Sept 19, 2010

I never been to New York before, so I never understood the “I heart NY” t shirts. I always thought, ” It’s just another big city, what’s so different and what’s so great about NY?” Well I finally understood. New York is amazing! I could just tell while driving to my condo rental from JFK airport. We rented a condo in Manhattan, a couple blocks from Soho, the shopping district. It was a good location, but you had to get use to the noise level at night.

The energy in NY is amazing, there’s so many people and so much to see and do. We decided to take an open double decker bus tour to see the city. I quickly realize how big New York is. We only toured Manhattan the first day and it took hours just to see half of the city. I’m guessing you could fit all of greater Vancouver into Manhattan and still have room. Then there’s the other 4 borough that make up New York, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens, which I recommend only a very quick visit if you have time.

We visited Chinatown, which is similar to most Chinatowns in the world, but bigger of course. Next to Chinatown is little Italy, where we decided to have dinner. The food was great. We ordered an extra bottle of wine at dinner to prepare us for the late night/early morning rumblings outside our condo. We walked home from the restaurant and girls stopped at every shop along the way. Luckily there was also a foot massage spa along the way too.

The next day we took the subway to go shopping mid town. Broadway was packed with shoppers. We quickly had lunch and let the girls go shopping. We took the tour bus to Brooklyn. Brooklyn was nice but I was happy to be staying in Manhattan.

We had tickets to watch a Broadway show, Billy Elliott. I was impressed, there wasn’t a boring scene. The stage, lighting, music, dancing and acting was sensational. The main character in Billy Elliott was about 12-15 years old. He could sing, dance and act like and adult. I have nephews around that age and could never imagine them preforming like these kids. Billy Elliott is the best play/musical I’ve ever seen.

After the show, we took the subway back downtown to eat at Katz’s Deli. Katz’s Deli was in the movie, “When Harry Meet Sally,” the big O scene. I wasn’t sure what to order, so the guy making the sandwiches sliced me a piece of pastrami and roast beef. He handed me the meat, that was still steaming, on a plate. It melted in my mouth. I order the pastrami and shared half of a Ruben sandwich too. It was so good, we were trying to figure out how we could squeeze in another visit before we left NY.

To be Continued… with pictures***

Linh