Really, not much to say here.... we did nearly nothing today, and all went smoothly. We returned to Foodswings for lunch. I had the chik'n bacon ranch sandwich and disco fries (YES!) and Karen had 1 piece of southern-style fried chik'n, mac n' cheese, and mashed potatoes. All was great!
We made it to the airport about an hour before our flight boarded, and were glad to get home, even thought it was raining when we got to Nashville. The dogs and cats were super glad to see us, and we got to spend some time with my parents for dinner, which was really nice.
Basically, that's it! All-in-all, it was a great trip, but we were ready to be home.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Thursday, March 28, 2013
NYC - Day 6
The picture heavy edition!
We actually set an alarm clock this morning, the first time since we got here. I actually woke up about 45 minutes before it was to go off, so I checked email and stuff, and jumped into the shower. When I got out, I woke Karen up. We got ready, and took off for the day.
We stopped by Ms. Dahlia's again for breakfast, and I had to get the biscuit again. It's so tasty. Karen had another bagel and liked it as well. The cream cheese was really thick again, but not as much as our previous one. We were headed to Central Park, so we jumped on the A train, and blew right past the 72nd Street stop. Uh-oh, I thought the A stopped there, but we had to get off at 125th Street, and get onto the local C in order to get to our stop.
A few minutes later, we popped out right next the Central Park and The Dakota. The Dakota is the building that John Lennon lived in, and he was shot and killed right in front of it. The portion of the park in front of The Dakota was renamed to Strawberry Fields and there is a large "Imagine" tribute to John in Strawberry Fields.
We continued walking around the park, looking at the rocks and one of the lakes, and strolling through The Mall. We stopped briefly and looked through some prints for sale, and I saw a cool silk-screen of the Brooklyn Bridge for sale. Karen and I have a tradition of getting locally produced art when we travel, so we purchased it. It will look good in our house.
We continued NorthEast, watching the squirrels and kids playing. Most of the squirrels were grey, and occasionally one would be more brown. We saw two weird ones though. One was so blond looking that we thought it might be albino at first. A little while later we saw a dark black one. CRAZY!
We eventually found ourselves on the East side of the park at 5th and 70th. We stopped to see what restaurants might be around, and I realized that we were fairly close to Candle 79. I had hoped to eat here, but wasn't pressing it much and had sort of written off getting to it. I was delighted to see we could go now. I felt a little under-dressed, especially once we got there, but I was very excited to eat there. Karen ordered the grilled kale salad. It was very refreshing and extremely tasty. I think she was a little disappointed with it initially, but later said it was very filling and it was nice to eat a veggie dominant meal. I ordered the seitan picatta and was simply blown away. It was so tasty, and made up of the most amazing seitan I've ever had. The texture was amazing, it cooked up differently than I've ever seen, and absorbed so much yumminess from the sauce and capers. IN-CRED-IBLE. I could eat this every day.
We wrapped up lunch with a perfectly sized and richly delicious Chocolate-Peanut Butter Bliss. We joked around with out waiter for a while, a weirdly hilarious guy that I can't describe more than that. I liked him a lot.
After lunch, we walked toward the subway, and eventually made it over to Times Square again. We walked away from Times Square as quickly as possible, heading toward the West side piers for our 4:00 cruise. We got to the pier at 2:15pm, but didn't really need to be there until 3:15. We had to exchange vouchers for tickets, and I asked if we could upgrade to the full-circle tour that goes completely around Manhattan. It was $4 more each, and was an hour longer, but left an hour earlier, so it worked out really well. The cruise was great, in my opinion, and freaked Karen out at first. We got to see so much from the boat, including a relatively up-close look at the Statue of Liberty, all of the bridges, and eventually the little red-lighthouse. I had a blast!
We saw so much cool stuff that I'm sure I've already forgotten what much of it was. One of the neat things, to me, was how much of the far Northern part of the island was forested. Not super-heavily, but still very surprising to me.
As we pulled in to the pier, we passed the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space museum. The museum is an air craft carrier, holding a number of aircraft on it's deck. Out front is the test Space Shuttle Enterprise. I saw this in Washington D.C. 2 summer's ago at the Smithsonian Air and Space museum, where it used to reside until it was replaced with one of the recently retired full-on Space Shuttles. Pretty neat to think that I saw it in two different cities.
We jumped off board, and walked back toward Times Square to catch the train back to the apartment. We needed to clean up, see the guy we rented from in order to get our deposit back, and get some rest before heading out for dinner.
