Anne and Joe: New York

Anne and I were in New York City this past weekend to celebrate our one year anniversary. We arrived there 11:30 Friday morning, March 28 via Septa rail to Trenton N.J., then caught the Amtrak Pennsylvanian to Penn Station in New York. I don't think we will ever drive to NYC again! It was a great ride and we saved beaucoup bucks on gas, tolls and overnight parking! Plus we estimated that we walked over 20 miles from Friday to Sunday. So our exercise routine was not compromised! Oh sure, we still had time for a beer and drink or two before lunch as evidenced by the following photo shortly after our arrival:

Anne and Joe at Jack Demsey's

After an early lunch at Jack Demsey's pub, we had a couple of hours till check in so we strolled around to become familiar with our surroundings. Our hotel, the Radisson Martinique (Martinique) at 32nd and Broadway was situated just over a block from the train station and just one street away from the Empire State Building on 33rd (Demsey's was just across the street from the famous tower). It was also only about a block and a half from Macy's on 34th St. where they just happened to be having the Macy's Flower Show. Before we went to Macy's though we took a stroll around the block to 5th Ave. and we saw this scrolling billboard with a peculiar anamoly:

Now I've seen handwritten and posted signs with backward "N's" before, but never on a programmable scrolling sign. Just had to take a shot of that. Now maybe if the programmer saw this sign first:

he may have avoided that mistake. Ah, but this is New York. Following are some shots of Macy's Flower Show:

Afterward we checked into our room and prepared for our walk to Little Italy where we had dinner at Lombardi's: Lombardi's They use coal fired ovens there! A healthy spinach, calamata olive, roasted pepper and wild mushroom pie that was worth the 35 block walk! And we ate the whole thing! On the walk back we stopped at a Starbuck's that seemed to be filled with extras from some long non-existant plays. Typically New York. But our trip was not to go starless. Suddenly into the Starbucks I noticed Philip Seymour Hoffman entering. I mentioned it to Anne and we just watched as he got a latte and strolled out unnoticed. Here is a pic of Hoffman:

On Saturday, after a breakfast inside the Empire State Building at the Europa Cafe, which actually reminded us of a backerei we visited in Wiesbaden, we went back to Demsey's for a couple of drinks and went back to the hotel room to get dressed for The Phantom of the Opera at 2:00. We strolled up Broadway though Times Square:

to the Majestic Theater:

where we saw our first Broadway show, The Phantom of the Opera. It was great and we couldn't take pics of the performance but here is a shot of the chandelier:

The show was fantastic and Anne wants to see another one next year. Yeah baby! After the show we walked up 7th Ave. to 53rd and ate dinner at Maison: Maison_NYC where we had a taste of the Brittany region of France. Anne had a sumptuous grilled filet of Salmon and I had the Juniper scallops. As usual we share our meals and then decide on dessert. Anne had a wonderfully delicious chocolate-hazelnut crepe and I had the fresh strawberry crepe. I have to say as good as my crepe was, Anne's was magnificent! We walked back to the hotel and passed:

After getting back to the hotel about 7:30, we went out to check three clubs we had read about from a magazine in our room. We took the stairs from our twelfth floor room down to the lobby:

The Stairway at the Martinique

One was the Rodeo, not much to say there. They were billed as a Blues Club but the only Blues there was those you get waiting for drinks. No bands, no atmosphere. Practically no service. What a boring joint. The place was not up to snuff, so we went to the second club on the list, the Star Lounge : Star_Lounge which had some very interesting history, and should have had some celebrities there but they don't open till 11:00. And you wouldn't even know it was there anyway as it is located outside and downstairs from the Chelsea Hotel. I recommend that you check out the website for the Star. It may have been a very intersesting place! Since it was only 9:30, we decided to go to the third club on our list, Tillman's. Listed as a jazz club with a Harlem twist. I thought it would be a good place to check out. Like the the Star Lounge, Tillmans was a club that was in an indescript location with only a light, a door and a doorman stationed outside. You wouldn't have known that a club was there. We went in and were instantly transported into a very swank club. Beautifully decorated and filled with mostly young urban professional people of color. They were very cool and didn't mind our presence. We were treated as any other customer there and I must say the drinks were great, and the appetizers we had were phenomenal! We split a grilled brie cheese and pear sandwich with a large mug of jambalaya that was pretty much out of this world. We stayed several hours people watching and listening to the sounds of pop/soul mixed with reggae and Motown. We were dissapointed to find that live bands performed there on Monday evenings only. I highly recommend checking out Tillman's if you want a fresh perspective on smooth.

On Sunday we just marched straight up 5th Ave. all the way up to Rockefeller Center where we took these shots: