A Jedi in New York: Day 5

I’m writing this post retrospectively as Jane recovered yesterday and I spent the day feeling rather unpleasantly ill, finally experiencing the unpleasantness of vomiting first via my mouth then via my arse at about 5am. I feel a bit better now though, if tired. Maybe we’re allergic to New York, maybe we picked up some weird virus, I don’t know. But I think we’re both over it now having spent some time talking to God.

Despite this, we had a great day yesterday. We visited the Natural History Museum which, despite getting up the earliest we’ve managed all week, we somehow didn’t manage to get into until after lunch. This may have been partly due to our practical demonstration of the difference between “local” and “express” Metro trains – the latter of which was the first one we boarded today, then wondered why it sailed past the station for the Natural History Museum, then streets beyond it until we were well over 40 blocks away from where we wanted to be!

We’re going back to the Museum today to see some other bits because we didn’t have a lot of time to see things in the end, though we got a chance to see the dinosaurs and an interesting section on Asian peoples. We got kicked out at closing time though – 5:45 – so we decided to head down to the south end of Manhattan to take a look at Bodies… The Exhibition. I think most people know about this by now, but for the uninitiated, it’s an exhibition showing how our bodies work via the means of real-life dissected bodies.

This wasn’t as gross as I was expecting, interestingly. It was, however, interesting to see the different body parts, how they interact and what they actually look like. There were also some interesting displays on the blood supply to various parts of the body, where they had injected the veins and arteries with a special dye and then chemically “decomposed” the rest of the body, leaving only the blood vessels.

The other great thing about Bodies which I hadn’t really considered before was its stunning use of lighting. The whole exhibition hall was very dark, with pools of light surrounding each major exhibit, but also focusing very tightly on small “body trivia” signs on the wall. The overall effect was very distinctive and memorable, and lent a huge amount of atmosphere to the whole exhibition.

Finally, once we had done this, it was time to go out for dinner to a restaurant I’d heard a little about from a few people and was intrigued to try, though it had a reputation for being expensive. I am referring to Ninja New York, a themed Japanese restaurant where you are served by ninjas and the food is self-proclaimed “high-end Japanese cuisine”. The food was indeed tasty, and the “interactive” dishes, which often involved something exploding or having to pull a sword out of something followed by it emitting an atmospheric mist were great. We also got an after-dinner magic show by “New York’s tallest ninja” who displayed some Derren Brown-style tricks to us which he admitted were inspired by the performer, and that he secretly hoped Derren Brown didn’t get too popular in the States because he’d then be relegated to the status of “Oh hey, you’re that guy who does stuff a bit like Derren Brown”. His mastery of manipulation and misdirection was excellent though, and it was a great display to finish the meal with.

The only things with the Ninja restaurant was you need to be 1) really hungry (we had a five-course banquet…) 2) really rich (…for $50-$70 each) and 3) not mind that “recommendations” sometimes turn into “orders” without you remembering having ordered them (and to counter this, if something unexpected arrives, simply tell them… they’re ninjas, they can handle it). All in all though, it was a fantastic meal that is worth experiencing, particularly, I would imagine, if you have kids.

We’re flying home at 10pm local time tonight. Neither of us want to go home. We’ve started to feel “settled” here now and are coming to terms with New York’s own little idiosyncrasies, although the Metro still occasionally bamboozles us. We’ll definitely be back, without question.

A Jedi in New York: Day 1

Those of you who know me, follow me on Twitter or have been secretly watching me from the bushes will know that I got married to my beautiful and gorgeous now-wife Jane on Sunday 26th October. The wedding was a huge success thanks to the not inconsiderable labours of the new Mrs Jedi along with assistance and financial support from our respective parents. Some photos can be found here with more to follow – if you were in attendance at the wedding and have some photos to upload, please feel free to use the Upload button to contribute your own photographs.

Now we’re over in New York for our honeymoon – yes, it’s the land of Papapishu and Lord Regulus, and we arrived last night, so today was our first full day here. I’ve decided to blog the experience (most of it, at least…) as a nice record of what we got up to. Like the wedding, there will be photos to follow upon our return – watch this space for details of where to find them.

So what did we get up to today? Quite a few things, actually, considering the fact that we decided today would be a day of “wandering” and discovering things rather than setting out to specifically do something. The only task we had to complete today was to pick up our New York Pass, a cool little card that Jane found out about before we left. Essentially, it’s a card that allows you free or discounted entry to a lot of the popular New York attractions such as the Empire State Building, the Guggenheimer, Madame Tussauds and numerous others, as well as money off Broadway tickets and food at various restaurants.

