Entries from November 2008 ↓

To add to my list of ‘first’ experiences is “2 and a half hours shopping before breakfast” – we weren’t as crazy as some but to get into the spirit of Black Friday we arrived down at Macy’s Herald Square at 7am on Friday morning! That meant getting up as early as a normal work day in NZ and riding the subway … no breakfast! When we came out of the subway stop it was barely daylight and Herald Square was crowded! People in the streets with Victoria Secret bags and bags from other stores – they’d obviously been shopping since the stores opened at 4 or 5 am. Inside Macy’s it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be – I assumed that because they were opening so early they must’ve been expecting hoards, granted, it was busier than the previous Tuesday we’d been there but not as busy as 3 years ago when we went.

We checked our coats and went to check out a few things we’d seen earlier in the week but alas, they weren’t on sale, and the line for trying on jeans was diabolical so the jeans I’d bought earlier for $50 I didn’t regret given the pain I would’ve gone through to try them on on Friday. After the Mister tried on a couple of pairs of shoes (took about an hour!) we finally got some breakfast – coffee from the 6th floor Starbucks (shush now … it had to be done. And if you order a double short latte it’s actually drinkable. I didn’t say nice, I said drinkable) and a cinnamon pastry from the basement Cucina. YUM. We didn’t buy much in Macy’s in the end, a couple of things for nieces and when we finally left at about 11.30am it was crazy. My god. That was obviously the busy time, not 7am. The first floor was solid people. It was like those letter games we had as kids (you know, 8 letters on a little board/tray that fits 9 letters, and you have to slide one letter along, and another and another to eventually get the letter you’re working with to move across the tray to the left to start a word) – as one person moved, another shuffled into their spot and so on – if you have personal space issues – don’t go to Macy’s on Black Friday!

We decided to be uber-shoppers and made our way uptown to Bloomingdales – not as crowded and we had a good explore of each floor and a turkey sandwich but didn’t really buy anything. What a day! Ended the evening with another fabulous dinner – this time on the Upper East Side at a cozy corner Italian restaurant – they’d had a mishap with kitchen renovations over Thanksgiving and when we got there were only serving drinks and appetizers – we’d read a mouthwatering review of their pasta in Time Out so decided to start with the appetizers and wait to see if the kitchen opened. They said if they could boil water they’d be able to do the pasta dishes on the menu. The appetizers were amazing! Absolutely incredible: both on bruscetta – tomato relish with julienned carrot and beet root, and grilled aubergine and creamy ricotta. The boiling water apparatus did come back online and we enjoyed some wonderful tomato pasta and spinach ravioli in a butter sage sauce. It was really good and yet another part of town that we’d not been to before.

Saturday morning we got up early and got down to the Chelsea market to hunt down another in the 3-cafe Ninth Street Espresso ‘chain’. This one was in the market – a huge old brick building filled with food and produce stores – and was really just a takeaway bar. It was so great to be walking through the market looking for it and knew where it was when we heard the clunk clunk of the grinder dosing out the coffee, the clink of porcelain saucers and tea spoons and the thump thump of coffee grinds being dumped out. Again, a fabulous cup of coffee and some pastry from Amy’s Bread Shop next door. Man there’s a huge variety of cinnamon pastry and bread around here! Not sure if it’s because it’s Christmassy or just something normal.

After the market we walked across 14th Street to Union Square and then all the way back up the island to our hotel via a combination of Park and Madison Avenues. I’m not sure whether other people walk in this town as much as we do but we see and smell so much doing so. There are some very nice buildings and luxury apartments on Park, that’s for sure!

Yesterday we got up early and took the subway way downtown and walked out through the East Village to find a little coffee shop called Ninth Street Espresso. In our New York Cafes book and in the Time Out magazine we’d read that it was the best coffee in New York and that they had nothing but 4 coffees on their menu (latte, espresso, cappuccino, drip), no tea, no food much and a sign on the counter that said “No ventis, no caramel, no decaf, no low foam, no spice, no kids, no deviating from our coffee menu” so it sounded very much like our kind of place. And MY GOD, it was worth the trek out through the Village to get a cup of their coffee. It was divine. Well, as good as coffee in Wellington, and not a shitty place in Wellington, but somewhere we’d go. The East Village was a rather different part of the city for us, not many sky scrapers, lots of people with baskets going about their market shopping and more rubbish lying around.

