NYC April 22

 

I could have slept more…but instead we made our way for Dean and Deluca for breakfast. How could I not think of Felicity?  While there we had famous person number two citing: From Will and Grace, we saw (and Isabell borrowed a chair from) Karen’s arch nemesis: Beverly Lesley…aka Leslie Jordan. He’s so little. We saw him again later that week but by then, he was old news. 

The three of us then hopped on a train, head to Greenwich to meet the gang and off we went on an epic walk through Greenwich, Noho, Soho, Little Italy, Chinatown, Financial District and across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was EXHAUSTING but quite lovely. This is what we saw:

• Washington Square Park is a park that I see all the time on film and television, with its petit arc de triomphe. It’s actually their memorial arch, but it really is modeled after the stunner in Paris. The buildings surrounding the park all belong to NYU. I was actually quite shocked at how small the park really was – I guess I expected something bigger. It was still lovely though. From there we jumped onto Broadway and stopped at the NoHo market, but on the way, I found a restaurant/café called DoJo. I was giddie. It was my 2 names Dodo and Jojo all smashed up into one. DOJO. I’ve decided its my new jedi master name.  As we walked down the street we quickly realized we needed to separate. Some wanted to shop along Broadway and others just wanted to walk..so that’s what we did. And we found ourselves on Canal Street.

• Now I’ve heard about Canal Street and its knock-offs and I literally just finished telling Bas and Isabell about it when this woman casually sidles up to us and says ‘louis vuitton? Prada? Gucci?’ and we look at eachother and think…what the heck. So I say ‘ya’ and she says ‘follow me’. And we walk at a rapid place for what felt like miles. And she tells us ‘stop here for a second’, and then brings us a catalogue of luigi’s.  We look at the bags but they’re not quite up to snuff. Another woman says ‘you like tiffany’ so I say ‘of course’ and she quickly lifts up the sleeve to her shirt revealing about 50 bracelets up her arm. HYSTERICAL. And then they as ‘you like rolex’ and we figure why stop now?  And again she says ‘follow me’ and we start walking again at a rapid pace, ending up at a church on Baxter Street…but there’s trouble in the form of a police car. She quickly walks in the opposite direction of us but says ‘take picture, be tourist’. Ha ha ha. HOLY CRAP THAT WAS FUNNY. Inevitably we went into the church to get rid of our pusher because a touch of fear and a touch of boredom had settled in. Besides we needed to hit Little Italy for lunch and meet up with the group.

• Little Italy really is little, but it seemed to be the NYC experience I was looking for. Italians all over the place hawking their food like they would in Rome but in a city with a much quicker and less romantic pace. I bought Torrone (nougat) from a street vendor, passed a restaurant called Giovanna's and we ended up eating at the most recommended place on the strip called Il Palazzo.

• Reunited, fed and watered, we made our way through Chinatown, noting a few Flight of the Conchords references, passed the New York City Supreme Court (we all thought of Law and Order), saw a wedding party, and made our way to the Brooklyn Bridge, one of the oldest suspension bridges in the US, and a beautiful one at that. It connects Manhattan with Brooklyn and spans the East River. There are some great views on this bridge! At the end, we caught a train and head for the World Trade Centre.

• There’s not much to see at the WTC site mainly because it is now a construction site. Not that I was looking for anything special, but what we did see was some significant construction of the new world trade centre. The rendering looks lovely. There is a memorial site you can visit – we didn’t as we weren’t personally tied up with the event, but we did want to pay homage. We also went to St. Paul’s chapel across the street, a miracle of its own as it was untouched by the damage that happened literally across the street, and was home base for the rescue crews post September 11. 

• From here we walked by Trinity Church (beautiful cathedral) and made our way to Wall Street – the hub of the financial district. From here you can see the NY Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, the American Stock Exchange and of course, the charging bull (located just off Bowling Green – the oldest park in New York).  Many people were in line to cup his balls, perhaps wishing for fortune and luck, much like how you’d cup Juliet’s breast of St. Peter’s Foot. Whatever floats your boat I guess.

We split up for the night as the 5 from London opted for a cruise around Manhattan. Bas and I were cold, Isabell gets seasick so we head back to Time’s Square into Hell’s Kitchen and found Turkish Cuisine, a yummy place for dinner.  We also found a psychic, who never seemed to be ‘in’, much to Bas and Isabell’s chagrin. For dinner we ate babaganush,  I had stuffed tomato, I can’t remember what Isabell had as an appie, and for dinner we ate baby okra, a chicken kabob and a lamb kabob. All with grilled eggplant, rice, bulgar, it went on and on. Stuffed to the gill, Bas head back to the hotel to pass out and Is and I went for a walk to digest just a bit, and check out Time’s Square at night…although it seemed like day there were so many lights.

Thus day 2 ended and again…I slept like the dead.

Pictures to come soon