New York City

We went to NYC last weekend!

Our trip revolved around food, food and food, with an occassional visit to a museum, bridge (like the Manhattan Bridge on the right here, shot from the Brooklyn Bridge), or historical immigration site. I think we packed about two weeks worth of walking into three days, but it's worth it. In my opinion, no trip to New York is complete without a bagel from Ess-A-Bagel , a stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge ending with a pie and a beer at Patsy Grimaldi's , and some cheap eats at Dojo.

We were fortunate to be in New York for the MOMA's "Free Fridays" night, which is extremely crowded but absolutely worth it. One of my favorite paintings in the museum is Magritte's "Emperor of Lights"

Saturday afternoon we went to the Tenement Museum - an incredible place dedicated to educating people about the experience of the Lower East Side's turn-of-the-century tenement dwellers. We toured through an apartment set in 1916 - the home of the Confino Family where an actor portrayed 14 year old Victoria Confino, a Sephardic Jewish Immigrant from Turkey. For the tour, our group was actually a newly arrived family to the United States, and we were talking with Victoria about life in New York City in 1916 - where we might live, what life is like and what we might expect as newly arrived immigrants to the US. The tour was followed by a fascinating discussion about contemporary immigration in a kitchen setting in the tenement. I would highly recommend this museum if you find yourself in the city.

We spent Saturday night with an improv comedy troupe called Gotham City Improv - not bad and for 7 bucks a head, probably one of the best deals on live comedy in the city. However, the Upright Citizen's Brigade is FREE (9:30 show) on Sunday nights, which I wish I knew before we made plans - next time...

Sunday, we took in more information about immigration when we took a boat ride to Ellis Island, where our tour guide told us about the history of the island and the experience of immigrants coming through this processing station. The island itself is mostly fill from the construction of New York City's subway system, but in earlier incarnations, it served as a food source for Native Americans (called Oyster Island at one point), a failed bar, a military fort and an ammunition storage facility before becomming a processing station for steerage class immigrants sailing the U.S. in the late 19th / early 20th century.

A walk over the Brooklyn Bridge took us to Grimaldi's for some of the best pizza in the world. The bridge is a huge structure and it is exhausting if you tack it on to the end of your day, which we did...Here, Kris is exhausted, resting at the half way point, dreaming about tasty pizza:

And here's Wes and I before, during and post-tasty-pizza:


Thanks, New York! See you sometime soon...