After chilling out for a bit, we were both getting quite hungry, so we set off for Foodswings. After a slight detour (wrong stop) we easily food the place in the heart of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Seems like a really cool place, but we were here for the food. The chica working the counter was really cool straight off, and quickly got us set up. We ordered punk fries (they were out of gravy for disco fries, their version of poutine :-<), chipotle fries, the Zapata burger (chili cheese burger), bbq chicken legs, and mac and cheese..... observations: 1. The fries were fantastic. Nothing fancy, but the cheese on both was crazy good. 2. The burger was quite possibly the best burger I've ever had. great. 3. Karen's chicken legs was awesome. Basically shaped and breaded fried seitan. Holly's is just as good, but these were good and had "bones" in them (wooden sticks) 4. Karen and I both thought that the mac and cheese might have been the best we've ever had, vegan or not. If this place was easily accessible on a regular basis, I'd weigh like 4200 pounds. INCREDIBLY tasty junk food. Amazing. See all of my pictures from today HERE.
We actually set an alarm clock this morning, the first time since we got here. I actually woke up about 45 minutes before it was to go off, so I checked email and stuff, and jumped into the shower. When I got out, I woke Karen up. We got ready, and took off for the day.
We stopped by Ms. Dahlia's again for breakfast, and I had to get the biscuit again. It's so tasty. Karen had another bagel and liked it as well. The cream cheese was really thick again, but not as much as our previous one. We were headed to Central Park, so we jumped on the A train, and blew right past the 72nd Street stop. Uh-oh, I thought the A stopped there, but we had to get off at 125th Street, and get onto the local C in order to get to our stop.
A few minutes later, we popped out right next the Central Park and The Dakota. The Dakota is the building that John Lennon lived in, and he was shot and killed right in front of it. The portion of the park in front of The Dakota was renamed to Strawberry Fields and there is a large "Imagine" tribute to John in Strawberry Fields.
We continued walking around the park, looking at the rocks and one of the lakes, and strolling through The Mall. We stopped briefly and looked through some prints for sale, and I saw a cool silk-screen of the Brooklyn Bridge for sale. Karen and I have a tradition of getting locally produced art when we travel, so we purchased it. It will look good in our house.
We continued NorthEast, watching the squirrels and kids playing. Most of the squirrels were grey, and occasionally one would be more brown. We saw two weird ones though. One was so blond looking that we thought it might be albino at first. A little while later we saw a dark black one. CRAZY!
We eventually found ourselves on the East side of the park at 5th and 70th. We stopped to see what restaurants might be around, and I realized that we were fairly close to Candle 79. I had hoped to eat here, but wasn't pressing it much and had sort of written off getting to it. I was delighted to see we could go now. I felt a little under-dressed, especially once we got there, but I was very excited to eat there. Karen ordered the grilled kale salad. It was very refreshing and extremely tasty. I think she was a little disappointed with it initially, but later said it was very filling and it was nice to eat a veggie dominant meal. I ordered the seitan picatta and was simply blown away. It was so tasty, and made up of the most amazing seitan I've ever had. The texture was amazing, it cooked up differently than I've ever seen, and absorbed so much yumminess from the sauce and capers. IN-CRED-IBLE. I could eat this every day.
We wrapped up lunch with a perfectly sized and richly delicious Chocolate-Peanut Butter Bliss. We joked around with out waiter for a while, a weirdly hilarious guy that I can't describe more than that. I liked him a lot.
After lunch, we walked toward the subway, and eventually made it over to Times Square again. We walked away from Times Square as quickly as possible, heading toward the West side piers for our 4:00 cruise. We got to the pier at 2:15pm, but didn't really need to be there until 3:15. We had to exchange vouchers for tickets, and I asked if we could upgrade to the full-circle tour that goes completely around Manhattan. It was $4 more each, and was an hour longer, but left an hour earlier, so it worked out really well. The cruise was great, in my opinion, and freaked Karen out at first. We got to see so much from the boat, including a relatively up-close look at the Statue of Liberty, all of the bridges, and eventually the little red-lighthouse. I had a blast!
We saw so much cool stuff that I'm sure I've already forgotten what much of it was. One of the neat things, to me, was how much of the far Northern part of the island was forested. Not super-heavily, but still very surprising to me.
As we pulled in to the pier, we passed the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space museum. The museum is an air craft carrier, holding a number of aircraft on it's deck. Out front is the test Space Shuttle Enterprise. I saw this in Washington D.C. 2 summer's ago at the Smithsonian Air and Space museum, where it used to reside until it was replaced with one of the recently retired full-on Space Shuttles. Pretty neat to think that I saw it in two different cities.
