Birthday and Tourism Overload (Day 1)

(This weekend has been split into 2 posts.)

Kicking off February and month two of excursioning (yes, I’m making up words), I had my very first NYC visitor! My cousin came in from Michigan, and having never been to this lovely city, expectations were high. It was also my birthday, so I really like to do it up...or something like that. Either way, big things happened.

My cousin got in late on Thursday evening, so her only real NYC “experience” was the ride from the airport to my apartment and then the shockingly small apartment that is mine. (This ain’t no Friends rent-controlled apartment.) Friday got much better.
We started the day with her very first subway ride down to the Staten Island Ferry. I’ve never taken the trip but it was recommended by a few friends from work, and it seemed a suitable substitute for Liberty/Ellis Islands, which are still closed because of Hurricane Sandy. Plus, it’s free. The ride over to Staten Island was a bit of a bummer because we happened to get on an older ferry that had no outside access for passengers. We had to make due with looking at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island through our dirty-windowed cabin. (We did try taking pictures, but the dirty windows prevented any sort of “wow” factor.) 

Nora gets her first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty

Luckily, the ferry back proved to be a newer model, so we immediately went up to the top and outside. We took in the Manhattan skyline, the always regal Lady Liberty and Ellis Island. We braved the cold and wind to snap a bajillion pictures and even got a nice guy to take a few of us together.

After our ferry ride, we had tickets to visit the 9/11 Memorial at 11:30 - our timing turned out to be pretty perfect. We made it through the many security measures and ventured onto the site of the former World Trade Center. Like most memorials, it was a solemn experience (not many “highlights” to report). The North and South Pools were really quite amazing as was the story of the Survivor Tree. The museum was under construction, and I’m not sure when it’s scheduled to open. Of course, the buildings are still being worked on as well.

Me learning about the Survivor Tree:
It was planted in the original plaza in the 1970s. It was found by firefighters in the wreckage after 9/11 reduced to an 8' stump.
It was nursed back to health in a park and grew to 30' until in March 2010 it was uprooted by severe storms. Still, it survived.
Since December 2010 it has been on this site, embodying resilience and the story of survival.  

We wandered into a nearby restaurant from lunch - BLT Bar & Grill in the W Hotel. Surprisingly, not a single BLT on the menu! There was a BLT Burger, but I still maintain that that doesn’t actually count. We split some fried calamari to start. Note to readers: the fried garnishes are lemon slices and green tomatoes. (Imagine my cousin’s surprise when she bit into what she thought was a french fry / potato chip thing.) For lunch we split two pizzas - Margherita, which is admittedly a bit boring and tasted just alright, and Brussels Sprouts, which was amazing. It was topped with butternut squash, bacon and cipollini in addition to the sprouts. 

Delicious pizza

Before our next scheduled stop, the Empire State Building, we headed over to SoHo so my cousin could check out a little NYC shoe shopping, though it ultimately was unsuccessful. We popped out of Penn Station and made our way to the tall landmark. I had pre-purchased tickets, not knowing whether it would be busy or not, but the place was practically empty.

Empty!

Here we are!

We were through security and to the top in less than 15 minutes. Again, we wasted no time getting outside to take it all in. We were relatively shielded from the wind on the east and south sides of the observation deck, but yikes! was it intense on the other two sides. Pictures were taken and then we ran back inside to un-freeze.

Chrysler Building

West (look really far for Michigan!)

South

Reallllllly windy and cold

Hey, NYC!

We wandered over to the famous New York Public Library and poked around a bit. (I still have yet to find a normal bookshelf in there...) Then, we hopped on the subway and headed home to prepare for a night on the town.

For dinner, we had reservations at Ouest on the Upper West Side as part of Restaurant Week, which luckily just-so-happens to fall around my birthday every winter. (Yay me!) The menu took us a bit by surprise, since it didn’t match what we’d seen online but we adjusted. For our appetizers, I had the duck liver pate while my cousin had a raviolo, filled with what exactly I can’t remember, and then we both got the hanger steak, served with fingerling potatoes, greens and a cream-based sauce, as our main course. We also split a bottle of Chardonnay from what was possibly a clearance section of the menu (going going gone...). Capping off a pretty rich meal, I chose the mango and raspberry sorbet for my dessert; my cousin got the dense chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream.

Dinner was followed by Nora’s first trip to Broadway - Disney’s Newsies at the Nederlander Theatre, which also happened to be a part of 2-for-1 Broadway Week. What luck! Neither of us had seen the movie, so we went in not really knowing what to expect. I originally wanted to see it because an Ithaca College alumni was playing the lead, but because he got a TV role had stopped performing in the show late last year. Still, I noticed another IC alum in the program who happened to be making his

Broadway debut as Davey. In fact, according the program, the majority of the cast were making their Broadway debut in this show, including some of the leads. We both really enjoyed the performance. The dancing was amazing and everyone did a great job.