New York State of Mind

Here is a departure from my normal travels to natural wonders. This week I will be in New York City!

Jaime invited me months ago on the basis of a band called First Aid Kit that she wanted to see at Radio City Music Hall and then we would figure the rest out. Well, my must do was a Broadway show and I chose the play Good Night, Oscar. It was really hard not to pick a musical, but I wanted something good, that was not a revival, and not something likely to get a touring company that could come to Indianapolis or somewhere else nearby.

I picked Jaime up and we headed to the airport. It all was a breeze. Which was a relief because I was getting a little paranoid. The last two times I had a trip planned to NYC they were cancelled for 9-11 and the pandemic. It was nice to find out I am not the harbinger of doom for NYC. Jaime gave me one rule, though: no checked bags! She did not want to waste time at baggage claim, but we were in the last group to board so we had to check our carry-ons anyway since the overhead bins were full. Oh well, it was quick.

Indianapolis is smoky once again from the Canadian wildfires. The smoke can pass for a haze until you fly above it and it just looks like a blanket in the sky. I did not expect it to look so different from cloud cover.

When we got off the plane in LaGuardia, we were surprised to find such a nice airport. It has been renovated and they did a wonderful job. As we headed to baggage claim, we saw a Hasidic Jewish man carrying a special hat shaped case for his other hat. Then when we went out to catch the shuttle to the subway station, there was a loud unhoused man screaming at no one in particular. They shuttle when through lots of traffic where small streets just kept coming in to merge without anymore lanes forming while people liberally used their horns. We hopped off the bus to go down to the subway. I have been on subways before, but not New York’s. There was more diversity in that subway car than in all of Hartford City. We came out at Penn Station, and then walked to our hotel. This was a good time to only have a carry-on instead of a big ol’ piece of luggage.

Our hotel is in Manhattan so we could be within walking distance of Radio City Music Hall and Broadway. It’s a nice little hotel called the VOCO. Our room is cozy. We are on the tenth floor and look out to the little courtyard the hotel has and the backs of other buildings. This sounds bad, but it is actually nice because we are not facing the street. Our room is quieter than my home in my small town.

We relaxed in the room for a little bit (it is humid as a sauna here) and made our game plan. We picked a Korean restaurant and decided we would walk to Times Square and Rockefeller Center, turn and go a block, then pass by the restaurant as we headed back to the hotel. The city is walkable, but it is still a lot of walking. I flipped off the Fox News studio and then we reached Times Square. Times Square was a bombardment of ads, videos, and lights. It was crowded and smelled of weed. It was a sight to see, but we were happy to just walk it without stopping in the stores. I was ready to get assaulted by bad costumed characters demanding payment for pictures, but the hot, rainy day left only a really impressive guy dressed as a Transformer yellow taxi cab out. (No picture of him, because I still didn’t want to get yelled at for money.)

Somewhere along to walk, Jaime found a site saying our restaurant is actually temporarily closed, so we changed our plan and headed towards a place called Empanada Mamas that showed up on two “Places Locals Only Know About” blogs. With our new route in place, we headed to Radio City Music Hall on our way to Rockefeller Center. We were walking around to get to the fountain side when we Jaime figured out we could just go in the building. We looked around a bit and were approached by a security guard who told us there were restaurants downstairs. Since one was Korean, we changed plans again. Those plans were short-lived since everything was closed for Sunday, but it also unexpectedly put us on the level with the famous fountain and ice rink that is a roller-skating rink in the summer.

We went up the stairs to go where the Christmas Tree is and unexpectedly ended up at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was quite spectacular. I know I had seen it back in the early 1990’s when I went to NYC on a school trip, but I do not know if we got to go inside because I did not remember all this.

At this point, since neither of us had eaten lunch, we were starving. We decided Empanada Mamas was too far, so Jaime found another Korean place closer by (HA!) We headed that way and had over ten blocks to walk. Once again, by accident, we ran into the New York Public Library. We plan on visiting it later in the week, but I still had to get my photo with the lions.

Disrespectful pigeon on his head

We finally reached the restaurant at 7:30. It was a hole-in-the-wall with a bunch of Asians waiting outside (which is a good sign the place is authentic) and a second Korean restaurant next door. We went in and there was a 61 party waitlist. We figured the neighbor was just as bad, do we opted for the Japanese place in the basement with its entrance between the two called Izakaya. There we were told it would be a 45 minute wait, but since we would have to find somewhere new and walk to it that that would probably take that long anyway, so we put our names in. I went and washed my hands and when I came back, they were ready to seat us! We are assuming she hit the wrong thing on her iPad which texted Jaime and then they didn’t take it back, so our 45 minute wait was only two!

We were sat at a communal table with only one other gentleman. He was probably in his mid-twenties, early thirties. Jaime stuck up a conversation with him and we is an aspiring writer who has lived in the city for a few years and had just came back from a trip to Japan. He was impressed with us finding this place on our first day in the City. We had a lovely time and delicious food and cocktails.

Full (and sweaty) we headed back to the hotel.

What we expected to just be a minor day of looking around a bit turned out to be a big bite out of the Big Apple! Day one and we have set the bar high.