NYC: An Intro

New York is dirty and smelly.  The people are weird and everything is ridiculously expensive.  I got lost at least 10 times and the weather kinda sucked.  With that said, I freaking LOVE it.  I went to DC in March, and while the company was nice (shout out to anna and priyal what whatt), DC is lacking a certain charm that I felt in New York.  Plus, it's kind of a bore.  I plan on writing a lot more about my trip, but I didn't want to write some super long blog that everyone would be scared to read.  So, first, top 5 things I love about New York.

1.  The People.  Where else could you find a man walking down the street carrying an enormous snake (5th avenue... during a parade.  There were TONS of people around)  Or a man shouting "Obamacondoms.com, for all your hard times"?  Or a man dressed up as the statue of libert

y?  Side story to that... as I was attempting to take this picture, my

 mother behind me all of a sudden started bursting into laughter.  After some moments of confusion I realized I was standing on a grate and my dress was going all marilyn monroe on me.  This was Times Square on a Saturday night. So, my family is dysfunctional, my mother obviously thinks crowds of people staring at me and my underwear is hilarious.  

    

2.  The food.  Oh, the food.  It started with 

olive oil and roasted fennel gelato from Mario Batali's restaurant (Iron Chef anyone?) and ended with an enormous piece of divine strawberry cheesecake from Carnegie Deli.  In between that there was Bobby Flay's restaurant- Mesa Grill, high afternoon tea (to the right... yeah I ate a lot of sugar on this trip), soup dumplings, etc.  On the last day we went to Aquagrill, a restaurant in Soho where I could have picked out a $500 meal consistingof 1 ounce of caviar, an oyster sampler, and a bottle of wine.  I settled for a yellowfish tuna sandwich which was only about $12 instead. 

3.  The Subway.  So it took awhile to figure out, but once you get the hang of it, it's not so bad.  While I felt that DCs was a tad easily to decipher, it is not as practical because NYCs system goes everywhere you would need to go.  Might still have to walk several blocks, but its doable.  And there's always somebody down there playing music.  Guitar, drums, violin, you name it.  My favorite was on our last night, as we were leaving Times Square we walked down to the sound of The Meetles, a Beatles cover band.  They had a huge crowd and were really good.  We only caught the last couple of songs they did but it was really cool.  

4.  The Countries represented.  To start, there's just so many foreign people it's not even funny.  I heard accents that I couldn't even tell you where they were from.  Chinatown is just great to walk around.  Its the only place I saw cats the whole time I was there... hmm. Lots of ducks hanging up in windows, all kinds of fish and fruits and veggies to buy.  Its really legit, it looks almost identical to the small town where I lived when I was in China.  Madeline bought some bubble milk tea while we were there.  The "bubbles" are tapioca and the drink is very sweet.  A bit strange but it was good.  We also went to Little Italy which is in fact, very little, just one street.  Come to think of it though, the only time spent there was in a shop run by Chinese people... so didn't really experience that.  Sunday was the national puerto rican day parade.  We were one of the few non-puerto ricans there, but I still found it very cool.  Its just neat to watch how excited they all were and how proud they are of their culture. 

5.  It's like, famous.  I kept on thinking things like, oh here's the lobby of the Empire State Building they show on Elf when he first walks into the building.  This is where Phoebe runs like crazy through Central Park on Friends.  These are the steps (of the Met) that Kevin James sits on in the movie Hitch.  This is the statue they always show in the intro to 30 rock.  And so on and so on.  Our waiter at Mesa Grill was telling us all the movies that were being filmed in NYC then and all the celebrities that he had randomly seen.  I also went on the NBC studio tour and got to see the SNL set and Jimmy Fallon's late night studio.  

SOOO, Summary.  NYC=awesome.  If I'm not lazy, I will write some more details.