2015-07-26: New York Marathon

We have pre requisites for maintaining a healthy mind and body. We have subway cards. We shall tourist it up! We commenced our tourism by abstaining from the subway and instead grabbing a ferry across to Manhattan.

911 monument looking to Freedom Tower. I still think they should have just built new versions of the old ones and acted like nothing happened. That would piss the terrrrrists off more than anything else.

This is because checklist item #2 - Staten Island Ferry - is all about getting a view of the Status of Liberty as opposed to anything intrinsically cool about the ferry. Plus apparently the Staten Island ferry breaks down all the time. We have too much to see and do to risk getting stranded on the river. Seems a good justification anyway.

Statue makes it seem nicer than the reality.

At the ferry terminal there is a monument to the Polish army officers that were slaughtered in Katyn by the Russians in 1940. Ewa was surprised as the Poles didn't know about this massacre until the 90's. I was surprised because it hadn't been moved to make a 911 monument (Freedom tower is directly opposite - there is a 911 monument a few hundred metres down the pier). A local later told me that after 911 most New Yorkers wanted stability and familiarity and the idea of moving anything would have been anathema.

They are even black like the expensive non stick bun heaters

The ferry docks reminded me of those metal spikes that hotdog buns get heated on and I realised our tourist checklist was incomplete. New York is famous for street vendors selling hotdogs. We shall call that item #12 in our revised list. I now realise there is no food on the list. Lists can't unwieldy though.

And just like that another item checked off.

This was awesome. After half an hour we have checked off two tourist items. I think this is the fastest we have ever done anything. On this basis we could almost go home now and not have the worst checklist rating of a city we have done.

Little pocket parks are everywhere. Really pretty. Should be on someone's checklist but ours is full.

Manhattan is an island. In my mind it is quite a small island. There is a place that sells coffee with okay reviews. I want a coffee grinder. The address says upper west wide. I figure that must mean somewhere around the top of the island.

Has to be a Canadian invasion I figure. Would be on an architects checklist I guess.

Google says there is also a place at the bottom west of the island that sells coffee and machines. Unfortunately this place does not exist as far as we can tell.

Ewa loves the water towers. I think they are neat too.

If the island is small and we have already accomplished more than enough tourist items we can wander vaguely up the west side of the island and grab some coffee beans and a grinder.
Turns out the island is sort of bigger than I had imagined it. As the crow flies it a 10km walk.
Given our habit of seeing shiny things and wandering off to check them we took about 5 hours to cover the distance. That is an average of 2km an hour.

US Postal Service is obviously more dedicated than Australia Post

An interesting thing we noticed in our meandering is that Manhattan changes really quickly. 2 blocks of run down apartments with street level shops boarded up or selling tacky consumer crap will change to leafy streets with an obviously gay / artsy / rich feel to it.

I assume a suburb advertising Tom of Finland is a predominantly gay / artsy / rich suburb anyway.

2 blocks later it will be different again.

Places Review: Zabars

mapref
http://www.zabars.com/
+1 for it because it does exist. Unlike that stupid other place.
Big cheese selection and huge fresh roasted coffee range.

Upstairs has a wide range of cooking implements arrayed in that half arsed cram it all in and let the customers work it out manner that I like.

Cramped always a good sign

If we hadn't been tired and thirsty we would have spent a lot more time poking around in here.

Rating: 9/10 (I do not have space to carry much more stuff but was tempted by things)

In my mind Columbus avenue is a street full of bars. We were on Columbus. We found a bar.

They had Beer Pong. Has to be a party street.

My memory is therefore a good guide. Better than stupid google with that other coffee shop anyway

2015-07-25: Polski Shopski

Jersey city once had a large Polish community. Over the years the community has largely moved on or, at least, spread out.

Spanish Gaydar?

Ellery says they still have a Polish shop with all the fun foods and booze you could want.

Places Review: Piast Meats & Provisions

http://www.piast.com/
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It is a castle. That, in my opinion, is a big call to make. Castles should be full of treasure so they have a lot to live up to.

