View from Morningside Park

This park borders our apartment, so I decided to take a few pictures.

The steps uphill through this park are tough.

Harlem sort of has a skyline.

This doesn't fit in, but I like this building.

There are Columbia students sitting on these stairs at all times of day.  It's a cool place to visit and just listen to all the crazy things that undergrads say.  It really makes me feel old.  These kids were born in the 1990s!  Life has never been "unplugged."  Anyway, that's a rant for another post! :)

New Food

We went to our first movie since moving this past weekend.  My Columbia ID lets me buy discounted movie tickets, so we decided to take advantage of it.

Beforehand, we needed to eat.

Erin had chocolate milk, pancakes, pickles, and coleslaw.

I had a sandwich.  OK, a giant sandwich.

Then tonight we went to a new dosa place.

Our street-side table.

Erin and the massive triangle dosa.

The massive square dosa.

Delicious.

Final Day

Jonathan wanted to see all five boroughs, so I knew we had to keep a fast pace to complete the set.  Queens and Brooklyn were covered, but we were missing Staten Island and the Bronx.  Also, there were still quite a few worthwhile Manhattan neighborhoods to see.

We started out with the 11am church service at Morningstar.  Afterwards, we had some classic NYC pizza to fuel our adventure.

#3 pizza place in NYC, which is still pretty good.

We started at the High Line in Chelsea.  We saw a movie being filmed about kidnapping Woody Allen.  I guess watch for it in theaters?  However, as you can see in the picture, it looks pretty terrible.

Can they see?

Driving range.

After the High Line, we went to Little Italy.  Big mistake.

Fire hazard.

There was a festival going on and walking was pretty tough.  We headed on through Chinatown to the financial district.  It just happened to be where Occupy Wall Street was hanging out.

So that was interesting.

They were angry.

We survived OWS and went towards the WTC.

Tallest in NYC.

Almost done.

Next up was the NYSE.

Also known as the JML stock exchange.  (He claimed it for himself.)

Navy memorial.

We needed to get to Staten Island, so we walked to the ferry.

At least the building is easy to spot.

Then came the fun part.

Pulling away from South Ferry.

Jersey City.

A statue you may have heard of.

It's totally free.

We walked around Staten Island for 30 minutes and found absolutely nothing of interest.  So, we went back the other way to meet Erin for dinner.

We enjoyed some empanadas from one of our favorite places.  For dessert, we found a great concept.

Krispy Kreme needs to look into this.

Finally, we had to finish the adventure.  It was 11pm, but Jonathan really wanted to complete the five boroughs.  Unfortunately, that meant heading into the Bronx at night.  That's not really my idea of fun.

The New Yankee stadium.

The stadium is only a couple stops from me, so we went there.  We took a picture, walked around a little, decided we would probably be mugged soon, and headed back home.

Three days.  Five Boroughs.  20 miles maybe?  Not a bad trip.

Who wants to come visit?

City Tour Day Two

I feel like I'm writing about Asia again.  adamrtw.blogspot.com

We met up with some of my B-school classmates to head to Flushing for authentic Chinese.  Just so you know, Flushing is superior to Chinatown.  However, since it's in Queens, you don't hear about it as much.

Welcome to Flushing

Flushing looks quite similar to Asia.  Check out the pictures on the Asia blog and compare.

Yes, that's lobster.

We settled on Dim Sum.  It was wonderful.  I'm not sure exactly what was inside those dumplings, but it couldn't have been scarier than what I ate in Taiwan.

After the feast we went to Astoria and Long Island City.

View from Astoria of Manhattan.

The nice part of LIC.

Next we headed through Brooklyn and went to Williamsburg to see hipsters.  We actually found more Jews than hipsters, but it was worth the trip for the culture clash.

After walking through Cobble Hill and downtown, we made it to the East River.

Manhattan at sunset.

Good view of the harbor.

Statue of Liberty!

That's the new WTC under construction.

Brooklyn Bridge.

We tried to eat pizza at Grimaldi's but the 2.5 hour wait just wasn't going to work for us.  Instead we ended up walking the Manhattan Bridge.

This picture alone made the walk worth it.

The rest of the night didn't really go as planned.  We ended up wandering for hours, but managed to eat pizza, thai, and macaroons along the way, so it wasn't a total loss.

Day two was pretty exhausting physically.  At least the weather was nice.

A visitor!

Jonathan came to visit on the 14th.  He wanted to see the city.  All of it.  Here is our attempt.

Columbia campus

Main library.

We started out with the obvious and toured the campus and Morningside Heights.  We ate some lunch from the local deli before heading to...

A classic?

Harlem!  Where else can you drive a purple Cadillac?

A popular Harlem business not widely seen elsewhere.

It's Harriet Tubman.  She's really tall.

After Harlem, we headed down to Columbus Circle to walk through Central Park.

The Time Warner Center.  I used to work here.

He was real?

Jonathan and Balto.

After wandering through the park, we had to check out the line for the iPhone 5.  This is a week prior to launch day.

Only 160 hours left to wait!

A modern NYC tourist destination.

I wanted to get the giant piano until I saw the price tag.

FAO Schwarz is probably in my top three stores of NYC.  It's a children's paradise.  Why couldn't they put one in Dallas circa 1990?

We headed down to Radio City Music Hall to meet a friend.  He lived on Roosevelt Island.  So we took the tramway back from the island.

From the gondola.

Strong wind = scary.

2nd Ave is really straight.

As you saw, the sun was setting so we headed to dinner.  I don't have pictures, but it was a super secret spot.  Come visit me and I will show it to you.  You have to find it to understand.

Times Square

If you're a local, you come to hate Times Square.  Still, I understand why it's a mandatory stop.  We also went to Grand Central before heading home for the evening.

Day one complete.