We began our day with breakfast at the Ritz Diner on East 62nd Street at 1st Avenue (or whichever way around you’re supposed to say them), a pleasant little dive that we found on our first night here. It’s a 24-hour traditional American diner with a huge menu (the kind that Gordon Ramsay would immediately want to set fire to and jump up and down on) and cheap prices. I had a stack of pancakes with eggs (sunny side – partly because I can never remember the American expressions for the different types of eggs except that one) and Jane had some waffles with bananas and blueberries. The breakfast was so enormous we theorised that it would be enough to sustain us for the whole day’s activities… and we weren’t wrong.

After that, we glanced at our guidebooks to attempt to work out which way we had to go to pick up our New York Pass. We knew it was somewhere in the region of Times Square but didn’t really know how to get there. It turned out we had to head vaguely West. So we did, crossing 1st, 2nd and 3rd Avenue and being momentarily confused by the lack of a 4th Avenue and instead having a Lexington, Madison and Park Avenue before we reached the famous 5th Avenue.

Upon reaching 5th, we had a stroll down it to look at the man shops, including, of course, the striking exterior of the Apple Store. I resisted the temptation to go in but took some photos of the outside of the building because, after all, it’s interesting to look at. But enough of that. We continued along 5th until we came to the corner of 45th Street, down which we turned because we’d noticed earlier on our guide map that we could pick up our Passes from Planet Hollywood which just happened to be on 45th Street and Broadway.

Down 45th Street I came across a sight which made us both chuckle a little – the Big Apple Hostel. Now, the location of this place is amazing – about 2 minutes’ walk away from Broadway – but from the outside it looks like the least inviting place in the history of ever. The fact that it stands right next to a distinctly pleasant-looking coffee house makes it seem all the more out-of-place, particularly given its proximity to the glitz of Broadway and Times Square.

Finally we reached Planet Hollywood and picked up our Passes. We stopped at the bar to have a milkshake – by this time, it was lunchtime, but given the enormous size of our breakfasts we weren’t feeling hungry in the slightest, so we settled for a simple drink and an ogle at the cheesiness that is the interior of that place.

Upon leaving PH, we strolled down Broadway. The sun had come out now after a dull start to the day with a few minutes of rain, so I took the opportunity to take a lot of photos. I’m finally starting to work out what the different settings on my still-quite-new Nikon D40 DSLR do, as will hopefully be evidenced by the photos I’ve taken. The photos certainly look nice on the camera’s built-in LCD – I guess it remains to be seen if they still look good on a monitor!

Jane led me down Broadway to an unknown destination – to me, at least. Said destination became immediately apparent once we reached East 34th Street and we saw the Empire State Building rising majestically into the skies. We decided that now would be a good time to ascend the gigantic building and also to take the New York Skyride simulator tour. Yes, we are doing gratuitously touristy things, and I’m sure those of you who live in or know NYC will be groaning at what we’ve done so far, but what the hell. The last time I came to New York I was four years old and can remember precisely jack shit about it, while Jane had been more recently but had ascended the tower on a very cold day when visibility wasn’t great.

The view from the top of the ESB was predictably fantastic (and yes, there were yet more photos taken) but the other thing which struck me about the building was the sheer number of queues you had to join in order to get to the top. There’s a queue to get through security. There’s a queue to get your tickets. There’s a queue to get in the elevator to the 80th floor. There’s a queue on the 80th floor to get in the elevator to the 86th floor, where the observation deck is. Once you’ve finished viewing the, err, view, there’s a queue to get down to the 80th floor, then a queue to get to the elevator to the 2nd floor… you get the idea. The whole experience, which was, let’s face it, getting in an elevator and going to the top of a really tall building, took over 3 hours altogether.

This sounds somewhat cynical. I don’t want to give the impression that ascending the ESB is a worthless experience – far from it, as the view at the top is spectacular. However, one shouldn’t go into it with the foolish assumption that I had, which was that it would be relatively straightforward to get in and get to the top!

Following our visit to the ESB, we decided we were hungry and decided to return to Planet Hollywood for dinner, as our two New York Passes gave us $20 off our meal there. While Planet Hollywood may not be the classiest cuisine in town, it was certainly very tasty and gave us the energy we needed to get back to the hotel.

It was a long walk around, but we covered a lot today, and I developed my “feel” for the area enormously. Before today, my knowledge of New York geography was extremely sketchy, despite playthroughs of Project Gotham and Grand Theft Auto. Incidentally, Grand Theft Auto has the “feel” of New York pretty much perfect (in my outsider’s opinion) and I recognised Times Square from both Project Gotham and Forza Motorsport 2. Kudos. No pun intended.

No idea what we’re covering tomorrow, but I’ll post if I get a moment! In the meantime, for those who are really, really interested, here’s a Google Map of today’s trip.