We jumped off board, and walked back toward Times Square to catch the train back to the apartment. We needed to clean up, see the guy we rented from in order to get our deposit back, and get some rest before heading out for dinner.
After chilling out for a bit, we were both getting quite hungry, so we set off for Foodswings. After a slight detour (wrong stop) we easily food the place in the heart of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Seems like a really cool place, but we were here for the food. The chica working the counter was really cool straight off, and quickly got us set up. We ordered punk fries (they were out of gravy for disco fries, their version of poutine :-<), chipotle fries, the Zapata burger (chili cheese burger), bbq chicken legs, and mac and cheese..... observations: 1. The fries were fantastic. Nothing fancy, but the cheese on both was crazy good. 2. The burger was quite possibly the best burger I've ever had. great. 3. Karen's chicken legs was awesome. Basically shaped and breaded fried seitan. Holly's is just as good, but these were good and had "bones" in them (wooden sticks) 4. Karen and I both thought that the mac and cheese might have been the best we've ever had, vegan or not. If this place was easily accessible on a regular basis, I'd weigh like 4200 pounds. INCREDIBLY tasty junk food. Amazing. See all of my pictures from today HERE.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
NYC - Day 5
The Less-Painful Foot Edition!
This morning we were in no rush at all, and apparently really tired. I woke up at 5, but went back to sleep around 6:30, and then we both slept until 10! After getting ready, we stopped at Le Paris Dakar bakery in the neighborhood. It's a crepes and French bakery, a French bakery run by a Senegalese woman. Karen had a chocolate croissant, and I had an apple turnover. Both were very tasty and extremely flaky. VERY good. Karen had a coffee and enjoyed it. I had a pineapple-ginger juice. It was really heavy on the ginger and burned the crap out of the back of my throat on the first sip. Unfortunately, the second sip didn't get any better.
We wrapped up, stopped at a bodega and grabbed some water to rinse the ginger out of my mouth, and headed toward the Theatre District. Our show was at 2:00pm, so we located the theatre which already had a small line nearly two hours before show time, and then we walked around checking out the rest of the Theatre District and Hell's Kitchen.
We spied a really good looking burger place, and made a note to come back.
After killing a bit of time, we made our way to the Al Hirschfield Theatre. I won't go into much about the show, other than to say we both absolutely loved Kinky Boots. It was HILARIOUS, touching, and just an all-around great show. Harvey Fierstein, Cindy Lauper, and Jerry Mitchell did an incredible show and I'm very glad that we got to see this show (Thanks for the tip-off Deb)!
After we got out of the theatre, we made our way toward Times Square to see about getting some food. We popped out right into the midst of things, and were surprised by how small it seemed. Camera angles are apparently everthing. Or maybe not, as we later learned. We were walking around when we recalled the burgers place, so we made our way back West to 5 Napkin Burger in Hell's Kitchen.
Karen had the classic and sweet potato fries and was very pleased with both. She said she was having a "Marshall moment" and had found her red door with a green burger sign (if you've seen it, you'll get it). I had the veggie and regular fries. I love thick cut fries, so I was a little surprised by how much I loved the shoestring fries. GREAT! The burger itself was not exactly that great, in my opinion. The patty itself was amazing textured and firm. It contained beets, however, and the flavor was fairly dominant. I'm not a beet fan. It also came with bread and butter pickles (they don't serve dills at all! thank toby I asked for them on the side), and a sauce that I didn't think was that great. I ate much of the burger, and later my stomach was upset.
Karen got a slice of cheesecake, and while I wasn't planning on having any of it, it was a massive piece. It was the lightest, smoothest, fluffiest cheesecake we've ever seen. If this is what New York Style Cheesecake is supposed to be like, NO ONE in the south has ever come close in my experience.
We pointed ourselves back toward Rockefeller Center to use our Top of the Rock passes. We stood in a few long lines to exchange our vouchers for actual tickets for 8:40pm, and then had a little over two hours to kill. We found ourselves walking around the area, popping into the big Sephora, H&M, Sak's (GOOD NIGHT! expensive!) and one or two other places for a while. Eventually, it was our turn to go to the top.
It was cool and windy up top, but totally worth all of the waiting to see the awesome view. not much to say here, the pictures hopefully convey the idea.