The flag is just camoflage

At first I thought it would be weird going to a Polish place at the moment because it is so hot. I have only been in Poland in winter so in my mind it is always winter in Poland. Ewa assures me that Poland has summers, they can be warm and that currently Poland is undergoing a heat wave.

Golonka in this weather on the other hand could be deadly.

If the temperature in Poland is similar to the one here I figure we ought to be fine as there have been no news reports of tragicomic exploding kielbasa deaths in Poland.

Prices are by the pound. That means if you normally think in kilos things look extremely cheap. So you buy more.

I had to dust off my memory banks of Polish as Ewa got excited and started speaking Polish. The same as everyone else in the place. Apparently there are still enough Poles around to field a couple of football teams. Unfortunately my memory banks were not good enough to remember the name of my favourite kielbasa.

I had to just get some of all the ones that looked faintly familiar or had names faintly familiar

I tried searching in this blog to find it but failed. I should really use tags or something I guess. Although it probably had a secret letter in it and I don't know how to do them on my phone anyway.

No memory issues for the booze fortunately.

Rating: 9/10 (they even had our favourite ptasie mleczko chocolate)

2015-07-24: Setting Up A Base Of Operations

When we arrive at a place which we hope to spend a reasonable amount of time at I have a few things I try to get sorted out quickly.
1. Coffee.
Every nation in the world claims to like coffee. Most of them have no damn idea about coffee. They are invariably happy to crap on about how theirs is better than the others without actually having a clue. At the hotel yesterday I asked where the best place for coffee was as there was no coffee making stuff in the room.

I quite like this little machine

The guy said Dunkin' Donuts. We have become quite tolerant in what passes for coffee. Dunkin' Donuts does not pass muster. Ellery has an interesting electric coffee maker. It passes. Probably have to buy a lot more coffee than he is accustomed to having in the house though.
2. Beer
Local beers are good to try. I like to find one which is easy to drink when I am just thirsty and ensure we have plentiful supplies. US brewing has made leaps and bounds in the past decade or so and I think I know the names of a few fancy places I want to try.

My geography is not so good but I don't think Jersey has a local session beer so I am okay with this failure

I expect them to be strong flavours though and therefore hard to drink after training when I just want to blank out and drink a beer that doesn't insist on me paying attention.
3. Workout Place
Naginata is obviously the main physical activity we do on our travels but most places only train a couple of times a week. Given the amount of food and beverages I enjoy consuming we need more physical activity than this.

Shutters on the main street make me suspect it is a slightly rough area. Therefore htey are probably good boxers.

In a pinch we will just use a gym with weights and other boring activities to perform. In Jersey city we have found a boxing gym though. Jersey City Heavy Hitters. We are not very good at boxing and the guys there look extremely serious about it. I hope Coach Jay doesn't think I was being modest when I said we suck.

2015-07-23: Ritualistic

First day of sightseeing. We know how bad we are and so we are trying to get lots of things done today before we remember we are bad tourists.

I assume it happens often enough to maybe make a checklist

Part of the prep work for this is working out how to get around. I have watched The Warriors and so I know that the subway is the preferred mode of travel. We have subway cards! We are now ready to Go Out To Playeeee

Damn Straight! It is a lifestyle!

The NY subway system has always been described as urine soaked. I wasn't aware you had to bring your own urine though. All the trains were clean and smelt better than I usually do.

Looks close enough to French Connection car chase for me.

We met up with Ellery, a fellow naginata person, for lunch and he suggested a few things to look at. We managed to do one of them. He knows me pretty well and I think he will agree that this is pretty good going by our standards.

I didn't make willy jokes because it was too obvious.

We were told that we ought to have a ritual on our travels so that each new place we can Make It Home by performing the little ritual, hanging a small picture or similar. This time I thought I had kept my eye on Ewa constantly but she must have snuck off at some point to perform her ritual summoning firefighters.

New York traffic is quite hard to get through.

I guess she feels at home in New York now. Unfortunately we are staying in New Jersey so I expect the firefighters will be busy again later. Maybe I shouldn't mention they are different states.

But I guess firefighters would feel less heroic with one of these.

