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The rarely updated blog of Joel Dixon

Viewing blogs tagged New York

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Travel Log - Day 9 (Best NHL Game Ever!)

# Posted by Joel Dixon at 14/05/2006 12:59:00

Upon waking up on Day 9 we discovered that our New York hotel room was still shithouse - and the early morning (noisy) construction work didn't help. When we originally went to Statue of Liberty on day 3 we decided it was too busy - and I'm glad we did. We ended up encountering very few lines - and it was a much nicer day weather wise this time around.

We shared the ferry over with around 100 school kids (the coolest excusion I can remember was Parliament House - wow!), and I tried my first authentic American pretzel. I really didn't like it - but I don't know if that had something to do with the fact that I bought it from a canteen on a ferry.

I was bitterly disappointed to discover that the tour wouldn't involve going inside "Liberty Enlightening the World" - but I had already assumed that it would be the case. The museum in the pedestal turned out to be really enjoyable - but if they ever open up the inside of the statue, I'll be back there in a minute.

The original torch. "Hey lady - you got a light?"

A full-scale replica of the face - I'm sure I'm not the only one that found this a little freaky (and sexually appealing)

For some reason this picture reminds me of Sarah Ferguson. "... noone's watching"

The photo didn't come out too good - but this was a nice cross section of the statue

There was windows on the roof at the top of the pedestal - so we could see the staircase we weren't allowed to climb

Been a while since washing day me thinks

I was amazed that I was so close to an icon that I had seen all my life

After getting back into the city - we bummed around for a bit. While shopping at Virgin we noted that Paris Hilton was doing a book signing. I'm not 100% - but I'm pretty sure she did a similar thing at Eastland a few months ago.

I also marked off another "must eat in America" item when I found some Philly Cheese Steak (in pie form - thankfully it was delicious). Onion, green peppers, steak, cheese - lovely! I might have to look for recipes! Then, after a brief nap at our hotel, we walked down to The Garden.

Finally - an NHL game!

I was so pumped to be going to a hockey game I didn't mind that most of the good vibes around The Garden was directed towards the Rangers. I wore my Penguins away jersey and I bought one of the Rangers' third jerseys (I love the logo design) for Bell to wear - which just happened to be what the Rags were wearing that night. I figured that at least Bell wouldn't be beaten to death my the mad New York fans. We got there very early, but I didn't want to miss a minute of the game (or warmups etc), so I stared at an empty rink for a fair while.

Our viewing angle - not too bad, but I had hoped we might be a little closer

Then, without much fanfare, the two teams took to the ice for warm ups. My mouth was gaped open for around five minutes while I watched players that I've idolised skate around the rink. The start of warmup probably got more of a reaction from me than the start of the game, as it's was the first time I'd seen NHLers take to the rink.

Warmups - Fleury's yellow blockers make him easy to find

Warmups - Caron was backing up - and you can see Crosby skating in (on the right)

Warmups - Bell like this bit, when they were all taking many shots from in close, it did look kinda funny

I'm sure the full description of the game would be boring for most - so I'll go bullet points:

New York got out to an early lead - scoring while Dick Tarnstrom was serving a double minor for High Sticking. The first ever NHL goal that I witnessed was by Maxim Kondratiev - I hope he's proud!
Early in the second period Fleury made an incredible save, and I could sense that the Penguins took a bit of jump from this. Shortly after, Ryan Whitney scored his first NHL for the Penguins - tying the game at 1. It was good to be able to see the way a play develops, something I wouldn't have picked up on TV.
New York scored later in the 2nd period, to stay in front for the rest of the game.
Fleury was incredible to watch - some of his saves were awesome!
Unfortunately both Crosby and Lemieux were pretty much non-factors in this game. Crosby was shaking off a foot injury from a few games ago.

Just before the puck was dropped

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Saturday, May 06, 2006

Travel Log - Day 8 (New York, New York ... again)

# Posted by Joel Dixon at 06/05/2006 01:44:00

Probably the least interesting day of our honeymoon - I'd probably skip this entry if I were you

Well, after being served breakfast by an authentic Canadian (the curtains matched the drapes) we decided on a less adventurous breakfast for day 2 in Canada. The Starbucks in the hotel lobby provided us all of the Chocolate-Chip Cookies and Almond Biscotti we required for a balanced breakfast.

We were actually getting much better at packing our bags by this point - so we were waiting for our New York train for a fair while. While we were waiting, we saw the first few flakes of snow that we had ever seen. Sure - it was no blizzard - but it was exciting to us.

