Easily amused :-): New York City: Day 1: Re-Acquaintance

Soooo - as you can tell from the title, I made it here to New York City! The trip up here was uneventful - I was actually able to sleep a little on the plane, thankfully. Once we landed in JFK, I got my bags and headed to stand in line at the Taxi stand outside. When my turn came, the director pointed me to a small Ford Escape SUV as my taxi - I thought they had all the same cars, like giant Crown Victorias, but there were a number of Nissan Altimas, SUVs, Camry's, etc...

Anyway an Indian man came out to help me with my luggage. Ahh cool - I will have something to talk to him about, being that I spent a whole month in India last year. So I get in the cab, tell him my destination, and we're off. They have these TV monitors in the back of the cab now showing advertisements, as well as an area to swipe your credit card. It has been a while since I've been in New York, but I don't remember any of that in the previous cab rides. I guess MTA is trying to spruce things up and modernize their fleet...

Anyway, The nice Indian man started chit chatting, and eventually I asked where he was from (duh I knew already, he had a turbin on his head, he's obviuosly Punjabi). He told me, and that introduced our conversation about India. As I suspected, he was most intrigued about my journey and asked all the usual things - where did I go, how long did I stay, did I like India, etc. He's been in the U.S. for 20 years now (along with his immediate family), though the rest of his family still lives an hour outside of Amritsar (the last city I visited on my India sojourn last year, where The Golden Temple is). So, because he's already westernized, he did not think it unusual that I wasn't married at 32 years of age (where all the other Indians within India kept asking me about it! Why are you not married????? Umm well... a) It's illegal for me to get married in my state and b) I haven't found the right person yet...

Anyway, my hotel is kick ass - it't right near a subway stop within Midtown Manhattan. It was expensive (don't ask how much :-x ) but totally worth it. It's practically brand new, all the furnishings inside are new, modernized, and clean. No mildew or mold to be found in the bathroom (a really nice thing in NYC)...

So initally, I got in touch with my friend Sean and his boyfriend to see if they wanted to meet up for dinner. While they were getting ready and finishing their stuff, I decided to get something quick to eat. I wandered down 6th Ave to find a place called "Pret A Manger" ( http://www.pret.com ), which is an establishment I frequented during my last trip to London. Lots of fresh sandwhiches and stuff - I got a quick Veggie sandwhich and popcorn! The place was really small though, too small for me to even find an open seat, so I took it to go back to my hotel room...

Once I finished eating, I realized that I forgot some toiletries and also gloves! The weather in NYC is really nice though, you don't even need gloves, but I suspect it will be VERY cold in Seoul, so I wanted to swing by Macy's and see what they had on sale. So first, I went to Duane Reade (a pharmacy chain here in NYC) to get QTips, lip balm and the like, then to Macy's. Many of you have probably been in the original Macy's on 34th Street - it's an entire city block of shopping and about 8 floors (maybe more I don't remember). I couldn't for the life of me find where the Men's section was - turns out Macy's spans 2 different buildings, and Men occupy a few floors in the back of where I was. Finally I found it, and they were having this amazing sale. I got 50% off my gloves normally $50, so I was happy!

Then I hopped on the Subway for the ride downtown to meet Sean and Joshua for dinner. They recommended I get some good pizza at this establishment called John's Pizza ( http://www.johnsbrickovenpizza.com/ ). It is supposedly a staple and has been around since 1929, with lots of photos of famous people. It was REALLY good pizza - the typical New York style, big and thick, greasy pieces. I had mushroom, onion and cheese, while the other guys just had cheese and also a salad...

Afterwards they decided to take me out to a bar called Splash ( http://www.splashbar.com/ ) for a drink. It turned out to be 2 drinks (was still 2 for 1 before they started charging a cover). It was relatively quiet, but it was really early (like 8:30 when we got there), so that's to be expected. The bartenders were friendly and the typical beefy, muscular kind. In fact, I could SWEAR to you that one of them looked like a character who played the U.S./Canada version of the Queer as Folk series that Showtime used to run. I think his name was Robert Gant - Sean and Joshua kept telling me that it wasn't him, and I'm too shy to just go up and ask him, but for real, I am 99.9999% sure it was him!! speaking of drinks, I had 1 1/2 drinks and that was enough for me - I'm still feeling it as I write this blog entry! Those who know me know I do not hold my liquor well at all, it's just not in the cards for me. I guess that's a good thing, right?

So then we left and they walked me back to my hotel. All in all it was a fun evening for my first night in NYC. There weren't too many pictures, but I can share a few here: