Entries from April 2010 ↓

Had a great long weekend with our Swiss Friend (Basel Lisa) last weekend who despite the ash cloud arrived safe and well. We haven’t seen her for 18 months so it was great to catch up. We dragged her around the usual spots and fav haunts we’ve identified for visitors on the days it was fine and we hid in the shops on the days it wasn’t. Was a very full on few days!

More photos on Flickr but here are some highlights (as always with Flickr photos, click on photo for larger):

• She brought spuglis baked fresh in Zurich that morning (proper name Luxemburgerli)

• Walked across the Brooklyn Bridge & enjoyed night views of Lower Manhattan after dinner

• Discovered Zabars deli on the Upper West Side & got enormous sandwiches for a picnic in Central Park (thanks to Ross for the tip who was available to us on Twitter stuck in London under ash waiting to fly back to NZ)

• Wandered down Third Ave when it was closed for a spring market day

• Lined up for burgers at Shake Shack

• Went down a dodgy alley to meet our New York Cousin for brunch

• Took Lisa to just about ALL our good cafes – here sitting out the back of Saturdays Surf

And we got some photos of us together in our lovely city at last (thanks for not dropping the camera Basel Lisa ha ha !!):

• Breakfast at Chelsea Market

• Enjoying the sun on the High Line

• Riding the subway (back to winter clothes)

Realised today that The Mister’s desk in New York is beginning to resemble the command centre he had back in Wellington … when he had a desk there …

My Swiss Friend is on her way right now! Only a couple more hours and she lands!!

It’s been touch and go all week whether she’d be able to come because of the volcanic ash over Europe but the skies cleared enough for her to take off. Apparently some concern she might not be able to get back due to a second cloud heading for Switzerland so we’ll see. So a weekend of coffees, shops, Chelsea Market and wandering is coming up … yes everyone is shown the same things but we love it!

Update: thanks to The Mister’s comment when he saw this just now I feel that I should explain that the image is taken exactly as was from the Flight Tracker page on the JFK website. The flight path line is not stunted due to my below average Photoshop skills, it’s like that because “Flight Tracker cannot guarantee the path the aircraft took outside of US airspace” so I’m guessing where the line starts is about where she entered that airspace. Hrummph

I made contact with my Orange Friend in Chicago today because we’re making plans to fly over there to visit family next month so I want to meet up with her. Needless to say we’re both very excited that our friendship that started because we both had orange blogs is going to end in us meeting! Both husbands are rolling eyes at the orange explosion that they’ll have to be involved in and she immediately blocked out the weekend in her diary and sent me this pic! Awesome !!

Have just looked back to see how long since we met online and it was around August or September 2007 – nearly 3 years ago! I that time we’ve exchanged knitting, baking, cards, gifts and many emails.

Looked out the window just a while ago and saw the Empire State building all decked out in orange – first time I’ve seen it orange. It’s very impressive and very orange Found our way up onto the roof to snap a couple of pictures. Totally amazing views up there although due to some building work we weren’t supposed to be up there so didn’t really look around.

Finally got to a game of baseball last night. The first Friday night game of the season at Yankee Stadium. It’s all The Mister has ever wanted to do on a visit to New York but the seasons have never been right and then there was that fateful day last year when we were here in June and non stop torrential rain cancelled the game and we weren’t here long enough to use the tickets for another game.

Yesterday wasn’t much better! It was very gloomy all day and a bit drizzly going into the evening but the game was still on. We rode the subway out to the game, and no need for subway legs on that ride – the train must’ve have 20,000 people in it and we were like grains of Aborio rice in those vacuum packed bags before you break the seal. Absolutely solid people.

The stadium was huge. Everyone was wearing Yankees gear, it was crazy exciting and very exhilarating for The Mister. Obviously I had no idea what was going on and was more feeling the buzz of The Mister being there at last, than the game.

Our seats were pretty good – 5 or 6 rows from the field and even though the stadium holds 55,000 people it seems pretty small and closed in so we had a great view and could see quite well. The levels of seats were stacked quite high so when we go again I think we’ll definitely pick the lower level even though I was paranoid the whole time that a ball was going to land on me!

It drizzled for a while and I proudly wore my Yankees poncho and kept pretty dry.

