Weekend in New York City

My bestie from undergrad (Amy), her boyfriend (J.T.), and her sister (Heather) came to visit us this weekend.  They're going on a cruise for two weeks, and they were flying out of JFK so they're parking their car here in Princeton while they're gone.  After the standard Princeton experience (eating delicious pasta that Jamey prepared, watching some kind of TV - in this case, Firefly, which neither J.T. nor Heather had seen - at our house, and then getting ice cream at The Bent Spoon) on Saturday, we all went into the city on Sunday...after a late start (Heather, Amy, and J.T. will have to get up early every day on the cruise, so we were in no hurry). 

When we got there, we dropped all our luggage in Jamey's and my hotel room, and went out to eat something NYC-ish.  Due to the late start, this was really all we had time to do.  We hopped on a Subway to Nolita (North of Little Italy) and tried to eat at Lombardi's Pizza (ostensibly, the first pizzeria in the USA. Everything is the first something in the NE). However, despite the fact that it was late afternoon (and not dinnertime), and despite the fact that they told us it would be a 15-minute wait, after 20 minutes we realized it would still be a while and we wouldn't have time to get then to the airport, so we were sad:

But we just walked a block back toward the subway and had pizza at Pomodoro Pizza instead.  I had a Spinich-Artichoke pizza that was basically just Spinach-Artichoke dip already on bread (in other words, delicious!) and their "famous House Special" Vodka pizza (which was good; traditional, despite its supposed fame). Jamey had the BBQ chicken pizza, which was also good.  The slices were bigger than the plates!

After dinner, we went back to the hotel and Heather, Amy, and J.T. got their luggage.  We put them on the train to JFK, and then we got on the subway toward Lower Manhattan.  On the way, we saw two mosaics of Alice in Wonderland in the 50th Street Subway.  They were created in 1994 and are called “Alice: the Way Out” by Liliana Porter.

In Lower Manhattan, we saw a theatre thing called "The Germ Project," which is 20-minute excerpts from four new plays presented at once.  We found out about it because Jocelyn Wiebe (who I know from church camp in NY; our other social-circle overlap is ACU) was the Producing Fellow for the show.  Unfortunately, she and her husband Mark were Upstate (at the aforementioned church camp) for the weekend, so we didn't actually get to see them.  Anyway, it was very cool, and one of the plays sort of had to do with Alice in Wonderland so that was a cool coincidence.  This is a picture of the studio (3LD Art and Technology Center); it was very trendy, as you can tell from the yuppie with a beret on the right (BTW: I didn't actually take this picture).

After the play(s), we went back Uptown to McGee's Pub (55th between Broadway and 8th) which is the pub that was the inspiration for MacLaren's, of How I Met Your Mother fame.  We were very excited to visit! We (luckily) were seated right under the mural that made the creators want to base a pub off this place!  We (unluckily) did not think the food was very delicious.  Our recommendation is just to go and get a drink and appreciate the experience, but not to get any food.  Sorry McGee's!

And then we went to bed.  And then we woke up, checked out of the hotel, and headed for Central Park.  We got off at 66th Street/Lincoln Center, and were greeted by another cool set of subway mosaics.  This series is called "Artemis, Acrobats, Divas and Dancers" by Nancy Spero. There a lot of different images, all of women: real, mythical, contemporary, etc.  Here are a few pictures of my favorites!

On the way from the subway to Central Park we got some delicious bagels/cream cheese (blueberry with strawberry cream cheese for me, whole wheat with walnut raisin for Jamey) and some mediocre (but sufficient) coffee.  We found a spot on The Mall in Central Park to eat our breakfast and listen to a wonderful violinist playing The Four Seasons.

After we ate, we mimicked some statues, took the Subway back to Penn Station, and got on the train back to Princeton.

What a whirlwind of a weekend!  But now that we've (finally, one year later) made our first trip into the city (it's really pathetic) I think we're ready to go in more often!  We're thinking about doing a day in each neighborhood (no hotels this time) or something like that: sleep in, take the train in time for lunch somewhere local, do some touristy stuff, eat dinner somewhere local, and go home.