After a couple (!) of coffees we wandered down and across to Soho and had a good poke around the shops and streets there. Went back to the cafe where we got ‘engaged’ (celebratory coffee after getting the licence) 3 years ago (one Keith told me about many MANY years ago – it’s still there and still the same!) and saw lots of clothes stores where you had to be buzzed in. Also went right down to the bottom of the island to Battery Park and around to the Skyscraper Museum which was fascinating. I loved their series of 3 huge photos of Manhattan – 1956, 1976 and 2006 and the little wooden models of the city made by a guy in Arkansas who’d never been to the city until he brought the models to the museum in June this year to donate them and had made them all by hand by studying archived photos from the museum and satellite photos.

On the way ‘home’ to get dinner at Morrell’s wine bar around the corner we went to the movies and saw Transporter 3 which opened yesterday – great movie especially if you’re Transporter fans which we are. Man that guy can drive and if I didn’t love Audis already, I do now. God it was invigorating coming out of the theatre and realising were still in New York.

This morning we were up early and walked a couple of blocks across to join 3 million other people at the Thanksgiving Day parade. That’s such an amazing event. We must’ve been 20 rows back from Broadway and I couldn’t see any of the street level stuff, but the 13 or so huge balloons being floated down the street couldn’t be missed. They were mostly the same balloons we saw 3 years ago but the excitement they caused when they come bobbing down the street is amazing. And the cheers for Santa were deafening – and it was mostly adults screaming and waving and calling out to him!

We spend he afternoon wandering through Central Park, starting higher than we have before and made our way down and across to Wholefoods to get some supplies for a homemade Thanksgiving Dinner of our own.

The room we have this time has no oven so we’ve got ready to eat stuff – got some great warm fresh bread to make turkey and cranberry relish sandwiches and then from a local deli, some New York baked cheesecake – our first this trip. We’ve just been to another movie – Four Christmases – gotta love those Christmas movies and this one was pretty good, and set in San Francisco which was exciting now that we’ve seen first hand a lot of city and bridge shots used in the film.

Early to bed tonight, big sale day tomorrow.

That’s it. Macy’s. All day. It was dark when we came out … mind you it gets dark at 5pm here and stores are mostly open until 8 or 9pm every night.

Guys are groaning, girls are wishing they had a Mister in their lives who loved spending the entire day in a department store! Massive bargains are to be had on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving Day when stores having one-day sales apparently go well into the ‘black’) so we were in there scoping stuff out.

I had another orange experience in store: when you want to try on shoes a roving guy scans the the bar code off the bottom of the display shoe and taps in the size you want and then somewhere in the bowels of the store someone scurries around the store room, locates the shoe and buzzes the guy who goes and gets them from some service window and brings them to you. They guy scanning/tapping/buzzing on my behalf was serving loads of people and seemed very hassled so I wondered how he found me so directly when he arrived back on the floor buried under 7 boxes of shoes (no, not all for me! It’s me we’re talking about!). There was a little print-out taped to the end of the box containing my shoes, the make, model, colour, size and next to ‘Cust:’ it said ORANGE!!! I’d wondered at the time why he didn’t ask my name like he’d been asking others. And I only had my orange scarf on – all the other winter paraphernalia was in coat check.

We’ll we arrived in New York safely on Sunday night to a cold 35*F (whatever that is in Celsius … hang on a minute … YIKES 1.6*C) – it was a bit of a shock to the system after California being very like Wellington when we left.

So, the rest of our time in San Francisco.

Friday evening after our day in Walnut we got the BART (local train/subway) into San Francisco and walked up a couple of massive hills to a neighbourhood Italian restaurant which was delicious and where the ladies were given roses.

