NYC trip recap
Mar. 17th, 2009 07:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swingchickie*sipping coffee* okay, time to recap our weekend in NYC. for heading up there with not much planned, we did pretty okay. :)
except for having tix to the simply red concert on sunday night, and dinner reservations at perilla saturday night, we really had nothing planned. which kind of worked against us, because unless you just want to wander around and shop, or catch some show matinees, you kind of need to know what's going on in NYC in order to fill the time. we found out through our hotel magazine that the two things we would have loved to do (a swing night in brooklyn, and the 2009 NYC mustache and beard contest) overlapped with the 2 things we'd already planned. oh, well.
anyway... here's our hotel, which we really liked. it's called "Stay." (the period is part of the name) and is literally 1/2 block from the middle of times square. it's a boutique hotel, which means tiny rooms, but everything was clean and modern and comfy (i slept soooo well in that bed).
lobby
lobby lounge (i seriously want a wall of glass bubbles like this!!! *covet*)
aquarium nook
the "aspen social club", a funky bar/restaurant in our hotel. it was packed on saturday night with a line out the door. the place is a hoot, this sort of surreal-twin-peaks-but-sexy vibe going on.
ceiling - those are all resin antlers.
the walls were made to look like a surreal log forest... but there are only a handful of logs there, the rest is done with mirrors.
we had all saturday afternoon to wander around... again, because we didn't know of anything specific going on, we just sort of wandered around times square. i showed jack Colony music, we got a greasy late lunch at the playwrights pub, and we got accosted by several dozen people scattered throughout the square handing out show flyers. bleh. took a nap and then cabbed it into the village for dinner at Perilla, the restaurant owned by harold dieterle (winner of top chef season 1).
perilla was... eh. the food was good, but it wasn't "oh my god" good like some of the reviews i'd read on yelp. the service was great, the vanilla-scented donuts that we split for dessert were yummy, but there are many philly restaurants that i'd rate higher. perhaps our expectations were too high... all i know is we left there a bit bummed. and promptly went back to our hotel room, where we passed out in a rich food coma by midnight. (this is a theme with us... we're not very exciting and party-y on vacation.)
sunday morning i was up at 7:30am, because my body doesn't know how to sleep in. grrrrrrrr. i let jack sleep in and headed out to wander the city for a couple of hours. of course, because i'm a total geek for the today show, i headed over to rockefeller center to catch the end of sunday's broadcast. i really hate screamy people who are all freaking out trying to get on TV... i'd forgotten how bad it was from the last time i went, but the squad of squealing high school cheerleaders i was near was making it exponentially worse. funny thing was, the cheerleaders and most of the crowd left around 8:30am when they thought there'd be no more outdoor weather breaks where they could get on camera... after they left, they came out 2 more times and there were only a couple dozen of us left. they actually lost their best chance to be on TV. har.
janice huff doing the weather
this dude was the spitting image of a guy i knew in college. but nope, turns out it wasn't him.
carl quintanilla doing an interview
looking in at the set
joan rivers getting her lipstick done before her interview... when she was done, she looked out the window at me and smiled and mouthed, "good morning!". heh.
the gang, including joan in her fur (of course), doing the last little segment
after the today show, i met up with jack at the hotel and we headed out to breakfast/lunch. jack really wanted to go to katz's deli, the site of the famous "i'll have what she's having" scene from "when harry met sally". (that's not why he wanted to go... he just wanted a good breakfast in a new york jewish deli.)
jack in front of the big celebrity photo wall
homemade pickles to go with my homemade salami sandwich
the salami counter... you can ship a katz's salami anywhere in the world. their motto is "send a salami to your boy in the army".
after katz's, we headed back to the times square area... wandered through macy's (so beautiful, with that cool old wooden escalator!)... took some photos of parson's school of design... bought some skechers shoes, because the shoes i'd brought to walk around in blew a heel after 8 years of use (my bleyer swivel dance shoes... *weep*). napped and then headed out for dinner, which was an adventure... silly us to think we could get dinner at serendipity, even at 5:30 on a sunday... there was a line down the block. meh! we'd cabbed it all the way out there, so we stayed in the area and had dinner elsewhere, then cabbed it to radio city.
the simply red concert was... amazing. for a pasty irish guy is his 50s, mick hucknall still has an astounding voice. they played all their greatest hits... and i have to say, after hearing "WHO are you going to see?" for the last few months, it was great to be among 7,000 other people who loved this band as much as me and could sing along to every word. people danced in the aisles, cheered, cried (including me... hearing the entire audience sing the chorus of "if you don't know me by now" just killed me)... it was a total celebration of the band and a great american sendoff as they finished out their last tour ever.
here's a clip of the band doing "holding back the years" on one of their february tour dates... just listen to mick's voice, good lord.
the one thing i'm going to remember from now on: do not pay attention to the "no cameras" warnings. i didn't bring my camera because i didn't want it confiscated... EVERYONE at that concert had a camera. everyone. people were taking photos in the lobby right in front of radio city employees with no problem. and with 11th row seats, i could have gotten some excellent pictures. grrrrrrr.
