I recently took a vacation to New York City to visit an old friend. The trip was a blast and ended up being some of the most fun I've had in a long while.
I arrived Thursday morning, around 7am, at JFK. I took the A train into Manhattan, and met my friend Aaron at the FIT Dorms by Penn Station. We had a quick breakfast, but then he headed into work and I started to walk up 8th Avenue.
I passed the New York Times Building, which is just gorgeous. I continued to walk North, and found Columbus Circle and Central Park. Instead of walking up Central Park West, I went up Broadway, but quickly realized my mistake. I tried cutting across the park on 65th street, and let me tell you, that road is not built for people.
I found the Met, but it had a pretty long line, so I decided to wander around the Upper East Side. I fell asleep in a Starbucks, and enjoyed Pizza at this delicious place called Roma's.
I then walked back to the Met, and spent three awesome hours wandering around inside.
I really loved the wide variety of stuff inside the Met, and the Picasso exhibit was awesome (although it really showed his decent into insanity...).
Probably the thing that made me the happiest about the Met though, is that they are using user submitted photos on Flickr in their advertising campaign. It seems so obvious and so awesome all at the same time.
Afterwards I got a little lost in Central Park.
That night Aaron and I hung out in Park Slope. I had some really good New York beer, and I met some cool people.
The next day I took the subway down to NYU and Washington square.
NYU was pretty cool, but rather empty because it's summer. Thanks to my phone, I was able to find the Strand. The Strand has 18 miles of books, inside and outside. I was giddy, and if I wasn't supposed to meet a family friend for lunch, I probably would have never left.
I bought a book, and found a coffee shop, Everyman Espresso, and read while the rain poured down outside.
After lunch with my family friend, I wandered around the area. I tried to visit the Apple Store, but it was raining so there was a line of people trying to get in. Finally four o'clock rolled around, I wandered over to the MoMA and met up with Aaron. We saw the Matisse exhibit, which was awesome. The rest of the floors were hit or miss, but there was a lot of really gorgeous art in there.
That night a group of ten of us or so went out to a few bars in Manhattan. The two that I remember the names of are "High Bar" and "Joshua Tree". The next day we slept in (the bars are open till four, which is amazing), and then visited the World Trade Center. We got a picture together even, near the Irish Hunger Memorial (cool random place we stumbled across).
That night we went to the bars around Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Everywhere we went was pretty cool, although I especially liked the bar called "The Union Pool". It was basically a combination of every great house party I've ever been to.
You can see all of these photos and more in my Flickr set for this summer.
Hasta,
/Nat