2015-07-22: Hellllloooooo New York

I have always wanted to spend some time in New York. I have a lot of preconceptions about the place.

I think my ranting about John Wayne and Johnny Cash might have been a touch garbled

Many of my favourite movies and songs are about the place. Actually all I can think of at the moment is They Might Be Giants - New York City and that seems to insinuate NYC is not that great compared to his girlfriend. He does give a decent checklist of tourist items though.

John Wayne Airport serves large beers from 0600.

We can do a They Might Be Tourists checklist!

Tourist Checklist: New York City

1. Statue of Liberty
2. Staten Island Ferry
3. Co-op City
4. Katz's
5. Tiffany's
6. Central Park
7. Brooklyn Bridge
8. The Empire State where Dylan lived
9. Coney Island
10. Times Square
11. Rockefeller Center

Rating: 0/11 (I assume all of these still exist)

And of course I still have to make it to Arby's

For our first day we have grabbed a hotel near the airport so we can orient ourselves and get things planned. The area is not as salubrious as the picture on the flyer made out. There seem to be a fair amount of people renting rooms for relatively short periods of time.

Possibly more aspirational than realistic

The large gentlemen sitting in quite nice black cars in the parking lot are not, I suspect, picking up their daughters. The large gentlemen seemed to quite like Popeye's takeaway.

New York City doesn't have much space.

When I was a teenage there was a really good burger place called Popeye's. This is not the same place. This Popeye's do southern style food. We grabbed some fried chicken (acceptable) and sides and had a bedroom picnic listening to the goings on in the adjoining rooms.

Beans (or peas) in gravy is probably one of the easiest ways to entice me into eating something. My favourite poutine has peas and chicken topping. One of my favourite lazy sunday things in Sydney was to smoke a chicken and have it with peas in thick brown gravy. These beans are disappointing and I doubt we will return to the chain.

Could probably make good money setting this system up in the foyer of the hotel.

2015-07-21: Bye LA

We fly out to New York tomorrow morning so tonight we are staying at a hotel next to John Wayne Airport.
Normal people would probably think we were being clever and practical as John Wayne Airport is closer to Huntington Beach than LAX.

Fairly generic travelling salesman type hotel pool.

But we are actually flying out from there because John Wayne!
I think he had a girls middle name. Marion maybe? Definitely not Sue though.

I should start testing the drinks before she has had four

I wonder if there is a Johnny Cash Airport. That'd be cool. They could play his music and then occasionally throw in The Jesus & Marychain - Head to toe I'm Dressed in Black.

A bit of colour makes it fun

John Wayne airport does not allow six shooters any more than other airports unfortunately.
They should probably rename the place so they can have a theme we can all join in on.

Places Review: The Atrium Airport Hotel

Older hotel. Large rooms. Decent food.

Really good coleslaw. Pulled pork nothing special as usual.

Not sure if it is an everyday thing but they make pretty good mojitos.
Actually what they really make are incredibly strong mojitos.

I will never understand non dairy creamer. I don't like it and, despite what the movies say, you cannot make a white russian with it

It wasn't until I tasted one that I realised Ewa was likely to need a bit of a steadying hand guiding her back to the room.

Rating: 8/10 (+1 for mojitos and -1 for psychedelic pool lighting)

Johnny Cash levels of drugs required to make this okay.

2015-07-20: Sign Time!

 The latest collection of signs that have made me chortle.

California Uber Alles indeed

Message received

A game I could be interested in

How do you feel about the guy that gave you a bad review?

There is a village full of them.

I always wanted to open a Thai restaurant and call it "Curl up and Dye". Alternately a Hairdresser called "Thai riffic"

Truth in advertising

 

You're simply glowing!

Then we had Korean barbecue. I like participation food.

Los Angeles seems to have quite a few pretty decent Korean barbecue places. They get all weird with Japanese and have a habit of doing Japanese/Chinese or other somewhat odd combinations (although lots of countries do that).

My favourite was in Krakow where there was a place that was chinese/vietnamese and there wasn't a single fresh herb in the place. Perhaps Koreans are better at staying on message.