After our Top of the Rock viewing, we made our way back to Times Square. What a difference! At night, when it's all light up, it is a much different, and much larger place. Very cool, and I'm really glad we came back after dark. I grabbed some veggie empanadas from gourmet food truck, Nuchas, and scarfed them down. They were just closing as I got them, and literally got all three of the veggie ones that they had left. I expected to like the shiitake curry more than the portobello, but I was mistaken. They were all good, but the portobello was my favorite.
We looked around for a little longer, and finally jumped on the subway. We got back to Brooklyn at about 11.
Tomorrow we are planning on hitting up part of Central Park, and then we have a Harbor Cruise around Manhattan. Tomorrow night, we WILL be eating at foodswings in Brooklyn. I CANNOT WAIT!
HERE ARE the rest of my pictures from today.
This morning we were in no rush at all, and apparently really tired. I woke up at 5, but went back to sleep around 6:30, and then we both slept until 10! After getting ready, we stopped at Le Paris Dakar bakery in the neighborhood. It's a crepes and French bakery, a French bakery run by a Senegalese woman. Karen had a chocolate croissant, and I had an apple turnover. Both were very tasty and extremely flaky. VERY good. Karen had a coffee and enjoyed it. I had a pineapple-ginger juice. It was really heavy on the ginger and burned the crap out of the back of my throat on the first sip. Unfortunately, the second sip didn't get any better.
We wrapped up, stopped at a bodega and grabbed some water to rinse the ginger out of my mouth, and headed toward the Theatre District. Our show was at 2:00pm, so we located the theatre which already had a small line nearly two hours before show time, and then we walked around checking out the rest of the Theatre District and Hell's Kitchen.
We spied a really good looking burger place, and made a note to come back.
After killing a bit of time, we made our way to the Al Hirschfield Theatre. I won't go into much about the show, other than to say we both absolutely loved Kinky Boots. It was HILARIOUS, touching, and just an all-around great show. Harvey Fierstein, Cindy Lauper, and Jerry Mitchell did an incredible show and I'm very glad that we got to see this show (Thanks for the tip-off Deb)!
After we got out of the theatre, we made our way toward Times Square to see about getting some food. We popped out right into the midst of things, and were surprised by how small it seemed. Camera angles are apparently everthing. Or maybe not, as we later learned. We were walking around when we recalled the burgers place, so we made our way back West to 5 Napkin Burger in Hell's Kitchen.
Karen had the classic and sweet potato fries and was very pleased with both. She said she was having a "Marshall moment" and had found her red door with a green burger sign (if you've seen it, you'll get it). I had the veggie and regular fries. I love thick cut fries, so I was a little surprised by how much I loved the shoestring fries. GREAT! The burger itself was not exactly that great, in my opinion. The patty itself was amazing textured and firm. It contained beets, however, and the flavor was fairly dominant. I'm not a beet fan. It also came with bread and butter pickles (they don't serve dills at all! thank toby I asked for them on the side), and a sauce that I didn't think was that great. I ate much of the burger, and later my stomach was upset.
Karen got a slice of cheesecake, and while I wasn't planning on having any of it, it was a massive piece. It was the lightest, smoothest, fluffiest cheesecake we've ever seen. If this is what New York Style Cheesecake is supposed to be like, NO ONE in the south has ever come close in my experience.
We pointed ourselves back toward Rockefeller Center to use our Top of the Rock passes. We stood in a few long lines to exchange our vouchers for actual tickets for 8:40pm, and then had a little over two hours to kill. We found ourselves walking around the area, popping into the big Sephora, H&M, Sak's (GOOD NIGHT! expensive!) and one or two other places for a while. Eventually, it was our turn to go to the top.
It was cool and windy up top, but totally worth all of the waiting to see the awesome view. not much to say here, the pictures hopefully convey the idea.
After our Top of the Rock viewing, we made our way back to Times Square. What a difference! At night, when it's all light up, it is a much different, and much larger place. Very cool, and I'm really glad we came back after dark. I grabbed some veggie empanadas from gourmet food truck, Nuchas, and scarfed them down. They were just closing as I got them, and literally got all three of the veggie ones that they had left. I expected to like the shiitake curry more than the portobello, but I was mistaken. They were all good, but the portobello was my favorite.
We looked around for a little longer, and finally jumped on the subway. We got back to Brooklyn at about 11.
Tomorrow we are planning on hitting up part of Central Park, and then we have a Harbor Cruise around Manhattan. Tomorrow night, we WILL be eating at foodswings in Brooklyn. I CANNOT WAIT!
HERE ARE the rest of my pictures from today.
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