New York: Day One

Day one started at midnight. I worked the evening before we left and when I got home, it was time to pack, get about 3 hours sleep and head to the airport. The flight was smooth except the landing was rougher than I'm used to, but all in all, pretty good. We were waiting for awhile after we landed, because my mother in law was at the wrong terminal to pick us up. If anyone has ever been to JFK, you may know that it is a labyrinth and an airport that was designed a long time ago, struggling to make it into the 21st century as the busiest airport in the most important city in the world. Anyway, she finally found us, we went to her place, had lunch, got settled in and I took a nap as Carmen took the kids for a walk around the old neighborhood. Awwww Yeahhhh! Hollis Son! (Insert RunDMC song here)

That night we went on a date to a raw food restaurant. The prices were high, but I attribute that partly to the cost of the ingredients and partly to the fact that the restaurant is in a trendy neighborhood in Manhattan. The food was incredible and quite honestly worth every penny. If you're ever in Manhattan and want to try excellent food, go to Pure Food and Wine. After that, we decided to walk the 25 blocks or so to Times Square. It was a great walk and a nice night. (it was in the 70's :D )

On the way I was thinking that I haven't had a real New York Hot Dog in a long time and there's nothing better to top off a great dinner of raw fruits, vegetables and nuts formed into delectable goodness than a common NY Hot Dog, from your friendly Sabrett street vendors of course. I have to admit though, I was a little disappointed. I remember that the thing I loved about the Hot Dogs from the Sabrett vendors is that they would crunch when you bite into them. I don't know why, and I probably don't want to know why, but there would be a very distinct crunch. The crunch was not there, and after 7 years of waiting I was of course very disappointed.

When we got to Times Square, it was probably about 11 at night, but you couldn't tell. The city there is lit up like it's 4 in the afternoon with massive ads all over the place. One thing that our family is sensitive to is advertisements. We don't have TV so our advertisement load is limited to the Internet (which I don't pay that much attention to advertisements on) and billboards. But New York takes advertising to the next level. In Times Square I suppose I expected it, but what really shocked me on this trip was ads on bridges, in subways and anywhere else that is conceivable (or even inconceivable)

We walked around for a little while and went into the massive Virgin Records store, looked around for awhile and decided to make the trek back to Queens. On the way to the Subway, we saw some impressive art. A guy with a can of spray paint was creating some impressive skylines of NY, complete with WTC 1&2. (More on the WTC later) Then we hit the subway and a bus back to Hollis. Anyway that's Day One.