Tuesday: Donald, K-Town, Rockefeller, Staten Island, Little Italy

These pictures go with this entry.

Donald was traveling the coast (mostly via train) and arrived late Monday night. We grabbed a quick snack at Gray's Papaya when he arrived; then I decided to take off Tuesday to show him around the city a bit. He was nice enough to offer to arrange our touring so that he would see sights in the city with me that I hadn't already seen then on Wednesday on his own see the sights that I had.

Tuesday started by us walking to Korean Town and exploring the area around it. With a chowhound inspired tip, we found a good restaurant that served the usual plentitude of small Korean dishes along with the entrees. For entrees, I had tasty thin steak strips cooked in a clay pot (with some veges); Donald had some soup pho-like thing -- I forget what exactly. I think we were both satisfied.

We grabbed the train up to Rockefeller Center: Donald wanted to see it. It was more impressive during the day than the previous time I saw it during the evening; there was a courtyard I missed before that contained a number of flags. But still the whole complex isn't as cool as grand central.

It was raining fairly heavily so we were careful about our choices. The plan to hike the Brooklyn Bridge was out. Instead, we took the Staten Island ferry (free!) and got some nice (although hazy) views of the statue of liberty, liberty island, and the manhattan skyline.

Returning, we headed to wander Little Italy and Chinatown for dinner. Surprisingly, although visiting a few times, I'd never eaten there. After jogging between awnings and examining menus in Little Italy and rebuffing desperate maitre`ds (the rain had dramatically effected their business) we settled on a restaurant.

The restaurant was popular and filled so we got sat outside under the awning This meant occasionally moving our table and rotating depending how heavy the wind was blowing, for the rain was still coming down quite hard. This also meant timing our orders to be nice to the waiter, because he had to jot outside of the awning to get to us. The bus boy was smart and put on a rain jacket. Dinner was tasty though, as I recall, not very big.

After dinner we tried to go the top of the Empire State Building, expecting that the rain and lightening would make for a tremendous view of the city. Sadly, the weather caused the early closure of the observation deck so they wouldn't let us up.

Since it was still early (10pm), we decided to find something else to do, and grabbed some quick subways (and ran a bit) and made it to a theater playing Fahrenheit 9-11 within the first few minutes of it starting. (The beginning credits were still rolling.)

This is what I wrote in my notes afterward: "Michael Moore's recent bush-bashing flick. Features too much Moore, such as too many Moore voiceovers. Quite disorganized and rambling -- hard to know where it is going. Despite these two negatives, still interesting for its uniqueness in topic and scope."

We were smarter after the movie and decided to take a cab home rather than two subways and some walking. This actually was my first cab ride in the city!