NYC and thereabouts (long)
Oct. 21st, 2002 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quislibetJ. and I woke up rather earlier than we normally prefer on Friday and drove down to Pleasantville, NY, where my old roommate Ann lives. We parked at her place and went immediately to the commuter train station in time to catch the noonish train into the city. As we wanted to wander about the Lower East Side, we took the no. 6 train to Astor Place and dealt our hunger a fatal blow at Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant on 2nd Ave. and 9th St. Smoked sausage: yay. Raspberry blintzes: yay. Kasha-and-mushroom-filled pirogies: yay. (As a bonus: film students at the next table discussing characters for their project; the word 'seduce' and its derivatives seemed to be frequently necessary.) We ended up not needing to eat another meal that day.
We wandered about, seeing cool things, putting up the occasional sticker where they seemed not unwelcome (one right next to an Andre the Giant sticker), happening upon a cool public garden and park where I would geekily place a Freehold (incidentally, that URL isn't working right now, but it's the one they had on a poster), window-shopping on St. Marks Place, that sort of thing. Around 6 we went and waited for rather a long time for a 6 train to deign to stop for passengers, whereupon we proceeded to 77th St., the nearest stop to the Madison Ave. location of the Maison du Chocolat, where J. was going to attend two-hour lecture/demonstration thingy.
I myself went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient stuff. Sadly, most of the Roman art is not on display until they remodel, so I got to see only one of the Pompeiian rooms, but happily the Temple of Dendur -- built, incidentally, under Augustus -- was still set up in the Egyptian wing.
We walked around Madison Ave. starting around 9 or so, noting among other things the cool bat-decorated raincoat and backpack at Oilily. Eventually we returned to Pleasantville and actually visited with our host.
Saturday J. and Ann and I went back into Manhattan to the Neue Galerie, chock full o' Viennese art nouveau, including jewelry, furniture, and paintings and line drawings (mostly by Egon Schiele) of emaciated and/or depressed German-speaking people. We had overpriced but tasty Viennese pastries and coffee in the attached cafe. We walked to the subway past the Oilily store, where we ascertained that, cute or not, the bat-themed objects were not in our budget.
Then we wandered hither and yon, from Greek yogurt places to wicked cool toy stores. Eventually we met Ann's Kiwi boyfriend and his Australian coworker at Cafe Charbon, where excellent food was consumed and conversation was somewhat foiled by the eclectic, but loud, music that the DJ was spinning. I had a steak with a green peppercorn sauce; J. had the duck confit (as did the two gentlemen). Ann, apparently hypnotized by porkchop posters in the subway, had the pork.
It was a good time.
Sunday morning, convinced that we had had a Damn Good Weekend, we took our leave of Ann and drove down, through heavy traffic made heavier by a parkway closed for a charity bike ride -- you know how those people are, with their road closings and their raising money for medical research, the bastards -- to Elizabeth, NJ, for some Ikea shopping. It should have taken us about an hour to get there; instead it was twice that.
It was an omen, though we knew it not.
We spent something like four increasingly zombie-like hours and a few hundred dollars there (primary goal being a new desk for J.). It was, as they say, a madhouse; everyone in the Northeastern US seemed to be there, but if at least one of you wasn't I'll have to drop that theory.
Afterwards, refreshing ourselves with Swedish food, J. lamented that we still had a five-hour drive ahead of us. As it turned out, we had only a three-hour drive, and that was just to get back to Pleasantville. For you see, we left Ikea at the same time as a Jets game was getting out a little further along the Jersey pike, and traffic was ungodly evil, a hateful thing. About two hours into it, not yet back to the George Washington Bridge, it began to grow dark, and J. turned on the headlights, as people do. We noted a lack of reflected light on the back of the vehicle ahead of us -- but we could see the orange running lights.
So. We were faced with the possibility of following up our three-hour traffic jam with a four-hour (if we were lucky) drive back to Salem with no headlights. As the high-beams still worked, we used them to get back to Pleasantville (J. repeating "I'm sorry" like a mantra, though the blinded drivers ahead of us could no doubt not hear -- but on the other hand, nor did they seem perturbed, so perhaps NYC-area drivers are not so easily troubled), and reluctantly interrupted the first night Ann and her boyfriend had had alone together for a few days to beg the use of the foldout couch. J. and I left them to their dinner and walked into town for food and drink, especially drink.
