NYC never disappoints. I now have almost unsurpassable expectations, but it just doesn't disappoint. There's something around every corner and always a new neighborhood to visit and new foods to try.
We drove up to Seattle on Friday night, dropped the kids off with my mom and Rong and departed early Saturday morning. We stayed 4 nights in NYC and now we are back in Richland. I fly back to Seattle tomorrow to pick up the kids.
When in NYC, we did the following:
1) Ate tons and visited as many different areas as we could. We also walked and walked and walked. We took the subway quite a few times and we Lyfted a few times to dinner, but we mostly walked. I love walking in New York.
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| Beautiful school in Harlem. I think it was a CUNY or something. |
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| Harlem |
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| Harlem streets. |
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| Ethiopian food in Harlem |
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| We weren't even close to being able to get a cronut but we got our hands on the second-best, a "DKA". Dominique Ansel is in lower Manhattan. |
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| It was really good but we forgot to take a pic of the pastry. Just a pic of me and food, which was a common theme. |
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| Brighton Beach (near Coney Island in Brooklyn). Predominantly Russian area. |
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| Dae thought these CCCP popsicles were hilarious. |
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| Brighton Beach shops |
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| The beach off of Coney Island/Brighton Beach. I was surprised how vast these Brooklyn Beaches are! |
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| Sushi Zo on our last night, near Greenwich Village. Yummy omakase dinner |
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| Sushi Zo. 10 seat sushi bar. |
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| Joe's Shanghai of course, in Midtown. Came twice. Did not disappoint. We have officially decided the xiao long baos are better than Din Tai Fung. I love Din Tai Fung, but Joe's have so much more of the delicious soup in the dumplings. The skin is thicker, though. |
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| Jongri in Koreatown with James and Gina |
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| Ice cream in Williamsburg. And my new Asian-fit sunglasses that I wear whenever possible. :) |
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| Delicious cold noodle soup in BCD tofu house in Koreatown. Humongous bowl. Here I am slurping the soup Chinese-style. I asked Dae if it was ok to do that in a Korean place and he said yes, so I didn't hesitate. They served the little individual fried fishes that the kids LOVE. Wish they would have been there to enjoy. |
2) Frequented 48 Mott Street in Chinatown for foot rubs.
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| This place is the best. $90 total for both of our foot and back rubs. $90 at our hotel spa would have probably purchased us like 15 minutes! |
3) No pictures, but I took two exercise classes. SoulCycle and SLT (Strength Lengthen Tone). Both were excellent (and pricey). I think it's worth it. Every year I look forward to attending these different classes that I would never be able to get in Richland. SLT was similar to Pilates, uses a MegaFormer instead of a Reformer, and works core and all sorts of muscle groups that I apparently never use judging from how sore I am today. Next year I am aiming to do: Anna Kaiser (dance and cardio) and Shadowbox (boxing).
4) Our hotel was one block from a Steinway & Sons showroom so every morning I looked in and practically salivated at the thought of playing one. Finally, on our next to last day, the showroom was open (it had been closed for Sunday and July 4 Monday) so we went in and got the lowdown on the Steinways (starting price $63K...ouch) and I finally got to tickle the ivories. Our salesperson was a Chinese girl who had studied piano at Juilliard and is a concert pianist...as luck would have it she sat down to demo a piano and played none other than my favorite Chopin piece! She was really good. Way better than me, obviously. haha. She said one thing I would notice on Steinways is that the keys are 'harder' than an upright - I am sure there is a technical term for that but that's what I remember - and that once you are used to that obviously the sound is immensely better. So I did feel like the keys were harder to press, but I couldn't really get a feel for the sound since I was nervous just trying to play correctly (ha!). It was definitely a really nice experience and I can appreciate the beauty and craftsmanship of a Steinway for sure.
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| Beautiful store |
5) Embarrassingly (or not), we hit the 100th annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on Coney Island, where Joey "Jaws" Chestnut regained his title with 70 hot dogs. Dae and I left the hotel that morning with the idea that we were going to Brooklyn. We realized it was July 4 and of course July 4 is synonymous with the hot dog eating contest. haha. He looks over and goes "wanna go to the hot dog eating contest?". Neither of us had any idea where Coney Island was. We mapped it and when we realized how close it was to the Russian area in Brighton Beach (which we really wanted to hit) we were on the subway in a matter of minutes. We got pretty close to view it but I would say the actual contest was pretty anti-climactic. Joey Chestnut easily beat out the other guy and had eaten 30 hot dogs in the first 3 minutes before he slowed down. The whole thing was over in 10 minutes and we strolled down to Brighton Beach.
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| This was the view of Manhattan from the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg (Brooklyn). It was really pretty. |
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| I thought this was hilarious |
Back in Seattle my mom kept the kids busy with the Museum of Flight, the Ballard Locks, a 4th of July parade in Kirkland (which they mistakenly arrived 1 1/2 hours early to. haha!) lots of delicious food and fruit (she got like 3 pallets of mangoes when I told her they loved those little champagne mangoes), roast beef sandwiches which she informed me they loved, a new Lego set each (lucky dogs!), trips to the 1/2 of Somerset Park that was still open and Science Camp which started on Tuesday. Boy are they lucky to have such loving grandparents.
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| Facetiming. They were extremely busy eating & chewing when we Facetimed them this one night. They love eating at my mom's table and watching the 6 o'clock news, the Olympic swim trials, American Ninja Warrior, or whatever happens to be on her big screen in the kitchen. |
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| Museum of Flight |
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| Air Force One! |
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| Another Blackbird SR-71. Two in one month. Leelee is a lucky kid. |
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| Happy campers. |
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| They love these spinning coin/ball things. Look at Olin's excited face and hands. |
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| Making homemade wontons with puo puo. She said Leelee now doesn't need any help making them. |
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| Ballard Locks |
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| Ballard Locks |
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| My mom said Olin was so tired he slept in the car for 2 hours. Then, he woke up a bit when she brought him inside and my mom assumed he was awake. But she said when she went back she saw he had again fallen asleep again at the entrance! He slept for another hour. Tuckered out. |
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| Kirkland 4th of July parade. 1.5 hours early. My mom said parking was a breeze since they were so early. :) |
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| Slingshots from camp. Leelee said the blue 'snout' opens and closes so it's especially hard to get the ball in to the snout. Somehow, the word 'snout' has become multipurpose for him. When making a rocket a couple weeks ago he came up to me and told me he needed something to make the 'sharp snout' for the rocket! Dae and I were laughing so hard. He then used the word snout in a funny way again last week but I can't remember in what context. |
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| Somerset park. Olin hung on for 100 seconds! Leelee hung on for 141! |
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| Loving the wild rabbits in my mom's neighborhood. |
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