New York City: Day 1 - "I'm a tourist, what are you?"

As most of you know, I’ve been out of pocket recently on a vacation to New York with my husband Tim. Now, relative to both of our life experiences, NYC was a profoundly different sort of location for our vacation. Our vacations usually involve our parents and/or relatives, so this was to be our first time “on our own”. So much happened in the brief time we spent in the city, so I’m going to break it down into days so you can get the full scope of our experiences. Please keep in mind we are viewing the city for the first time, as loathed “tourists” with relatively limited cash flow so our ideas about the city are colored by this. And don’t be offended if I refer to NYC as “the dirty place”. It is what it is, okay?

NYC – Day One

Before I tell you about our first day in NYC, I must preface this first part of the story with this information: I forgot my Birth Control pills at home and did not discover this until we were about to get on the plane from Denver. Now, ladies, knowing what a giant disaster this could be for a romantic getaway, you must be able to understand how panicked I was. Nevertheless, my friend Dane, immediately fetched them and FedExed them overnight to NYC so I could continue my vacation without further worry. I’ll come back to this later…

I had typed up an itinerary for our trip. Not my usual, anal retentive, “be at this location at 6:07 p.m.” type of plan, but something more loosely based just so we wouldn’t be wandering aimlessly. We promptly ignored my 9:00 a.m. waking time, made coffee and scrambled some eggs for breakfast and then headed out to try our luck on the subway. Echo had been kind enough to give us a few tips on traveling in the NYC subway system, but once you get down there it becomes exceedingly difficult to figure out which train is local, express and uptown, downtown etc. We took the wrong train… twice. Finally we made it to 81st st. and the American Natural History Museum.

Call us nerds if you want, but after the whole Bill Bryson audio book thing, we’re more interested in space and we heard they had this really cool space theater. The museum was like a lot of things in New York, I would find out later, very grand, very crowded, and slightly worn around the edges. The sheer volume of people that traverse through this museum and all the famous places in New York tends to make even the nicest places, a bit shabby around the edges. That being said, the shabbiness of the museum was easily forgotten when, due to a fluke reading in an NYC guide at Echo’s apartment, I discovered that my military ID card would provide with free tickets to the museums. So, we saved $60. Go Air Force. Anyway, the museum was AMAZING. The displays were really well done, very thorough and we had a great time perusing all the wild life floors and the dinosaur floors.

After that we took the Subway to Rockefeller Center. (We got on the right subway on the first try! We foolishly thought this mean that we had it all figured out. We did not. I’ll come back to that later as well.) We wandered around inside Rockefeller Center and then went to go see the tree and the skating rink. I carefully averted my eyes from the Saks window displays (I had planned to see all of them at the same time on Christmas Day) and we rounded up some lunch at a deli. Then, we headed to the Museum of Modern Art. We also got free tickets here and saved $40 more. Woohooo! We had such a great time checking out all the displays they had. I was very moved by seeing Pollack’s work up close, I could sit in front of his paintings for days. And, it was pretty phenomenal to see Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting. (Yeah, I love calendar art, so what?) We annoyed after they told me I was too close to a painting ( I was like 10 inches away!) and then Tim wanted to take a picture and accidentally used the flash. They get really upset when you do that. Anyway, we were starting to get worn out so we decided to head down to Time’s Square for a drink.

We made sure we knew where the Shubert Theater was (We had tickets to Spamalot that night…) and then we wandered further into the theater district trying to find somewhere quieter and less touristy to have a drink. We ended up just down the road at O’Flaherty’s Pub. It looked grubby, but in a good way. The way I always want my Irish pub to be. Very like the famed Sean Donlon’s where I spent wasted time in younger days. Anyway, the pub was indeed quiet, very dark and cozy. The bartender seemed cautiously friendly at first, then after Tim’s cell phone rang and he had a chat for a few minutes, the bartender decided he hated us. His prerogative I guess, but the way I see it is… they’ve taken away the smoking in pubs, what’s a patron supposed to do with his/her hands when they aren’t sipping? Even Tim’s jovial (and usually ice-melting) “hey brother…” and a healthy tip, didn’t turn the tides of fortune our way. So we packed it up and headed down to Joe Allen’s.

Now, Joe Allen’s, I read, is a low key pre-theater restaurant. Our table wasn’t quite ready so we sat at the bar and had some friendly chats with the bartender and waitstaff, (who, by the way, knew we were from out of town, but still talked with us in a normal and non-patronizing way…super good staff, good stiff drinks and witty banter… a few too many “mullethawks”, but I gather that is the style amongst hip waiters these days…) So, as we are sitting at the bar, I’m joking with Tim and the bartender about my desire to spot a few celebs while we are in town. I said, “ I’m hoping for Madonna or Johnny Depp, but I’ll settle for the chubby guy from Kings of Queens…” All of a sudden, Tim says, “ Who’s the really tall guy from that show on T.V.?” I said, “Brad Garrett? The one from Everybody Loves Raymond?” He’s like, "yeah, he just walked by and he’s sitting at the table back there." I swivel around and sure enough… It’s him. I’m not really a fan of the show, but seeings as I was ready to settle for my one celebrity sighting being a relatively less famous sitcom star, I was excited. NYC, celebrity count: 1.

The dinner at Joe Allen’s was superb. Decently priced and quickly served. Afterwards, we walked down to the Shubert Theater and settled into our seats for Spamalot. Now, I was excited about seeing Tim Curry (I’ve loved him since he played Dr. Frankenfurter…) But the bartender had mentioned earlier that he had left the show the previous week and even if I had seen him that rumor had it that he was “phoning it in…” the last few months. After we got settled at the theater and opened our programs, we also learned that David Hyde Pierce wasn’t going to be in the show anymore either. So, that left, our hero, Hank Azaria to carry the show (and a bunch of other very talented actors, but we are speaking from a celebrity standpoint…) Now, I’m sure most of you know that Hank Azaria is a very talented actor and also does many of the voices for our beloved, Simpsons. I knew he’d be funny in this play but I was not prepared for how truly hilarious this show was. If you aren’t a fan of the Monty Python movie, “The Holy Grail” then you probably wouldn’t think it was that great. However, Tim and I are huge fans it was freaking awesome! I laughed so hard, my sides hurt and when it was done, I was an even bigger fan of Hank’s. He did such a wonderful job! Some special notes where the “Lancleot is Gay!” number and “You can’t have a Broadway play without any Jews…” Very irreverent and not for the easily offended. Oh, and since I saw Hank Azaria: NYC Celebrity count: 2. Actually, that was all of the celebrities I saw. I thought I saw Macaulay Culkin, but it was just a kid with poofy lips.

Afterwards we tried to take a subway home but found the one closest to us closed, so we hopped in a cab instead. We got home to find my pills waiting for me… (Yay!) And I ripped open the package eagerly, only to find, they were the wrong ones… (booo!) But they did have enough pills to keep me from going to the “bad place” so that was good. It cost Dane $35 to send them and it was well worth it. Nothing like an ill-timed visit from an unwelcome Aunt to kill a vacation, but alls well that ends well. At least in that respect. I will blog about day 2 tomorrow, until then…enjoy the pictures from Day 1.