New York City, NY, USA
Realistically it’s everything you want from a city. It looks so much like New York it’s ridiculous. Yellow taxis driving about, steam billowing out of the pavements, people with that accent, and the iconic skyline visible from every corner. It’s like being on a film set.
We arrived in New York on a dark January evening and it was cold. Very cold. Too-cold-to-snow cold. We hopped in a cab, pretending it wasn’t cripplingly expensive, and checked into our hotel, the CitizenM on the Lower East Side. A slightly edgy neighbourhood, the Lower East Side is home to all the best dive bars and a whole host of great little restaurants, without being smack bang in the middle of the tourist area.
After chucking our stuff into the (tiny) room and playing with the blinds, we headed out to a nearby bar which I’d read about a week or so before. A couple of blocks from our hotel, we arrived at the bar and joined the short queue outside, expecting it to move fairly quickly. Thirty minutes later, having made no progress, we spoke to the doorman and asked what was going on, who assured us ‘It won’t be long’. So we stayed in line. It started to snow, and we huddled close up to the wall to stay out of the worst of it. By this point, we’d committed, so we stayed. It started to snow more heavily. We stayed. It developed into a full blizzard, the snow blowing sideways. We stayed in that line. And eventually, after nearly three hours queuing on a cold New York side street, we entered the bar. To this day, we don’t know why we didn’t just find somewhere else in that time.
But inside, it was perfect. Chic little cocktails made with homemade infusions, and Korean-style chicken burgers in buttery brioche buns, with spicy slaw slipping out with every crunchy bite. It was only the next morning, lying in bed, that I googled the name of the bar, ‘Double Chicken Please’. Turned out it had just the week before been named one of the top five bars in the entire world. That explains why a. It was so good and b. There was such a long wait.
Our first couple of full days in New York were spent wandering about getting our bearings, and we wandered through Soho, Chelsea, Tribeca and up to the upper west side. We walked and walked and walked. At one point, we stumbled across the High Line, the former railway that winds itself around the west side and up to the river. So we walked along that for a while, just generally marvelling at being in New York, and saying how they should turn every railway bridge into a scenic footpath, admittedly without any thought to how that would entirely ruin public transport systems.
A big part of New York for me is the food and drink. Thousands of articles have been written about the delights of eating in New York, from the pizzas and burgers to the Jewish delis and fine dining. And they’re not wrong. Our days revolved around what we wanted for breakfast, lunch and dinner, eating thick reuben sandwiches at Katz’s Deli, pizza pies at Scarr’s, and lox bagels at Russ and Daughters. All were faultless. We had Manhattans overlooking Manhattan, meat packed in the Meatpacking District, beers in the Brooklyn Brewery, and the cheapest drinks on the menu in the historic Bemelmans Bar. We ate like kings for the entire trip.
We initially weren’t sure whether to visit the Empire State Building. It’s quite expensive, and you famously can’t see the Empire State Building from the top. But after some deliberation in the lobby, we thought why the hell not, we’re only here once, so we bought our tickets ($45 each!) and headed to the elevators. And you know what, it was great, and once again ticked the box of exactly what you’d hope for. Art nouveau rooms, elevators with hundreds of buttons, and at the top an incredible view across the city. A cold but crystal clear day, we could see right to the end of Manhattan and over to New Jersey. We stayed at the top for until we were the people who’d been up there the longest, spending a couple of hours pointing out things we had already seen, and admiring the beautiful Chrysler Building down below. Easily my favourite skyscraper in the world, it is just as beautiful in real life, its zinc triangle tip catching the winter afternoon’s sun.
Next on our tourist tick-list was the Staten Island Ferry, a free ferry which gives you a great view of the Statue of Liberty in Hudson Bay. Once again, the beautiful weather meant Liberty looked great, a pleasing vivid green against the blue sky. New York in the winter might be cold, but it does show the city in a good light.
A slightly less touristy site was Rockwood Music Hall on the lower east side, a succession of small rooms with successively bigger bands playing in each room. We started out in the free room, listening to a small unknown indie band, before graduating to the middle room, where a $20 ticket gave us the chance to listen to Rigometrics, a band from Portland who were chaotic fun. We spent a few hours here, racking up quite a drinks bill on our debit card, which we then completely forgot about and left at the bar.
On our final afternoon, the sky crystal-clear as ever, we walked over Brooklyn Bridge and into Brooklyn, where we sat alongside the river, wrapped up all warm, and watched the sun set over the New York skyline. The Statue of Liberty to our left, the Hudson stretching out along Manhattan to our right. As cities go, it’s got to be up there with some of the world’s best. I’m certainly a massive fan.