A licky boom boom down

More of the white stuff - the most we had seen at this point of the trip

The train ride back to New York was much more boring this time - but did offer a brief distraction. I had mentioned that the trip up to Canada involved a scary "border check". Turns out the Canadians are a lot more relaxed when it comes to these things. Our American border-check assistant was a little more thorough with questions such as "Which bags are yours?", "Why do you need so much luggage?", "Why are you going to the U.S.?". Much more nerve-racking than the simple "fill in this form" from the way up. He seemed to calm down when I said we were on our honeymoon - and had picked up many souvenirs. The chick that was sitting opposite us was not so lucky. She was asleep when border-check begun - so her answers weren't as confident at the beginning of the conversation. It went something like this:

Quote:

Scary Border-Check Guy: Are you a Canadian resident?

Sleepy Canadian Girl: Yes.

SBCG: How long are you going to be in the U.S.?

SCG: 4 days.

SBCG: Can I see your passport again?

[passport is um'd and ah'd about for a while]

SBCG: Why are you traveling to the U.S.?

SCG: I have a funeral to attend.

SBCG: Who's funeral?

SCG: My grandfather's.

SBCG: What was the cause of death?

SCG: [pause followed by mumbled answer]

(I was trying not to make it obvious I was listening)

SBCG: We're going to need to interview you in the back carriage.

Please come with us.

After what seemed like about a half-hour of interrogation our Canadian friend resumed her seat. She seemed a little shaken up (definitely more awake). I, once again, said a silent thank you that our "interrogation" was tame, and didn't involve in-depth questions of my specific plans for our honeymoon (I got enough of those questions from Bell's father).

Anyway - we finally made it back to New York, and checked into the worst hotel of the trip. More expensive than our initial New York hotel, The Gershwin was an absolute dive. I didn't have a tape measure handy, but I think our whole hotel room could have fit in our bed from the Sheraton room. The big selling point was how much "art" was on display at the hotel - as well as the interesting guests (their website boasts "We attract opposites. We welcome all kinds of human flora and fauna. Snappy dressers tingle our g-spot, but we open doors to shabby neo-romantic Ostro-Goths as well."). I would have traded both of them in for a room that we didn't have trouble fitting our bags in.

The crappy room at The Gershwin did piss us off a bit, but thankfully we were only there for two days - and we didn't spend much of that time in our room. I guess we'll never be a pair of neo-romantic Ostro-Goths Frown

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Monday, March 13, 2006

Travel Log - Day 5 (J-Dix on the six)

# Posted by Joel Dixon at 13/03/2006 00:22:00
Updated by Joel Dixon at 08/02/2008 12:38:43

The travel notes I took while on our trip tell me that we slept in again on Day 5 - and I'm not about to dispute it. A few weeks before our wedding I had planned on mapping out every day of our trip in detail. I didn't want to do a whole movie dad thing and map out every single minute of a "vacation", but I thought that, while we didn't have to stick to our plan - we'd have a good starting point. Of course, I never got around to finishing it - so we ended up waiting for a bus to Bronx for an hour before giving up and catching an (expensive) train (but it took us through Grand Central Station, which was nice).

Arriving in Bronx, the first thing we noticed was the complete lack of taxi cabs. Coming from the crazy taxi cab archon-board that is New York it was odd to not see any of the hacks around - and meant we had to walk about 2 kilometers to the entrance of Bronx Zoo.

Bronx Zoo - you can barely make out the ad for the "Holiday Lights" display on the left - man, that was as lame as the sign suggests

The zoo was ok - but definitely had an off-season feel to it (I couldn't go on my first monorail - D'oh!). We saw lots of animals but of course, I was more interested in enjoying my chocolate taco (whoever thought of making a chocolate / ice cream taco is a genius!).

He looks sad, but I assume it's just because he is thirsty

He thinks he's people

Contenders ... READY!!!

Gladiators ... READY!!!

Tapirs are the animal world's equivalent of James Carville

Feeding time for the giraffe's (yes, they're licking the walls)

Here kitty, kitty

I think I had three of these, and they weren't really that good. I was probably just impressed that I was eating an ice cream taco (there was a period I started to eat my broccoli when a brother suggested they looked a little like trees)

One thing that Belinda got a pretty good shot of was a tormented lion. They had a lion in one cage, and some prey (I don't know animals, I assume they're gazelle or impala) in the adjoining area - separated by a wooden fence. The lion was just stalking the fence trying to figure out how to get into the other cell - kind of sad really.

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Monday, February 27, 2006

Travel Log - Day 4 (What is the deal with "New" York anyway?)

# Posted by Joel Dixon at 27/02/2006 22:37:00

... it's almost 400 years old (yes, I butchered a Family Guy joke)

Thankfully day 4 wasn't quite as cold as the day before, but it still wasn't toasty. On our way to the Internet Cafe (single dirtiest mouse I've ever touched) we got our first taste of American star-spotting. We actually saw one of my favourite actors - Samuel L. Jackson. He was just standing out the front of Madame Tussauds - but wasn't overly animated. I guess the stars are different in real-life then they are in the movies.

