Big Apple redux

Brooklyn Bridge

Because we'd both been to New York before (many times for my wife, just the once for me - see here and here), we were lulled into a mistaken feeling of being fully prepared for it. A typically hair-raising cab ride full of last-second lane changes and blaring horns was enough to dispel that notion.

Then we arrived at the dreaded Blue Moon Hotel. Now, there are no shortage of glowing testimonials and 'Top 150 New York Hotel' certificates on the walls, and Tripadvisor has some gushing reviews. We however found this establishment shabby at best and dirty at worst, and the management's responses to the negative TA reviews are distinctly tetchy.

Perhaps we'd been spoilt by all those huge rooms and honeymoon upgrades. And perhaps with it being an old building on the hip Lower East Side, with rooms named after golden age stars of stage and screen, the target audience doesn't mind the questionable hygiene, or finds it edgy and cool. Read the reviews and judge for yourself.

Further failed challenges on the first day included the famous Katz's deli, which on a packed Saturday afternoon felt more army barracks than restaurant (we looked at the queues and left sharpish) and the subway, which delighted in sending us on labyrinthine quests to platforms where no weekend trains were even running. But then New York is not built for comfort. It's a city that offers you incredible sights, but one that prefers to pummel you into submission rather than opt for gentle seduction. It took a while, but then once we were immersed we fell in love with it all over again - just in time to go home.

9/11 memorial

On that Saturday, we still managed to visit the shiny new Freedom Tower and the 9/11 Memorial and museum, followed by a trip to the bleeding-edge Meatpacking District and a modern Chinese feast in Buddakan, the highlight of which was an incredible deconstructed chocolate fondant dessert.

Since meeting my wife, I've been ushered into a brave new world of classy restaurants and crossed many frontiers of cuisines, and our New York stay was largely planned around places to eat. I still prefer eating the stuff to writing about it though, so this isn't about to turn into a food blog (more's the pity, as they seem to be pretty lucrative). Still, here are links to some of the places where we wined and dined, so again, make up your own minds:

Wolfnights - nice gourmet wraps
Rabbithole - hipster Williamsburg brunch (no laptops allowed!)
Jacques Torres Chocolate
Clinton Street Bakery - maybe becoming a victim of its own success, suggests my wife. Food good, service not the best.
Shake Shack - there's one of these in Covent Garden now, though the queues are even more punishing.
230 Fifth - wrap yourself up in a warm blanket with a warm cider and admire the Empire State Building at rooftop level. Not bad.
Biererria at Eataly - this was recommended by a random guy we got chatting to at the Epcot food festival. True story. Amazing beef.
Magnolia bakery - don't know what on earth a Snickerdoodle is? Step this way.
Dudley's - a bar just down from our hotel. Staff were all English, menu was all superfoods and greens - none more hipster
Jean-Georges - three Michelin starred. Had to be done really.

View from 230 Fifth. Looks better in the flesh.

When we weren't stuffing our faces with food, we were mostly trying to walk it off. Sore feet and the odd blister are small prices to pay for seeing huge tracts of New York from street level at your own pace. On the Sunday, we walked over to Brooklyn, had brunch in Williamsburg surrounded by people in beards and rolled-up jeans (and that was just the women!! etc), then went down to DUMBO (another hipster area, not the elephant), then back over the Brooklyn Bridge (where brave cyclists attempt to create clear paths through the milling tourists by furiously pinging their bell or, even better, blowing a whistle), across into the bohemian fantasyland that is Greenwich Village before finally walking the length of the High Line - and all this before tea.

The High Line is an urban planner's wet dream - a disused stretch of raised railway line just begging to be converted into the ultimate hipster footpath-slash-roof garden. Although the skyscrapers are never out of your sightlines, it's great to have a break from walking alongside great torrents of traffic and the endless blaring of those bloody horns. The best bits are where you can sit down behind sheets of perspex and watch the streets stretch out into the distance. Like, really deep, man.

Taken from halfway up the High Line (see, leaves in shot and everything)

After that, Midtown with its endless chain eateries, tourist bars and cheesy stores was rather a shock. Times Square in particular has not aged well from my memory - after seeing the real thing (so to speak) at Disney, the people in shabby Mickey Mouse costumes were actually quite offensive, and some of their partners in tourist-baiting, eg the fat Captain America, were just embarrassing. The square is of course misnamed, it being an intersection and therefore choked by traffic. Worse still, half of it is under refurbishment, clogging up the sidewalks even more. Apparently, back in the Seventies when the city was basically a death trap, Times Square was full of crackheads and hookers. You can't help wondering whether the current version is really any improvement.

We'd done enough walking by this point, and had our fill of bohemian culture too, so we went to a New York Rangers hockey game at Madison Square Garden that evening. Ice hockey is pretty frenetic, so much so that everyone bar the goalies only seems to spend a few minutes on the pitch at a time before being subbed off. This keeps it interesting even for neutrals who have no clue about the rules (ie us), and even though there are the customary regular stoppages you get in all US sports, there's always stuff happening on the video screens to keep you occupied during the breaks. Plus, the Garden really does feel special, having perfected the great trick of seeming very intimate no matter high up you are. A shame then that the Rangers utterly sucked.

Madison Square Garden. We got there early - hey, leaves time for more of those bargain $12 beers!

Monday saw another huge walk down from the northernmost tip of Central Park and down Fifth Avenue, via many shops and the Rockefeller Center and basically all the way home. Most notably:

- Two hobos appeared to be living in one gents' toilets in Central Park. It reeked in there.

- We couldn't quite bring ourselves to take a horse-drawn carriage ride, even though we had included this on our gift list. Sorry, it just seemed a bit too naff.

- The famous giant piano at toy store FAO Schwartz was not as impressive as I had been lead to believe.

- The Rockefeller Center ice rink was in operation and the giant Christmas tree had been erected; sadly it was still under scaffolding and was not yet illuminated. Didn't they know we were coming? 
- Don't ask for a 'regular' size pork bun in a Chinese eatery. They are bloody massive.

Our final day reads like an inadvertent attempt to experience as much of New York's eclecticism as possible. Naturally, before saying goodbye to the Lower East Side we shared a coffee shop queue with a green-haired, Thomas Pynchon-reading young lady, Then we spent a couple of hours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I may not know much about art, but I know an impressive museum when I see one. 

The Met. It's big.

Then came lunch at the aforementioned Jean-Georges. That this was the best meal I've ever tasted may be an obvious statement (I've never been anywhere near any other three Michelin star restaurant and may never do so again), but it needs to be made regardless. Just the combinations of textures and flavours, the impeccable service, the bright, airy dining room..... sigh. Anyway yes, not a food blog - sorry.

Finally, after a retail therapy detour to Macy's, we had to squeeze in an ascent to Top of the Rock before starting the journey home. Perhaps appositely, due to availability and time constraints we could only spend ten minutes admiring the views. This great metropolis, as is its wont, had hustled us at almost every turn, and as we took a sad cab ride through Queens back to JFK airport, we felt like we'd been chewed up and spat out.

Treat them mean, keep them keen, as they say.

We'll be back.

Top of the Rock. I really like the low-level clouds in this shot, even if the resolution is crap.