Hello and welcome to my 7th blog! I’ve had some writer’s block with this one after having the proverbial rug pulled out from beneath me. I originally had dinner plans tonight and was going to blog about that experience, but the plans were postponed by exactly one week due to an unforeseen illness in the group. Drat. My beautiful wife, Lizzie, and I just got back from a trip to Washington D.C. yesterday, but I won’t have my two rolls of film from that trip developed for another week, so we’ll just have to wait on that blog! Luckily for you, my dear reader, I got my roll of Ilford HP5 black and white film back from the New York City trip that Lizzie and I went on a few weeks ago. It was my first time shooting on this film stock and I couldn’t be happier with the results (I shot another roll of it in DC before seeing the results). Today I’m going to go over what we did in Manhattan (and a brief trip to Brooklyn) with the help of some 35mm film and iPhone pictures!
Friday, April 4th
Lizzie and I packed in the morning and departed for the airport around 10am at a very leisurely pace as our flight out wasn’t until 12:30pm. It was a nice morning! Looking at my camera roll from that morning to jog my brain, I now recall that when we were on the way to the airport my phone was lighting up from the “Atlantasy” group chat, the chat for our Atlanta-based fantasy football league but is constantly buzzing with other sports news, jokes, gambling activities, and miscellaneous discussions. A relative of Chad’s girlfriend (believe it was a cousin) ran into a world-famous celebrity that morning and he shared a video of the interaction. Who was the famous pop culture icon? It was a living legend himself, Druski, out for a nice morning bike ride through the streets of a local ATL neighborhood. The video was hilarious, and I shared it with Lizzie, knowing that she’d at least recognize him from his meme format superstardom. I then shared the screenshot with the Mir boys who all found the interaction as funny as I did.
We arrived at the airport and strolled through security in record time, even with my new security ritual of providing my rolls of film for the weekend in a Ziploc bag to TSA agents and patiently waiting for them to hand check it. After we got to the gate, I loaded film into my camera, filled up my water bottle, and boarded shortly thereafter. Even though it was a short flight to LaGuardia, I managed to squeeze in a movie viewing into my flight. I chose an absolutely perfect plane film, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. I really thought it was going to be trash and boy was I wrong. I found myself constantly giggling to the unstoppable onslaught of Jack Black acting like a 16-year-old girl stuck in his body and falling in love with Nick Jonas. Super fun movie.
We landed at approximately 2:43PM in the Eastern time zone and got to see Illinois One, a cool Southwest plane. We left the airport, took a taxi to our hotel (Hyatt Place Chelsea – would recommend), and by 4PM we were checked in, changed, and ready to go attack the town. We walked somewhat aimlessly towards the Flatiron building since I wanted a picture of it and stumbled upon the Eiffel Tower. One of our favorite bits is the Eiffel Tower (also from Vegas) bit from Despicable Me, so we got a picture and sent it to Lizzie’s sister (we did the same bit when we were in Las Vegas last December).
We then took a stroll through Eataly NYC Flatiron, which we loved even though we didn’t purchase anything, and continued to walk 5th avenue for some light shopping. We didn’t buy anything, but I took a picture of some cool ASICS shoes at 5:14PM so I could go back and maybe buy them later.
Our reservation was approaching, so we stopped shopping and made a beeline for OLIO E PIU in Greenwich Village. Of course, we stopped off one more time because there was a cool looking park with some blossoming trees behind a church. After that, though, we were off to dinner, which was just across the street.
Lizzie secured this reservation and got us patio seating, which I was very happy about since it was a beautiful spring night. We got a bottle of Barbera wine, which we had discovered we both liked this past February in Sonoma. It is a more full-bodied red wine but still lower on tannins (the ingredient that makes a wine dry) compared to some wines that I tend to prefer (namely Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon) vs Lizzie’s preference for a more sweet and less dry wine (but still not fully on the sweet side of the spectrum). We started with
wine and crusty bread, which was fantastic, then got a couple different types of cheeses and some meat to pair with those. As I’m a huge fan of Caesar salad, we shared one of those as well. I do not say this lightly – it was probably the best Caesar salad I have ever had in my life. The dressing was to die for, the croutons ideal, and the lettuce the perfect mix of fresh and crunchy. When it was served to us, I put some on my plate, took a bite, and didn’t even say how much I liked it for a few minutes. I just kept eating it. It is for this reason that I don’t have a picture of it. Gone before I even realized it. True 10/10 Caesar salad.
For my main course, I got the night’s special, a truffle parmesan fettuccine dish. It was also a 10/10 dish. Pasta was cooked to perfection and the truffle wasn’t that grated BS you get on fries at a “fancy” restaurant, they were the straight mushrooms. After all this delicious food, we tried to refuse dessert, but the waitress said it was on her if we left her a good review on Google. Luckily for her, I can both easily be bought and enjoy writing reviews on Google, so we ordered the tiramisu. It was lovely and I happily left a five-star review on Google mentioning our waitress, Gocke.
