Meet you with a warm, wet kiss

2005-05-17 - 6:14 p.m.

A week ago today, I was in New York City. I went to work Monday evening, worked a graveyard shift, caught the bus downtown straight from work and took it to the airport, and flew directly to New York, where I caught the subway to Flik's place. I didn't sleep at all on the plane...it was a long day!

That night we ordered take out Vietnamese food and just hung out in her dorm room. She was in the process of packing up for the summer, so her place was kind of a mess, but there was room for me to crash on her floor.

The following morning we got up bright and early and headed down the street to a bagel place called Nussbaum & Wu's. We actually had breakfast at this place last time I was in New York and at that time I had met The Bagel Guy. I suggested that we go there again this time just because I was curious to see if he was still there. I know, I'm a big dork. Amazingly enough, though, he was. Unfortunately, he had gained quite a bit of weight and had pretty much lost all the charm he held before.

But anyway, after breakfast we took the subway over to the Roosevelt Island tram and rode the tram across to the island. Remember in the first Spider Man movie when the bad guy is threatening to drop MJ and the tramload of tourists at the same time to make Spider Man choose who to save? Yeah, that's the tram. Luckily, we made the trip without needing rescuing.

A picture of the other Roosevelt Island Tram as we passed it en route to the island

Afterwards we went to the United Nations building and took the tour. That was pretty interesting. Did you know that the 18 acres on which the UN building stands is not US territory? Yeah, really, I went out of the country. So we got to see all the big rooms where they have meetings and some of the gifts the various member countries have given to the UN and hear all sorts of political and geographical facts. The tour guide was very good. The gift shop at the end was cool, too. They have little sections with items that came from each of the various member countries.

We went back to Flik's school at that point because she had to procter a final exam for one of her classes. I hung out in her room for the duration and then we headed out for dinner in China Town and dessert in Little Italy. On the way there we stopped by Washington Square and walked a bit through Greenwich Village. From what I saw of it, the Village is definitely my favorite bit of the city. I mean, if I had to live in the city, that's the place I think I'd most like to live.

The next day was the 12th--my 6 month anniversary of being a Seattleite. We had breakfast at Starbucks to celebrate. We took the subway to Times Square where we attempted to buy tickets to see "Spamalot" (because Flik wanted to see it), but it was sold out way in advance. Instead we ended up with tickets to the cheap seats to see "The Producers." Then we headed over to the Museum of Modern Art. The MOMA has apparently been closed for a while and only recently reopened. It was pretty cool. I'm not a huge art fan so I wasn't sure if I would enjoy it, but I really did. They had paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, architecture, landscaping, film, design--just about anything artsy you can think of. They had one special exhibit for the work of a guy named Thomas Demand. This guy basically built life-sized models of things entirely out of paper and then photographed the models so his pieces are actually poster-sized photographs. Flik and I walked into this exhibit without reading the explanation first. We looked at several photographs before realizing that the subjects weren't the real thing. Everything was very realistic and there was a very amazing amount of detail in them. It's hard to describe, but very cool. Here's a link to some of his work. And then of course they had more stuff you might expect like Van Gogh's "Starry Night" and a whole bunch of Picasso among lots and lots of other things.

A piece of art in the MOMA

After we finished with the MOMA we went back to Little Italy to have dinner. Little Italy is fun...it reminds me a bit of Disneyland--like the New Orleans section where everyone dresses up and pretends like they really are in New Orleans and you walk through just like that's normal. After dinner we had dessert in China Town (the opposite from the night before--bubble tea!) and then headed back to Broadway to see "The Producers." We bought really cheap student-priced seats that were at the very left hand side of the second row. They were obstructed view, but there were very few things that I couldn't see. The show was very funny and we came out afterwards singing "Spingtime for Hitler" which is just hilarious.

The next morning we finished packing up Flik's room and then took the subway up to Flik's boyfriend's place in Brooklyn for breakfast. I really like him and I hope that things between him and Flik continue to go well. After breakfast we walked over to the neighboring park and saw the place where the Indians supposedly sold Manhattan Island to the Dutch for a bunch of beads. Then we took a cab to the Cloisters. The Cloisters is the most eclectic piece of architecture ever. It was entirely imported from Europe, but every bit of it comes from different buildings in entirely different eras. You walk into a room and will see that the door is from 12th century England while the window is from 14th century France and so on and so forth. In the end it turns out to be a very beautiful building, but it's a bit mind-boggling to think of all the things surrounding you when you're there.

One of the gardens at the Cloisters

From the Cloisters I hopped on the subway back to the airport. I didn't have a direct flight to Seattle, unfortunately. I had to fly by way of Houston. It made for a pretty long trip.