This morning we drove back without anything particularly noteworthy happening, except that twice we stopped at cool places we knew along the way, but they were both closed on Mondays.
We wandered about, seeing cool things, putting up the occasional sticker where they seemed not unwelcome (one right next to an Andre the Giant sticker), happening upon a cool public garden and park where I would geekily place a Freehold (incidentally, that URL isn't working right now, but it's the one they had on a poster), window-shopping on St. Marks Place, that sort of thing. Around 6 we went and waited for rather a long time for a 6 train to deign to stop for passengers, whereupon we proceeded to 77th St., the nearest stop to the Madison Ave. location of the Maison du Chocolat, where J. was going to attend two-hour lecture/demonstration thingy.
I myself went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient stuff. Sadly, most of the Roman art is not on display until they remodel, so I got to see only one of the Pompeiian rooms, but happily the Temple of Dendur -- built, incidentally, under Augustus -- was still set up in the Egyptian wing.
We walked around Madison Ave. starting around 9 or so, noting among other things the cool bat-decorated raincoat and backpack at Oilily. Eventually we returned to Pleasantville and actually visited with our host.
Saturday J. and Ann and I went back into Manhattan to the Neue Galerie, chock full o' Viennese art nouveau, including jewelry, furniture, and paintings and line drawings (mostly by Egon Schiele) of emaciated and/or depressed German-speaking people. We had overpriced but tasty Viennese pastries and coffee in the attached cafe. We walked to the subway past the Oilily store, where we ascertained that, cute or not, the bat-themed objects were not in our budget.
Then we wandered hither and yon, from Greek yogurt places to wicked cool toy stores. Eventually we met Ann's Kiwi boyfriend and his Australian coworker at Cafe Charbon, where excellent food was consumed and conversation was somewhat foiled by the eclectic, but loud, music that the DJ was spinning. I had a steak with a green peppercorn sauce; J. had the duck confit (as did the two gentlemen). Ann, apparently hypnotized by porkchop posters in the subway, had the pork.
It was a good time.
Sunday morning, convinced that we had had a Damn Good Weekend, we took our leave of Ann and drove down, through heavy traffic made heavier by a parkway closed for a charity bike ride -- you know how those people are, with their road closings and their raising money for medical research, the bastards -- to Elizabeth, NJ, for some Ikea shopping. It should have taken us about an hour to get there; instead it was twice that.
It was an omen, though we knew it not.
We spent something like four increasingly zombie-like hours and a few hundred dollars there (primary goal being a new desk for J.). It was, as they say, a madhouse; everyone in the Northeastern US seemed to be there, but if at least one of you wasn't I'll have to drop that theory.
Afterwards, refreshing ourselves with Swedish food, J. lamented that we still had a five-hour drive ahead of us. As it turned out, we had only a three-hour drive, and that was just to get back to Pleasantville. For you see, we left Ikea at the same time as a Jets game was getting out a little further along the Jersey pike, and traffic was ungodly evil, a hateful thing. About two hours into it, not yet back to the George Washington Bridge, it began to grow dark, and J. turned on the headlights, as people do. We noted a lack of reflected light on the back of the vehicle ahead of us -- but we could see the orange running lights.
So. We were faced with the possibility of following up our three-hour traffic jam with a four-hour (if we were lucky) drive back to Salem with no headlights. As the high-beams still worked, we used them to get back to Pleasantville (J. repeating "I'm sorry" like a mantra, though the blinded drivers ahead of us could no doubt not hear -- but on the other hand, nor did they seem perturbed, so perhaps NYC-area drivers are not so easily troubled), and reluctantly interrupted the first night Ann and her boyfriend had had alone together for a few days to beg the use of the foldout couch. J. and I left them to their dinner and walked into town for food and drink, especially drink.
This morning we drove back without anything particularly noteworthy happening, except that twice we stopped at cool places we knew along the way, but they were both closed on Mondays.