Sam Jackson - didn't seem too impressed when I offered him some triple-thick milkshake though

After picking up our tickets for the Phantom of the Opera for later that night we started "Kramer's Reality Tour". For those that don't know the story, Kenny Kramer lived across the hall from Larry David, co-creator of Seinfeld. When Jerry Seinfeld was offered a pilot for NBC he and David came up with "The Seinfeld Chronicles", named Seinfeld when picked up. One of the characters was based on Larry's neighbour Kenny Kramer, and he was actually hesitant to use Kramer's real name because he figured Kenny would try to profit off it. Sure enough, Kenny oragnised a bus tour around New York pointing out the real sites that were shown in Seinfeld (which was later parodied on the show with the J. Peterman Reality Tour).

It's chocolate, it's peppermint -- it's delicious!

The tour was definitely watered down, as a lot of the sites were things like "although this is a hotel now, it used to be ..." - but it was still great. The best bit about it, in my opinion, was the 20 minute introduction that Kenny did, which was mainly describing Larry David and his "brand" of comedy. I found it all quite amusing - and I think I might give Curb Your Enthusiam another shot (saw 1 episode and didn't really like it).

Some of the highlights of the actual tour were Monk's Restaurant (or Tom's), old footage of Larry David's standup, and The Soup Kitchen. Kramer showed some footage on the bus of him informally interviewing the "Soup Guy" (he doesn't like the whole Nazi thing) which was very funny. He said that Seinfeld ruined his life, and now only idiots came to his soup store. Didn't seem to ruin it too much - as he's now starting to franchise.

No witty photo comment for you!

Bell did some nice cropping for the full Seinfeld effect

Over half of the people on the tour were Australians - quite a few from Melbourne

"His struggle is man's struggle...he's a loathsome, offensive, brute, yet I can't look away." - and I bought the T-shirt!

After the tour we had dinner in an "authentic diner" in the middle of Times Square. It was actually quite good, but I was almost getting sick of cheese (almost). The cherry soda with chocolate icecream was very nice - and I've just realised that most of this Travel Log is just around what I was eating. Anyway...

A bit of a compromise for my (our) hockey tickets was that we would see a Broadway show. While I could be interested in a few different options, Belinda wanted to see The Phantom of the Opera. I was a little surprised - but I loved it. I especially liked the way they changed the sets "on the fly" and the music wasn't that bad.

Believe me, I didn't pick out that hat for Bell!

The Majestic from when we picked up the tickets

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Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Travel Log - Day 3 (I can't believe it got colder)

# Posted by Joel Dixon at 15/02/2006 21:33:00

While it had been cold for the first two days that we were in New York, it was kicked up a notch on the third day. On our way to the Statue of Liberty, we found a pothole that would usually be filled with water - completely frozen. The trash that was encased in a frozen, sludgey prison was a nice touch.

Watch out for that first step, it's a doozy! (Bing)

I was going to make a joke about the squirrel freezing it's nuts off - but thought better of it

When we got to the ferry bound for the statue we noticed that it was extremely busy (and still only about 8am). It looked like all of the volunteers from the parade were using their long weekend to "catch the statch" (I'm sure New Yorkians use that colloquialism all the time). So we got a hot chocolate instead!

After the hot chocolate warmed us up a bit - we went to the world's biggest Disney Store (3 levels of Disney goodness - though hardly any of Walt's Nazi Paraphernalia). Bell bought some Winnie the Pooh crap - and flush from my celebrity spotting, I bought some Muppets.

Never did meet Santa Goofy unfortunately

I took the Muppets from Manhattan

After the Disney store Bell and I went to Central Park, which was ok, though generally anti-climatic (turned out it was just a park). Saw lots of trees, lots of squirrels and went ice skating (that was pretty cool).

I only just realised this now, but what's that kid doing to Balto?

The memorial for John Lennon...

... and the hotel he was shot outside of

Joel Dixon - rock conqueror!

Wolfman Rink - the one we skated on

Bird's eye of the park - looked pretty cool

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Thursday, February 09, 2006

Travel Log - Day 2 (Thanksgiving)

# Posted by Joel Dixon at 09/02/2006 00:49:00
Updated by Joel Dixon at 19/08/2007 16:42:50

We went to bed early(ish) on day 1 because we wanted to get up early for the Thanksgiving Day Parade. We got to New York about 4 / 5 days earlier than originally planned so that we could catch this event (we figured we'd probably never be in New York around November for a while). I'm really glad we did - because, while corny, the parade was lots of fun. Oh, and I had sausage burritos from Maccas for breakfast - very nice!