The poncho did make it quite difficult for me to leap to my feet and shout (not that I really knew what to shout about) and high-5 The Mister – yes, for all those who’ve seen me refuse to do it and complain that it would hurt, I had high-5 lessons from a colleague for 6 weeks before we left and steadfastly refused to do it until we got to the game and surprised The Mister by reciprocating … although luckily it was so cold I was wearing my gloves so it didn’t hurt … even though I know how to do it now, it DOES hurt!

The Mister went and got sliders for dinner (which we think a little burgers) – they were pretty tasty actually.

Then half way through the game it poured down, and didn’t stop, so they called it quits – all these matching men ran out and in perfectly co-ordinated sequence unrolled a cover and spread it over the pitch and bases.

Such a shame but we were in reasonable spirits because we didn’t get too wet. Despite the price of the tickets I think I’d like to go again. It was a very wet steamy ride back into the city on the subway!

We’ve crossed another thing off our list, we’ve walked the High Line – an old elevated train track, now a park, that weaves along the edge of Chelsea, sometimes under buildings and sometimes over the road. It’s great we went on a day that’s a bit bleak and cool because we’ve heard it’s very crowded on a sunny day and I can see why it would be hard to appreciate it when it’s crowded as you wouldn’t get to see ahead much to where it’s going.

In places the old tracks have been left there and form part of the gardens

It curves around and goes through buildings

This kind of see-through over-bridge has grandstand seating so people can watch the traffic and it looks like a kind of cool living billboard from the road.

So I’ve experienced girl time New York-style in the month we’ve been here. In such a huge city where you don’t have any recommendations and things are done differently it’s quite daunting. But I’ve been overwhelmed by the choice to the point of almost not doing it, but have persevered.

• Finding the place – in a city like this everything is addressed by building, floor and room and when I went for my first appointment the place turned out to be a series of rooms in a hotel! Sounds very dodgy, a room for reception then rooms down the corridor for ‘treatments’ but it was all legit!
• Hair do’s – strange having someone else cut my after about 10 years of the same guy in Wellington so where do you start? I went for a salon that had products that I knew on a subway line easy for me to use from work or home. Next decision is whether to book with ’stylist’, ’senior stylist’ or ‘master’ – however when I phoned to make the appointment I wasn’t asked … and I didn’t have to wait months to get in despite not having been there before … so yep, I was with a ’stylist’. Which I didn’t know until after the haircut when it cost me about a third of what I’d psyched myself up to possibly pay. And she didn’t do an awful hatchet job like her lowly status might make you wonder. In fact she was brilliant and I loved walking out of the salon and poncing off down to Bloomingdales, hair swishing (and no SDF, it’s no different really to the style I have now, just tidier and bouncier). She said all the right things about how lovely my hair was, gorgeous colour, well looked after etc and also provided me with a very important piece of information – not many places do eyelash tinting in New York as it’s illegal with out a licence. Which leads me onto my next girl time experience.
• Eyelash tinting – I now know why it was so hard to find a place that would do this, and that when I found a place it cost TWICE as much as my hair cut, in New Zealand it’s basically a $15-$20 add-on service!  When I was buzzed in to the multi-floored ’spa’ I was faced with having my tinting done in a communal space in a chair normally used for manicures! Too weird, keeping your eyes closed against stinging tint with the elevator opening and closing and people coming and going and muttering.
• Manicures – haven’t had one of these but just about *everyone* does here. Mind you they’re pretty cheap so it’ not so much a luxury.
• Tipping – yep, even extends to girl time. You can put the cost of the treatment on the credit card but then have to tip in cash. I’ve had to have some how-to-calculate-20%-on-the-fly lessons because obviously The Mister wasn’t with me to deal with it!

We took a trip out to Brooklyn a couple of days ago to visit their Botanical Gardens and we might’ve been too late for the main spring colours but it was pretty spectacular. They have a Japanese garden and lots of cherry trees so they have a kind of cherry blossom festival.

A strange squawking orange bird seemed to follow us around too which was very cool but never quite got close enough for a good photo.

The day was threatening rain so we almost had the place to ourselves which was pretty cool – one of the least populated days we’ve had since getting here.

I smelled the rolls of gladwrap in the supermarket yesterday to find one that didn’t have a smell. Didn’t realise you can get actual ‘Glad’ here, and it doesn’t smell. Yipeeee!