Saturday we drove into the city and spent ages exploring the Big Orange Bridge and surrounds. I didn’t realise you could walk on it so was very surprised and excited to do so. The bridge really is very big and very orange. It was a gorgeous day for photos. Disturbingly there were lots of crisis counselling phone numbers and ‘Jumping is fatal’ signs.

We drove 1 hour or so south to San Jose (just as some crazy, scary film like fog was rolling into the Bay) to the enormous new HP Stadium for a Sharks home game. We stopped in at a local pub to kill some time – man Americans eat a lot! Or perhaps it’s normal pub behaviour and never frequenting them I’m not used to seeing it but men and women had baskets and plates of chicken and chips and chilli and burgers and nachos.

The game itself was amazing, well, the stadium was. I got tingles when we walked up the steps inside – I’ve never been to Westpac stadium in Wellington so have no idea if it’s at all the same. The thing that amazed me was how orderly it all was. The great oval downstairs of food and drink kiosks and toilets with pretty swift queues and well sign-posted seating areas where everyone knew where to go. I’ve never seen so many people wearing the same gear! Every man, woman, child and a few babies were dressed in black, white or teal Sharks gear. And inside the stadium it was even more incredible – it was a sea of Sharks gear.  And there was a huge inflated Shark balloon that flew around the Stadium over the crowd by remote control. The rows were quite steep down to the ice rink and everyone was saying hi to each other and shaking hands and saying ‘just let me know if I lean forward too much, give me a tap if I do’. Once the game got underway everyone chanted the same stuff at the same time, everyone had hot dogs and beer (yes even me) and everyone knew what was going on and what all the player’s names were (except me). And when a Sharks goal was scored. Well. Some massive ship fog horn BOOMED out across the stadium, everyone leapt to the feet screaming and hi-fiving and the some music started which involved everyone arm waving and punching the air. It was incredible.

One weird thing was that the crowd were always cheering for a fight to start. And I mean a full on fist to face punch up. One started about 10 minutes in and I was rather alarmed. Everyone was screaming and cheering the fighters on. The refs did NOTHING. Just stood there and let them fight it out. And from then on half the crowd were cheering ‘FIGHT’ or ‘HIT HIM’ every time 2 opposing players touched! When one of the opposition got sent to the penalty box they boomed the Jaws theme out of the sound system and the whole crowd cheered and and made huge jaw-munching motions with their arms … god it’s too hard to explain. A great night.

Sunday was pretty much taken up with 7 hours of travelling, watching Dexter on the plane, and a loss of 3 hours due to the time zone change. When we got here and unpacked we went down to the little Italian restaurant near the hotel that we ate at a lot last time we stayed here and it had not changed. Not one bit. Same menu, same FANTASTIC Penne con Broccoli which we’ve since tried to copy and eaten lots of in the last 3 years. God it was good. It tasted just the same.

Today because it was fine we went up to Columbus Circle to the Wholefoods supermarket to stock up on a few supplies for the week and goggled (as we did when in the store in Washington DC) at all the fresh produce, types of granola, bread, ready meals, Thanksgiving stuff. Now we know why Jiff was so impressed with our Thanksgiving meal prepared from the start. In the store we saw packets of already shredded purple cabbage and grated carrot and bottles of dressing; tinfoil containers of mashed potatoes, beans, sliced turkey that just needed to be heated up; pie shells and tins of pumpkin … etc etc.

We caught the subway down to City Hall and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge (it’s turning out to be a bit of a bridge-themed trip!) to take in some great views of Manhattan back over the East River.

After wandering around Brooklyn Heights we had a fantastic meal at Henry’s End – a tiny brick-walled restaurant that we’d read about in Time Out – yaaaaay! The Mister had pheasant and squash ravioli and duck, I had a warm goats cheese and pistachio salad. Brooklyn is full of those ‘walk up’ places you see in so many movies – buildings about 4 or 5 stories high on tree-lined streets, lots with pumpkins on their stoop for Thanksgiving. Also saw lots of nannies and lots of dogs. And one extremely exiting thing – Orange Street!

