As Gerrard Kenny once sang “New York, New York (So Good They Named It Twice.) And he was right. It is so good. Every visit to New York seems to always bring something new, as well visits to the old, and with the whole family (Dad, Mum, Stephen and Pat) in New York my 2008 visit was an extra special visit.

Reflecting back on the last five days or so it seems that I’ve spent most of this visit eating or shopping. Not a bad thing in most people’s books! Also, for the first time, and I’m not sure why I’ve never done this before, I experienced a bit of what the New York nightlife could be like when I caught up with Mark on a Saturday night. Maybe I’ve never really done it before because in my previous visits the days are usually filled with doing all the touristy things morning ’til night and with all the pavement pounding during normal waking hours the last thing I could imagine was partying like I was 18 again! Heh heh.

Day 1 was relatively relaxed as our flight into New York had been delayed and instead of coming into New York at 5pm the day before we got there at midnight instead, and with all of us not getting much sleep on the flights we’d all basically been up for about 36 hours straight so a sleep in was the first order of the day. Dad, Stephen and I somehow made it in to Manhattan for lunch time but in the time it took me to go downtown with the boys it was already time for me to turn around and head back up town to meet Mirela’s Dad! It was pretty trippy to meet up with him in Manhattan of all places. After grabbing lunch I headed back down town to meet Dad and Stephen in Century 21 for a few hours of serious shopping. I’ve mentioned Century 21 in my New York blog entries before – it’s a department store which is famous for discounted designer stuffs but you’ve got to work for it and dig around if you want anything decent. I was absolutely worn out by the time we headed back home.

Day 2 was a bit of a tourist day with Dad and Stephen. After spending what felt like the morning in Hershey’s and M&M World in Times Square we headed to Rub (standing for Righteous Urban Barbeque) BBQ for lunch. It would have been really good if we’d been able to get the selections that we wanted. Unfortunately the storm the night before had caused their fridges to malfunction and they lost a lot of their meat. 🙁 Still, we made the most of what we got and weren’t we stuffed after we’d finished. What better way to work off a huge lunch than a work out at Chelsea Piers. One of the things I love about America is their love for baseball because this translates in to the very cool batting cages. At Chelsea Piers there are a few enclosures with three different speeds – 30-40mph, 50-60mph and 65-75mph. You’d think that the slow cage would be relatively easy. Instead it proved difficult mainly because the ball came almost too slowly and the anticipation often had you swinging too early. In the video below it doesn’t even look like I’m making an effort! Moving from this to the medium was almost a bit of a shock with the 50-60mph being significantly faster but by the time we got to the 65-75mph the batting was almost second nature. We then wiled away the rest of the afternoon, witnesses a beautiful sunset, on the three-tiered golf driving range overlooking the Hudson River.

Day 3 was a bit of a lazy day with a family (and by family I mean my grandma, two of my aunts and their families and Dad, Mum, Stephen and Pat) yum-cha in one of the largest Chinese restaurants I’ve ever been to. It was absolutely massive! Not the greatest yum-cha I’ve ever had but worth it for the spectacle on its own. After dinner (for which Kathleen cooked up a mean lasagne), with another of my aunts coming down to Manhattan to see us, Kathleen (my cousin) and I headed in for a night out in Manhattan. The main reason was for me to catch up with Mark (who was over here in New Jersey for work.) Another trippy catch up! We met up with Mark at The Ginger Man known for its large number of taps (66!) and wide variety of bottled beers (120!) Trust me to find an English place to meet up in! Ha ha. Well, being in a venue know for its beer I could hardly not try one so I finished my first ever (half) pint of beer ever! I can’t say it was fabulous but not too bad for something that makes me gag just when I get a wiff of it!

Kathleen had a friend we were also going to meet up with (a DJ she met when he DJ’s our cousin’s sweet 16 do) so at just after midnight we headed down to somewhere in Chelsea to another bar. I don’t even know where we ended up but I was glad that we got somewhere to sit. I had a very fun night and even though rolling in at 4am wasn’t going to help us with our early wake up the next day I didn’t regret a minute of it.

Day 4 saw us up bright and early ready to tackle a day at Woodbury Common. Kathleen was gracious enough to give up one of her weekend days, and only on a few hours sleep, to chauffeur us the more than hour drive to the Outlet. I’m not the biggest shopper in the world but I’ve never had so much fun shopping in my life – the time simply flew by. It really helped that Kathleen was there to encourage me. 🙂 The biggest challenge was fitting four people’s shopping into the Mini!

Day 5, my last full day in New York, was a day of eating – beginning to end. After an aborted attempt to go to Central Park for the ice skating we started with lunch at BRGR which is a burger joint specialising in serving organic meats and awesome thickshakes. The black&white shake and blueberry-pomegranate shakes were oh so yummy and really thick enough that I didn’t need the burger to go with my shakes! After lunch I was hoping to make it a trifecta of dessert places starting at Room 4 Dessert followed by Rice to Riches and the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. Unfortunately Room 4 Dessert had shut down so it was only a quinella of dessert places (unless you count visiting the Egg Custard King Café as a third?):
– Rice to Riches. I love rice pudding and Rice to Riches is a concept right up my alley delivering rice pudding in all sorts of flavours with names such as Coast to Coast Cheesecake, Forbidden Apple, Hazelnut Chocolate Bear Hug, Fluent in French Toast and Peanut Butter Pick-A-Peck. Unfortunately I was stuffed so couldn’t get a rice pudding for myself and instead settled for taste-testing several flavours and picking at Stephen and Pat’s selections. All rice puddings had surprisingly good strong flavours. What I really liked about the store were the sayings up on the walls including: “Eat all you want, you’re already fat”, ” The calories you consume here are yours to keep” and “Limit 500 rice puddings per customer.” The only drawback – the puddings are very expensive. I guess you pay a premium for the ultra modern décor and the cool containers and cutlery.
– Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. The catchphrase for this place is Ice cream with a Chinese twist. I love an ice cream store where the Regular flavours are such flavours as Almond Cookie, Black Sesame, Chocolate Pandan, Durian, Lychee, and Taro and the “Exotic” flavours include Chocolate, Rocky Road, Rum Raisin, Strawberry and Vanilla. It has become so popular that they even published their own book: Saturdays in Chinatown, the author of which, Christina Seid, happened to be working when we visited and took our photo!

You’d think that after all that eating during the day we’d be hard pressed to fit anything else into our stomachs. Wrong! We finished the day (and by that I mean literally we finished eating at midnight) with a visit to Nobu, the world famous Japanese restaurant of Chef Nobu Matsuhisa partnered with Robert De Niro amongst others. Review to come separately!

My final day in New York was a sad one. Not only would I be saying goodbye to what is virtually my third home but I was also saying goodbye to my parents and Stephen. We finished our time together with one of the biggest meals ever – at a Korean BBQ in Flushing. We innocently ordered all this food only for all these free extras to turn up. I swear our whole table was filled with free sides, dishes and drinks and there was no room for the food we’d actually ordered! Apparently competition is so tough in Flushing that these are the kinds of measures the restaurants resort to in order to attract customers!