http://www.homemade-productions.com/new-jersey-blues-festival/
New York, without baggage, reservations or Fresh Socks
New York is an impossible place – an island with an elevated climate disagreeable horrible traffic. . . magic. What's not to love? Our day trip to Manhattan was typical John and Laura – last minute. It was the mail Christmas and very cold after a snowstorm. The sky was bright blue and the wind was piercing as we stood at the bus stop in the New Jersey native John's – Kearny. I, weak and pathetic after years of mild weather LA, huddled in a nearby store while John, the native stood in the cold without gloves or a scarf. He deigned to wear a hat, at least. I was in my pocket $ 40, an American Express card and a lipstick. Oh yes, and use a camera. I did not know we would not be back in Kearny for nearly two days.
We have made excellent DeCamp Bus Lines bus again, warm and comfortable. I watched the landscape pass Gritty, spalling and cracking winter overpasses, much Graffiti, beaten salt by cars. This is not a romantic way to get to NYC, but a warm place. My father actually Scottish immigrant who arrived by ship and his first vision of America was the Statue of Liberty. He even spent immigration at Ellis Island. This is an arrival in New York. We got to the Authority grungy port where a taste of winter wind had even John admitted he needed a scarf. He bought a good deal after Christmas for $ 6. One thing you can do and we want to do in New York is on foot and we were warm enough before we went out late morning and went to the Metropolitan Museum. The place was full of families to leave school and work, many students art and a well-organized. I finally was hot and very reluctant to join the long line of locker room and surrender my security blanket, but the line moved fast and soon we had our tags coat and plunged into the crowd. John knows his modern art and we visited many of his after a favorite snack in the elegant cafe. American Express received its first uses a lot of people. We then traded off putting in place with exposure to another. I reviewed the Vintage Baseball Card for him and he joined me in the costume exhibition, making emphasis on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor clothing developed. God could really dress these two – but then again maybe it was all they really do. . .
A few hours in a museum was a lot to us, while in the air, we went. It was warmer at the end. I had not been to New York for many years a school trip isolated before, so I have seen some of what I had seen just before to compare notes with me. Central Park was easy because it borders on the Met. Oh yes, one more beautiful great park. In winter, children were sliding down the hills and small dogs romping – though they were dogs whose owners lived on the park maybe they sashayed. The Plaza Hotel is also on the list of places to revisit. The lobby is as gorgeous as I remembered, but seems smaller. Do all things shrink from year to year? Or are they so important in your memory this can never match the past?
Before the Great was the dinner – we decided to walk and look for a likely place. John did no harm in asking local people where to look they like to eat and they were happy to help. What is this rumor about bitter New Yorkers? Of course, I was introduced as visitor to LA so they all had reason to be sure I have something besides the cabbage, tofu and sunflower seeds. We stopped in for oysters and champagne in a small restaurant, but packed. I got to around 9 and we thought we had a chance to enter Balthazar without reservation. Indeed, we only had to wait about 45 minutes on the stand, pace ourselves, for consumption by that point, Believe me. The dinner was quite wonderful, but I let him talk to a local fish – cod – and spoke in the Chilean sea bass, which is inevitable in restaurants LA The boy had obviously spent his childhood cod pushing around his plate and claiming that he had completed. Ravioli John's has been phenomenal and has led him to keep his perfect pasta and ravioli from scratch.
We rolled on the Grand with no bags to check in – I'm not even a handbag. I do not LUG around purses because they are a burden to bear and a magnet for the bandits. We stopped at a bodega and bought a toothbrush, toothpaste and solution for contact lenses for me – $ 9, not market but who cared? We then hit the hotel and observed the scene jump the bar – and walked right past it. We have fallen into bed and slept blissfully – although by the morning light, we discovered the room was tiny. Not used to be an old SRO hotel? They certainly did not increase the size of the room when it was converted into a profit center. John pointed the view from our window and what was missing – The World Trade Center. Solemn moment.
