168. New Year's in New York

For celebrations on the eve of 2008, I went to New York City. It was an almost-last-minute decision, but as my friends who work for a student tour group were going to guide a group in NYC for New Year's, JNTN and I decided to join them. They gave us a cool discount so the trip for 4 days, 3 nights was only $150! And that included hotel for three nights (with breakfast), return bus transportation from Toronto, daily transportation from our New Jersey hotel to Manhattan and all sorts of other little extras!

We had a great time, even though the city was crazy busy with tourists EVERYWHERE (like us!). The first night was a short night because we didn't get to New York until 7pm. We just went to Grand Central Terminal and had dinner in the food court area. Afterwards, we wandered around to Bryant Park, where there was a giant skating rink. We thought about skating, but the line up was just wayyyyy too long.

Day two we woke up early to go to the Empire State Bldg. JNTN and I opted not to go to the top of the building, and instead went to wander around the shops in that area. We were hoping to go shopping at Macy's, but they weren't open until 11am, and we were there super early at 9am. Instead we just looked at the amazing Christmas window displays. By the time the shops started opening, we had to go meet the bus, which picked us up and drove us to Brooklyn. And then it left. This part of the tour was for us to WALK across the Brooklyn Street Bridge. I had no idea people could even DO that! (because it looks like a scary suspension bridge when just looking at it). But it was a fun (although windy) walk and we took tons of photos. It took about 20-30mins to cross the bridge and reach Manhattan on the other side.

We then walked to Pier 17, a little shopping area near the waterfront. It was quite nice... with a big Christmas tree and pedestrian promenade area. JNTN and I met up with his uber-cool buddy Y, who lives in New Jersey but took the train in to meet us for lunch. We chose a pizza parlour specializing in Chicago-style pizza (very appropriate for us New York tourists!) Then we went to the TKTS booth. There wasn't very much selection for shows left so we decided to see a show called "Forbidden Broadway", which Y described as a "spoof of all the other Broadway shows". We figured it sounded funny--and it would be like seeing all of the best parts of like 20 different musicals! The challenge was we had to buy tickets for a whole bunch of other people... 5 to be exact. And because the tickets were $50 apiece, we spent all our $250 USD cash. (TKTS only accepts cash!) So we were poor hobos for the next few hours.

When our friends joined us, we got some of our cash back (phew!) and then we went off to find a dinner place for our pre-show dinner. We went to this little dark cafe called the Rendezvous Cafe and Hookah Bar. Did I say "Hookah" bar?! Yes I did! Oh what a surprise, and oh how fun it was to smoke an apple-flavoured hookah pipe! haha.

Then off to the show, which was in an intimate theater of about 70 people. It was the perfect setting for the perfect off-Broadway show. For our post-show snack, we were again joined by Y, who picked us up from the theater door, drove us over to the other side of Manhattan to a neat little cafe, and then all the way back to the front door of our New Jersey hotel!

Day three started off just as early and we started with a hike through Central Park. It was a cloudy day but not too cold so the walk was nice. We went from one side of the park to the other, emerging right by the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art. Since we had a couple of hours to meet the bus, we decided to spend our time indoors and being "cultured". The Met was so much fun, with famous paintings, sculptures, and photos. We only got through a quarter of the Museum before having to leave.

The second drop off point of the day was SoHo/Tribeca area, where we had lunch at our favourite restaurant and shopped at our favourite Japanese stores. There was some running around to do there too, but we got all of our shopping done before leaving for our friend's New Year's Eve party in Brooklyn.

Instead of going to Times Square (thank goodness!) we were invited to her party at her brownstone. Once a single-family house, the brownstone is now a converted apartment building of four different apartments. From the outside it looks like the Huxtable's residence (from the Cosby Show) but inside it is beautifully renovated into the different units.

Each of the residents opened their doors to a massive open-house/New Year's Party. It was so fun to wander from floor to floor, visiting each of the guests on each floor. On the basement was a musician couple with their jazz musician friends and semi-hippies. The second floor was a young couple with kids... and ALL of their young couple friends with lots and lots of other kids! The third floor was an all-night-party-bachelor guy and the fourth floor (home of my friend) was the "young professionals" party and the coolest place in the building. All sorts of people came and went all night but by midnight there were probably about 50 people on her floor alone! (And maybe a couple hundred in the entire building?) It was an incredible, unique, and fun way to bring in 2008!