ah, new york. this past week, the hubs and i indulged in a laid-back jaunt through the big apple... eating good food, doing whatever we wanted to do, sleeping in - all in all, a grand vacation. i know being on vacation in a city is far from the reality of living in a city, but my experience this time (and in prior visits) makes it hard to think logically about the differences- when i fantasize about living in a city, i think of manhattan.
without further ado, organized roughly by themes, a pictorial mash-up of our Summer 2010 NYC tour.
museums: we hit up the king tut exhibit that we had missed in SF, the museum of natural history, the new museum (pics yoinked from the web below), and walked museum mile past the guggenheim, whitney and the met. particularly enjoyed watching Hubble on IMAX at the museum of natural history, and rivane neuenschwander's exhibit at the new museum- her piece Rain Rains pictured below.
random happy thing: so it just so happened that we were walking on fifth avenue one afternoon... and waddaya know, we found eataly. it had been open for about an hour, and it was packed. we could hear italian spoken everywhere, and the store was enormous, and then all of a sudden we see people whipping out their cell phones and taking pictures... yes, mario batali in the flesh.
Broadway: spent an evening watching sean hayes and kristin chenoweth in promises, promises. we had pretty awesome orchestra seats- so close that i was driven to distraction by something that resembled a bindi on kristin chenoweth's forehead... googling after the show revealed that it was a microphone, which wouldn't have been noticeable from further away.
the sweets: there was so much in the way of good eats that i have to split up the desserts from the rest of the food pics. pictured below, two little red hens- a cute little bakery on the upper east side, with really great red velvet and brooklyn blackout cupcakes. also pictured (with pic stolen from the web), sugar sweet sunshine bakery which offered up an ok red velvet, but an outstanding strawberry cream cheese cupcake which andy proclaimed "the best cupcake i've ever eaten". the cupcakes looked so unassuming i didn't even taken pictures of them... also hit up some candy stores, including economy candy (my pic) and dylan's candy bar (web's pic). we also visited gramercy tavern for desserts, though i really wish we could have stopped by again for dinner. i had great aspirations for tracking down various dessert trucks, including the wafel truck, the cupcake stop truck, the big gay ice cream truck (not making this up)... but ended up incidentally having ice cream from the van leeuwen artisan ice cream truck in the village, and the lone remaining cupcake (s'mores) from chikalicious dessert club. at some point, even i had to admit that i had to stop trying cupcakes everywhere, because EVERYONE made cupcakes... including convenience stores on every corner.
the food: pictured below- shake shack with daniel & mike, rickshaw dumpling bar, le cirque (pre fixe lunch for restaurant week), rare, katz's deli (best pastrami ever), alice's tea cup chapter II (tastiest scones ever), and babbo (best. pasta. ever.). not pictured- mad for chicken (deliciously fried chicken wings of the bonchon/kyochon-esque variety), lunch at le bernadin with kay & steve, falafel at taim, pizza at motorino with molly, thai delivery food to our hotel (i just might be most jealous of the delivery service in nyc), random street cart fare. i could wax rhapsodic about most of our eats, but the most memorable dish was part of our pasta tasting menu at babbo (i have to thank my college roomie jenny for recommending this!)... we had the pasta bolognese replaced with the beef cheek ravioli, which is according to our waiter, the signature pasta dish of babbo. o. m. g. this dish would definitely be one of my picks for my "last supper"... rich, decadent, ridiculously good. and that's all i have to say about that.
but perhaps the happiest thing we experienced there was the gelato. andy proclaimed his pistachio gelato to be BETTER than the gelato he'd had in italy, and my pear and vanilla gelato was delicious. their desserts were also pretty tasty- pricey, but tasty. the standout was the monte bianco- a concoction of chestnuts and meringue.
yay for sporting events! the timing was wonderful... we planned our trip without thinking about the US Open, but a few weeks ago realized that we'd be there during the 1st-2nd rounds. so one lovely evening, we headed out on the 7 train to flushing and watched some good tennis. we had tickets for arthur ashe stadium, and we were in the middle of the djokovic vs. petzschner match when a fight broke out amongst the fans a few sections over. we couldn't really see anything because everyone was standing up, so we saw the fight on youtube after the match. ridiculousness! we're hoping to visit wimbledon someday as well, and i just can't imagine something like this happening there- at least, let's hope not. in any case, it was an awesome experience and i'd love to attend again if given the chance.
other random moments: trekking all the way out to the colbert report studios only to find that the show was on hiatus for the whole week :( , shopping in soho for a jacket (restaurants apparently have dress codes that they actually stick to out there... what a concept), shopping desperately along our walk on the UES for more suitable footwear and finding some $7 sandals at H&M (not all shoes, no matter how comfy they may seem, are NYC-worthy), washington square at night, and strolling in central park. oh, and finding out that the hubs is now BOARD CERTIFIED. :)
*sigh*
i heart NYC
it was a much-needed break, and has helped tremendously with providing some perspective. i DO feel refreshed (even if i did catch a little cold over the past few days). i've been able to realize, yet again, that there will be a life after residency which will start in less than 2 years... a life that is full of possibilities.
that being said, i still really don't wanna go back to work. don't suppose there's any solution for that.