The rain’s arrived tonight and is set to stay through tomorrow so I’d say we’ll be hiding in Macy’s or some other enormous store or the movies.

Bev & Dan kindly arranged for us to be up and out and about and down to Pacific Bay for our 10.20 coffee this morning, 3 years, and no, am not nagging him!

Changed plans from a big day in the city today, although we’re going in for dinner so might see the Big Orange Bridge on the way. We’re going to explore there tomorrow on our way down to San Jose for an ice hockey(!) game. So today we’ve wandered around Walnut a bit more and the Mister has been lapping up the attention from the lovely male shop assistants. And I didn’t mind waiting in this shop for ages while they checked the butt area of trousers he was trying on to gauge if they were the right size for him.

We’re here, 8.30 Thursday night and barely awake. The flight was OK – it’s always a bit turbulent over that big body of water so am only surviving on 4 hours sleep. After a bit of a separation blip with our plane seating we managed to secure upgrades to Business Class which was great – the only downside is that men lying down brings a greater chance of snoring – my god there were a couple of rattlers in our section.

This afternoon we got the best cup of coffee we’ve ever had in America and I drank it all the way to the bottom – obviously Bev and Dan know what good coffee is and have trained the people down the road at Pacific Bay to make a small, correct drinking temperature, coffee-flavoured beverages. We wandered through Walnut Creek and went to the latest Bond film – full of great action and hunky Daniel Craig and since eating pizza and drinking champagne we’re settled in to watch Ugly Betty, Grey’s Anatomy and ER – lucky we’re all up to date watching it at home.

Tomorrow we’re off to visit the Big Orange Bridge.

Update next day: after a couple of texts and emails, to those of you wanting to know, yes, the James Bond movie was great! Loads of action, no nudieness, and that guy can drive anything – in the movie a couple of cars (yes the DBS was back in action), motorbike, plane and boat!

Well, one more but it’s on the plane! Hi from Auckland airport. Temps in San Francisco are going to be 17, 17, 18 and 18 then when we arrive in New York, 6! Yaaaay for Christmas winter wonderland. Bye for now.

So it’s the day after the Thanksgiving feast, the dishwasher has run about 4 times since then – every glass, plate, jug, pie plate, knife, fork and spoon in the house has been used and reused in the last 24 hours! Had a great evening with our lovely friends, the damn turkey cooked really quickly again and the Mister sliced the top of his finger off on the mandolin (don’t worry, it didn’t end up in the food but in the drawer because it happened when he was rummaging for something in that dreaded ‘2nd drawer down’!)

Some more photos.

Especially for Jiff to show the apples did NOT come out of a can for the pie and that the coleslaw was homemade.

Carving assistance from Father

The urban family ready to eat

More eating

The glorious apple pies – this year’s were definitely the best

Well folks, it’s that time of year again – we’re cooking up a Thanksgiving Dinner today for our urban family. We’re doing it this weekend because we’re off to the States on Thursday – YAAAYYY. This year we’re cooking for 11, biggest number yet, and are missing our trustee photographer and chopper and general slave Dan … she’ll almost be tucked up in bed in San Francisco, only 4 sleeps to go until we get there!

Anyway, here’s our own attempt at a self-timered photo documentary:

Started yesterday with 2 dozen Christmas fruit mince pies (homemade, Jiff),

And this afternoon (this morning was taken up with making caramelised onions, crostini and the housework).

Eeeeeuw what’s that bit?

Barely fits into the bag (see Jiff, it’s not pre-bagged and pre-stuffed…)

Into the oven, 3 minutes behind schedule

Errrr, feeling a bit tired already

Right, back out to the kitchen. Oh, here’s what we’re having – most of it a repeat of previous years but it always goes down well.

Thanksgiving Dinner 2008

Toasted Le Moulin baguette with:
Cream cheese & caramelised onions

Roast turkey with wild rice & cranberry stuffing
Kumara & orange gratin
Coleslaw

Ommigod – now I can say “we’re going to New York NEXT WEEK!”!!! (Ok, ok, will stop the damn countdown now …). After the week we’ve had at work I’d almost forgot we were going.