Some NYC exploring, finally

Finally I can say I have explore (a bit of) NYC. My loving girlfriend and her sister came on last Thursday and stayed with me at Stony Brook.

On Friday we took the LIRR train to Penn Station. We started by heading out of Penn Station looking for the Empire State Building. After mistakenly pointing to the wrong antenna, we "came across" the tallest building in the city. It was pretty impressive. I had been here before, probably like ten years ago, so I had forgotten how tall it looks. Then we headed toward Grand Central and the Chrysler Building. We walked by the New York Public Library, which looked pretty nice so I might return there by myself to read some mathematics or physics. On fifth avenue we looked for a bagel place, but instead settled down for a cafe that was close to the Museum of Modern Art, which was our main target. At the cafe I had a croissant sandwich with imported ham and Swiss cheese with some pesto pasta salad on the side. It was better than I expected.

The MoMa was pretty nice. The first thing that we saw was a very tall wall full of cartoon-ish drawings with a political attitude. We wandered around the different floors. The most boring was the floor on Design and Architecture. It was annoying that The Persistence of Memory by Dalí was out on tour. It will not be back until mid 2008. The Picasso paintings were nice at least. I really like Picasso since he explore the concept of viewing something from all points of view at the same time. I think that in his book Hyperspace, Michio Kaku discusses that just like a three-dimensional being can observe all of "space" on a two-dimensional piece of paper, a hyper-being living on a four-dimensional world would be able to see all perspective of a three-dimensional world.

Anyways, after the MoMa we walked to the toy store F.A.O. Schwartz and then through Central Park. The park was pretty nice, we walked through the south-east corner towards the mid-west part, catching the train on 72nd street to finally returned to Penn Station and catch the train back to Stony Brook.

On Saturday we started by heading to 79th street to get some bagels at the nearby H&H. The service was a bit rude, since I had to repeat the lady the list of bagels I wanted many times and to top it all they did not accepted debit cards. Nevertheless, the bagels were good. H&H is not a sit-down place, so we headed outside with no napkins or even a knife for our bagels. I had an everything bagel, same as my girlfriend's sister Ann. Merideth had a plain bagel. For home I bought two poppy seed (which are becoming my favorite bagel now...), two everything, two plain and one pumpernickel. After bagels we headed to a Starbucks for drinks. After all that w hoped on the 3 line of the subway downtown to South Ferry. We realized that we needed to be on the 1 line so we got off at Time Square and took the 1 that came behind us. It turned out that because of constructions the 1 is not going down to the South Ferry so we had to change at 4th street for a 2/3 train down to Chamber street and there we took a bus to the ferry. It was all annoying because of the sense of slow moving. By the time we got to the ferry for the Statute of Liberty all the boats for that day were sold and they were selling tickets for the next day trips. That was also depressing, but my company reacted well and instead we wandered around Battery Park and watch the street performers The Positive Brothers. They were pretty good, besides some technical problems with their audio and some out-of-the-hand jokes like expressing the desire for making an Oreo with one person from the crowd. Still they got one dollar from my wallet.

After this we had a fruit break where I had an orange, and literally came across the insides of a very nice looking building when I suggested to visit the bathrooms of the National Museum of the American Indian which was previously the U.S. Customs House. This museum is not part of the Smithsonian system, and it looked a lot like the ones in D.C. The small bit we saw was very empty, but the security guards at the entrance were really nice. We checked out Wall street, where we saw the New York Stock Exchange and the building where George Washington took the oath as the first president of the U.S. I wanted to find this place since it appears during the end sequence of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. After Wall street we took the subway to Spring street, where we had a few slices of pizza from nearby Lombardi's. This place claims to be the first pizzeria in the U.S. It was truly great pizza, we had the traditional Margherita. Very yummy and tasty!

We headed to the Empire State Building after the pizza. The line was OK, but it was annoying all the stuff they are trying to sell you while you wait for the elevator. They even take a picture of you. The view from the top was spectacular, of course. This is the highest point in the city, since September 11th, 2001. After the view we sat down in front of the public library and then headed across Time Square to for the train to Penn Station.

It was all fun. I might go by myself at some point. Maybe next week since I have booked a trip to Amherst, MA on this Wednesday returning on Saturday to visit my friend Michael. Should be fun. Meri and her sister left on Sunday afternoon to London where they will start a trip along Europe for a three weeks. My girlfriend called around noon to tell me she made it fine to the hostel and that it was a bit cold. I told her that envy-green was my favorite color.