Hell yeah, we’ll take it!”
Thus ends my only vacation of this year. *sniffs* It wasn’t much of a vacation, really; I mean, it was just two days away. But it felt good to get the break, and now all my money and vacation time can be be directed toward buying a house/condo and fixing it up. After that I can focus on saving for my next big vacation, which will probably involve some configuration of Prague, Budapest, Kiev, and Krakow.
song heard most recently before posting:
Please Can I Go Now—GMT and Hinda Hicks
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