so, that's pretty much it. came home yesterday, had a hoop order to fill, caught up on some of my work e-mails. back to the grind.
except for having tix to the simply red concert on sunday night, and dinner reservations at perilla saturday night, we really had nothing planned. which kind of worked against us, because unless you just want to wander around and shop, or catch some show matinees, you kind of need to know what's going on in NYC in order to fill the time. we found out through our hotel magazine that the two things we would have loved to do (a swing night in brooklyn, and the 2009 NYC mustache and beard contest) overlapped with the 2 things we'd already planned. oh, well.
anyway... here's our hotel, which we really liked. it's called "Stay." (the period is part of the name) and is literally 1/2 block from the middle of times square. it's a boutique hotel, which means tiny rooms, but everything was clean and modern and comfy (i slept soooo well in that bed).
lobby
lobby lounge (i seriously want a wall of glass bubbles like this!!! *covet*)
aquarium nook
the "aspen social club", a funky bar/restaurant in our hotel. it was packed on saturday night with a line out the door. the place is a hoot, this sort of surreal-twin-peaks-but-sexy vibe going on.
ceiling - those are all resin antlers.
the walls were made to look like a surreal log forest... but there are only a handful of logs there, the rest is done with mirrors.
we had all saturday afternoon to wander around... again, because we didn't know of anything specific going on, we just sort of wandered around times square. i showed jack Colony music, we got a greasy late lunch at the playwrights pub, and we got accosted by several dozen people scattered throughout the square handing out show flyers. bleh. took a nap and then cabbed it into the village for dinner at Perilla, the restaurant owned by harold dieterle (winner of top chef season 1).
perilla was... eh. the food was good, but it wasn't "oh my god" good like some of the reviews i'd read on yelp. the service was great, the vanilla-scented donuts that we split for dessert were yummy, but there are many philly restaurants that i'd rate higher. perhaps our expectations were too high... all i know is we left there a bit bummed. and promptly went back to our hotel room, where we passed out in a rich food coma by midnight. (this is a theme with us... we're not very exciting and party-y on vacation.)
sunday morning i was up at 7:30am, because my body doesn't know how to sleep in. grrrrrrrr. i let jack sleep in and headed out to wander the city for a couple of hours. of course, because i'm a total geek for the today show, i headed over to rockefeller center to catch the end of sunday's broadcast. i really hate screamy people who are all freaking out trying to get on TV... i'd forgotten how bad it was from the last time i went, but the squad of squealing high school cheerleaders i was near was making it exponentially worse. funny thing was, the cheerleaders and most of the crowd left around 8:30am when they thought there'd be no more outdoor weather breaks where they could get on camera... after they left, they came out 2 more times and there were only a couple dozen of us left. they actually lost their best chance to be on TV. har.
janice huff doing the weather
this dude was the spitting image of a guy i knew in college. but nope, turns out it wasn't him.
carl quintanilla doing an interview
looking in at the set
joan rivers getting her lipstick done before her interview... when she was done, she looked out the window at me and smiled and mouthed, "good morning!". heh.
the gang, including joan in her fur (of course), doing the last little segment
after the today show, i met up with jack at the hotel and we headed out to breakfast/lunch. jack really wanted to go to katz's deli, the site of the famous "i'll have what she's having" scene from "when harry met sally". (that's not why he wanted to go... he just wanted a good breakfast in a new york jewish deli.)
jack in front of the big celebrity photo wall
homemade pickles to go with my homemade salami sandwich
the salami counter... you can ship a katz's salami anywhere in the world. their motto is "send a salami to your boy in the army".
after katz's, we headed back to the times square area... wandered through macy's (so beautiful, with that cool old wooden escalator!)... took some photos of parson's school of design... bought some skechers shoes, because the shoes i'd brought to walk around in blew a heel after 8 years of use (my bleyer swivel dance shoes... *weep*). napped and then headed out for dinner, which was an adventure... silly us to think we could get dinner at serendipity, even at 5:30 on a sunday... there was a line down the block. meh! we'd cabbed it all the way out there, so we stayed in the area and had dinner elsewhere, then cabbed it to radio city.
the simply red concert was... amazing. for a pasty irish guy is his 50s, mick hucknall still has an astounding voice. they played all their greatest hits... and i have to say, after hearing "WHO are you going to see?" for the last few months, it was great to be among 7,000 other people who loved this band as much as me and could sing along to every word. people danced in the aisles, cheered, cried (including me... hearing the entire audience sing the chorus of "if you don't know me by now" just killed me)... it was a total celebration of the band and a great american sendoff as they finished out their last tour ever.
here's a clip of the band doing "holding back the years" on one of their february tour dates... just listen to mick's voice, good lord.
the one thing i'm going to remember from now on: do not pay attention to the "no cameras" warnings. i didn't bring my camera because i didn't want it confiscated... EVERYONE at that concert had a camera. everyone. people were taking photos in the lobby right in front of radio city employees with no problem. and with 11th row seats, i could have gotten some excellent pictures. grrrrrrr.
so, that's pretty much it. came home yesterday, had a hoop order to fill, caught up on some of my work e-mails. back to the grind.