The crowd was getting bored when nothing was happening. They were even cheering a policeman walking past at one point

Macy's was determined to ensure you remembered who's parade it was

The mascot is always the first balloon. I think Scooby smelt my left over burrito - because he's coming straight for us!

I was a little surprised at how excited I was by seeing the Sesame Street float...

... but there was something really cool about seeing the actual puppets...

... passing by in all their glory (even though they were probably operated by any old hacks)

I was happy Bell was quick enough to snap up Oscar

Sponge Bob was a crowd favourite...

... but couldn't compare with the action that Chicken Little demanded

I thought this was a pretty cool blast from the past

Super Grover is the man!

Now I know this dude is after my burrito!

Mr. Potato Head looked pretty happy...

... considering he left his spare nose behind

Garfield was one of Bell's favourites

The balloon that injured two of the crowds-people

Red knows that he screwed up!

While Santa officially ended the parade, I think this guy's classy mix of facial hair and rosy cheeks finished it for me

Afterwards we had some Wendy's (not too bad - but odd slogans on their packaging) and went into an American grocery store. The store was pretty cool - beer in the fridge, but no fresh fruit.

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Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Travel Log - Day 1 (New York, New York)

# Posted by Joel Dixon at 01/02/2006 12:11:00

Waking up in New York was pretty weird - and so was using the toilets / showers. American toilets seem to be wider, lower to the ground, and the water level is higher in the actual bowl. And the plugs in the basins / showers were also odd (I think I broke one of them in our first hotel room).

After a brief breakfast (with grape and cherry jam - hawt!) we started our first day with a bit of sight seeing. We hopped into a cab right outside our hotel on our way to the tour bus. It was funny, as soon as the cabbie found out we were Australian, he talked about cricket for the whole trip (I think he was a West Indies fan). I hadn't expected that I was going to be chatting to American cab drivers about cricket (or crumpets for that matter).

We got onto our open roofed tour bus, and the first stop we made was to Macy's Department Store for winter clothing - as it was extremely cold. Apparently it was very cold for late November in New York, and we had just come from a nice Australian Summer, so we were freezing. This marked the first time in my life that I have ever worn gloves, a scarf or a hat purely for warmth.

One of the entrances to Macy's - Scooby, Dooby Doo!

While picking up the first of our hockey tickets at Madison Square Garden, we met a couple that had visited Australia previously. They liked our country, but hated the outback - apparently noone had warned them about the flies. Let this be a lesson to everyone - Australia's outback has lots of dirty, stinking flies.

Our next stop was the Empire State Building, which was tall (shock horror). One fact I didn't know is that the building actually has a mooring mast on it for zeppelins. They never use it (too windy) but it's still sitting there. It was cool to be at the top of the tallest building in New York, but the view was basically just a whole lot of buildings. The Coke vending machines were pretty cool though!

I guess the view is kinda cool

But again, the Coke machine was pretty neat

After another McDonald's meal we went back onto the tour bus and drove around New York. The tour guide seemed quite knowledgeable as we drove past things like ground zero, Chinatown, the Chrysler Building, SoHo et al. We got off the bus at Times Square and was just amazed by the size, the lights and the sheer number of people (unfortunately we didn't see any naked cowboys).

The Big 'N' Tasty - Undeniably tasty, yet not convincingly big

This Coke sign was pretty cool - currently in Pinball Machine form

Yet, now it's a Coke can - technology!

We went to the Virgin Mega Store, which was awesome (I picked up some sweet Family Guy figurines - and we bought way too many DVDs). We then had dinner at Planet Hollywood - which had a menu pretty much exactly like the Melbourne Planet Hollywood (fajitas are good). After dinner we went to the Toys 'R' Us store - which was also quite fun. Most New York stores seem to be really, really big - Virgin, Planet Hollywood and Toys 'R' Us were all three stories - but the actual area is pretty standard. There's just more stairs / escalators to worry about.

Toys 'R' Us had a big-ass ferris wheel inside the store...

... with some very cool...

... gondolas

Just bouncin' with my homie

After a visit to ESPN Zone and Ben & Jerry's, we decided to call it a night.

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Viewing blogs tagged New York

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Travel Log - Day 9 (Best NHL Game Ever!)

Saturday, May 06, 2006

Travel Log - Day 8 (New York, New York ... again)

Monday, March 13, 2006

Travel Log - Day 5 (J-Dix on the six)

Monday, February 27, 2006

Travel Log - Day 4 (What is the deal with "New" York anyway?)

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Travel Log - Day 3 (I can't believe it got colder)

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Travel Log - Day 2 (Thanksgiving)

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Travel Log - Day 1 (New York, New York)