We had a late start and debated what to do. Well, food was coming, but first some great walking and a really great cup of coffee at the place we dived into. Do not ask me the name. New York abounds small picturesque streets with cafes, shops, galleries and what not. We ended at about 2 pm Veselka This is a classic Eastern European restaurant, 10th and 2nd Avenue. I'm stuffed cabbage and borscht and goes even dessert. We read the NY Times at our window table and watch the world go by. But the break was over. One of the people we meet at last return to appeal cells. Okay, I admit, we've turned the phone for hours so as to be inaccessible. I mean, uh, to preserve the battery. We are prepared to meet in midtown and walked all the way (increments of 40 or more, but John assured me that the natives they were short blocks, no blocks Crosstown). The walk took us through the strange diagonal becomes Broadway and I started to get an idea of the geography of the city, something that is difficult to done in a taxi, bus or car. We met my friend for a drink at the bar of another "boys" with a crowd after work done by Wall Street. John was a White Russian who seemed to be made with maple syrup. Click for a beer and Scotch place, I suppose.
Then it was time for a trip to hell Port Authority, both needing to find a bathroom and desperate to take the bus in time to get him back in Jersey, and a long-arranged night with family in Scots-American social club. Back in Jersey, Manhattan was a vision through the water again. Brother of Jean-brother Joey kept the wine and beer is as it was night to tend his bar, but after the night before we left light. I convinced my native hosts to return to Manhattan the next day, this time to hit the Natural History Museum. We drove over with Pop John's, driving his car, nice enough to go to a city he hates. He used to have a sidewalk stand in the Village, where John sold his original paintings as well. He reminded about these days, and the really old days, when he met John's mother to dance Catholic in 1949 and was married 18 years.
We have tried for nearly 25 minutes to find parking near the museum and actually succeeded. Pop and I were on the lookout for a place while John takes a nap, still catch up on sleep After a night back on the lumpy mattress. He woke up just in time to find a place for us, we needed to claim expertise. Okay, but that is up and down ten blocks square until we found a street undiscovered? Now, I felt the real New York. Scour the site for parking or pay the staggering rate of $ 24 for 2 hours. Satisfied with our discovery, we walked to the museum where a large group meant that we could enter What?
How about a trip to Hoboken? But first I felt I had to see Ground Zero. It was a crisp December Saturday as we have little through traffic usually hell to the tip of Manhattan. Everyone had warned that it was just a big hole in the ground, surrounded by a fence with chain link. We could not park or get more close, but around a bit. I could see the fence was decorated – and perhaps – with tattered memories of the dead. Images, ribbons, poems, posters. An old photo of a young woman remains in my mind. She smiled in a stiff pose, perhaps a kind of studio shot. I glimpsed hawkers sell shirts, banners and buttons – the crowd of post Christmas holiday was a festive atmosphere but I'm not close enough to feel the vibe of other I knew was there. The sad. And the anger against one.
Thus, it was back through the Lincoln Tunnel in Jersey. We visited Hoboken, where both John's parents were born. We drove past cradle Sinatra, very well marked and easy to find within the two square miles is Hoboken. We then prepared for double or even triple park perhaps, by tradition, outside of Biggie Clams. Was a social club 1940 / illegal gambling joint that served good food if it became primarily a restaurant by Art '50 ' I had raw clams on the half shell and was very happy. East Sea coast is seafood cold water, somehow brinier and more accurate than the Gulf seafood where I grew up. Perhaps this is an argument for cold climates, after all.
We were soon back at Pop's, greeted by his cat Duke remote than ever. The guys had managed to find a New York Times for me after three attempts in Kearny local newsstand. They watched football and read the paper. We drank hot tea and eating cakes and it was difficult to imagine that the high rises of New York were so close that street comfortable middle class. There was more to eat at night. Italian food, of course. Huge portions for your average "Gavone" – Italian for what I had become on the journey, someone who eats anything that moves. But in New York in Winter is made for eating … when in Rome.
Laura Glendinning is a travel writer, and Vice President of LinkParis.com.
About the Author
Laura Glendinning is the Vice President of Sales for LinkParis.com
Jon Faddis and Jimmy Heath from the 2007 New Jersey Blues & Jazz Festival