With our bellies full, we moved on to our next activity for the evening, a rooftop bar. I am notably afraid of heights, but had written this down on the list of things we would do from the beginning. I’m still a sucker for a great skyline view! Our reservation wasn’t until 8:30, so we went back to the hotel for a bit to relax after a big dinner. We took the subway a few blocks towards Times Square and made it to the hotel, where we were greeted by a nice hotel employee who checked our IDs and shared with us that he lived in Savannah for a few years. We made our way up to the rooftop bar and shared a couple drinks with an amazing view! Fun!
Afterwards, I expressed that I wanted to go take a peek at Times Square since it was very close, and I wanted some pictures of it at night. Lizzie, being the trooper she is, followed along with it even though it’s an objectively terrible place. Turns out it was as truly God awful as I remember it to be, but it was very worth it because I got some amazing film pictures.
We exited that God forsaken street as soon as we could and walked our way back home so we could grab a New York Slice on the way back. I found a place with great reviews on Google, so we went there and grabbed a cheap slice. It was great, but as Lizzie correctly pointed out on the way home, it only had high Google reviews because you could get a free slice from reviewing it and showing them. Oh.
Saturday, April 5th
It was a dreary morning with rain in the forecast, but we still got up early and left the hotel around 8AM to grab coffee and hit up the Union Square greenmarket, which began in 1976. We walked around the market to check out all the local offerings. I got my traditional farmers market breakfast, a savory pastry (believe it was a spinach and feta empanada) and Lizzie got an almond croissant.
Afterwards, we took the train up to Central Park. We saw a bunch of the classic Central Park sights and I took a bunch of great pictures during our ~2 mile walk from the south end all the way to the big reservoir near the north side before it started to rain. Once the rain hit, we found the nearest subway station and rode back home, where we decided it was time for lunch. We hit up Eataly again and enjoyed a delicious spicy pepperoni sandwich.
It was once again time to shop until we dropped. There were a few places on the stretch that I wanted to check out, like Zara where I thought about buying some cruise wear for our upcoming trip with Gustavo and the gang. Big swing and a miss there. I liked the shirt, but it wasn’t comfortable enough. Enter to stage right, ol’ reliable. H&M. It’s very rare that I step foot inside an H&M ready to spend some money and don’t come away with at least one item. In this case, it would be two items from the clearance rack. This shirt was super comfortable, and the second shirt was only $7. I got exactly what I was looking for and my total was $24.98.
The day was going by fast, and it was almost time for our main event – the Final Four game between Lizzie’s Auburn Tigers and my Florida Gators. We were to leave nothing to chance and therefore wanted to find a place to settle in by 5PM for the 6:09PM tipoff. The original place I found was primarily a soccer bar that I’d heard of from my favorite FPL podcast (the hosts live in Brooklyn so this Manhattan on the next street over from our hotel had been used as a meetup spot). We walked in and much to our dismay they were showing the conclusion of La Liga match between Barcelona and Real Betis. Even if it would clear up, it was far too busy to be able to establish our foothold at the bar without a little bit of work. As we decided whether we wanted to stay or not, I quickly looked at Google Maps and found another place around the corner called Storehouse. We walked there and found a couple prime spots. They were showing some NHL action, so I double-checked with our server to make sure they were going to show the Final Four game. “Definitely.”, he said. “OK awesome.”, I replied.
We shared some loaded nachos, and I downed probably too many $6 happy hour beers before and during the game, which was a great time for both of us even though the result would inevitably favor just one of us. The Florida Gators of course won, I made Lizzie a little annoyed by being a drunk bastard, but we reconciled over some delicious Taco Bell from the nearby Taco Bell Cantina before retiring to our hotel only to fall asleep during the Duke/Houston game before its insane finish.
Sunday, April 6th
We had a great time over the past few days, but when we woke up, we were ready to go home later that afternoon. There was only one thing left to do, something that Lizzie had found out about the night before. The New York Transit Museum. Lizzie booked us tickets for 10:30AM, so we were once again up and at ‘em around 8AM. We got bagels and coffee at a nearby joint and realized that we should’ve split one rather than getting our own.
Afterwards, we made our way to Brooklyn to visit the museum, which is in a now-abandoned subway station. It was insanely cool and a highlight of our trip. I would for sure recommend it to anyone visiting NYC with any interest in the subway system (public transit is one of Lizzie’s ASIs). They have a history of the subway system, which was built between roughly 1900 and 1905, and a very cool area with around 15 different styles and variations of subway trains that were used from all the way back then until the current day, showing the evolution of the train cars. Wicked.
We left the museum and took the subway to a nearby mall next to the arena where the Nets play which has a UNIQLO, somewhere I wanted to go shopping since I enjoyed so much the last time I went to NYC. They didn’t have any t-shirts I really loved but I did get some new white shorts and some boxers! We had just enough time afterwards for lunch before our flight, so we took the Subway back to Manhattan and went to a place Lizzie found. It was called Revelie and we shared a patty melt that was soooooo damn good. Very cool diner in general! They had The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly playing on a small TV above the bar which is a fast way to win me over.
Afterwards, we learned our flight was delayed due to some very bad weather in the south. We took the subway one last time back to 5th Ave where we did even more shopping. I bought those shoes that I took a picture of on Friday and we went to Old Navy where Lizzie bought some work clothes.
We then finally made our way back to the hotel to pick up our luggage,
go back to LaGuardia, and took one of the bumpiest flights of my life. We touched down back in ATL at 9:25PM.
