the big āporo

Wow, we are on our second morning here in New York City and have already had a blast.

So much so that we have had to cancel today's plan, in order for Megan to sleep off a nasty hangover... how did it come to this you ask? Read on.

We travelled from Las Vegas to NYC on Saturday morning. At the airport we had a fond farewell, a pleasant interlude and a rude discovery.

The farewell was to our beloved Mustang. We filled her up and I dropped one final squealy, utilising the mighty V8 for the last time. What a great car. We had become almost symbiotic with her after 14 days, 1500 miles and about $US200 worth of gas. She is sadly missed.

The pleasant interlude was with a young Hawaiian-based, Arkansas Golfer Danny Lee, who we met in an insane queue at Las Vegas McCarran Airport. What a nice guy. He is 20 and already a seasoned pro. He was flying around the USA conducting seminars, so he must already have a reputation as being good at golf. We told him to come play the NZ Open and he said "I might just do that". You may be wondering how we got to know him so well - I said it was an insane queue, and it brings me to the rude discovery.

The rude discovery is that the country that put a man on the moon, has NO idea how to get people to check in to catch a plane. American Airlines only had self-service terminals as an option for check in. Now most New Zealanders are familiar with these by now, and it a system which we handle well... here is how the Americans do it.

The terminals are almost hard up against the check in counter. There are only 8 of them and they are co joined in bunches of 4 making them very hard to access and maneuver around. People arriving at the terminal gravitate towards the machines, but can't get to them. Everyone is carrying at least one bag, most people have 2 (megs and I had 3 between us). In order to check in you must abandon your bag. The system (for want of a better word) is that you check in at the self-service terminal and inform it who you are and how many bags you have.

Now, the Airlines computer knows you are someone with bags to check. When your place in the electronic queue is reached you are paged by name and go to the counter, with your bags which are weighed and tagged. Then you need to carry the bags back across the terminal to security and queue to hand them in, then WAIT until they go through an X-Ray machine.

If this sounds laborious then factor in this - to get to any of these three points (the self-service terminal, the check-in counter, the security) you have to wade through hundreds of other suffering travellers (none of whom understand what is going on). To get your bags to the check-in counter and onwards you have to get them over or through all these people (in each direction). It is an absolute debacle.

As I said earlier Las Vegas is the 2nd most touristed place on Earth. The stupidity of this arrangement is gob-smacking.

Ok enough of that, we only have to go through it one more time - can't wait.

Since then, however, the Honeymoon has gone from strength to strength. Megan has never been to NYC before and this is my third visit, so to a certain extent I am showing her around.
We are staying in a converted apartment called second home on second ave.

http://secondhomesecondavenue.com/

We are staying in the Caribbean room for the first few days. It is lovely airy and large, has probably a hundred tv channels. We have free Wi-Fi. There is a kitchen with a fridge we can share with other guests. There is a free phone for local calls. We do need to go down a hallway to get to our bathroom, but it is locked and is only used by us. The only real downside is that the walls are quite thin, so our neighbours and us need to be careful about volume early in the morning and late at night.

So what have we done? We were settled in by 6pm on Saturday evening and we decided to walk around the local neighbourhood. This is known as the East Village, which is a booming part of town. Within 4 square blocks of our second home there would be more cool bars and restaurants than in all of Wellington, easy.

Our host Carlos recommended a Moroccan place to us. If you know us, you know we love Moroccan. It took half an hour of rambling to find it, only to discover that half of Manhattan were queueing for a table there (it was Saturday night after all). So we decided to wing it, and I saw a sign which tickled my fancy. DUMPLING MAN

http://www.dumplingman.com/

We both remarked that it looked like Nic Marshall had designed the Dumpling Man logo, so we bowled in, ordered up and squeezed into some spare seats in the corner. It is so cool. You watch a dumpling assembly line behind the glass. Inscrutable Chinese women work constantly assembling the entire dumplings from scratch. We watched them knead the dough and make the filling casings, then fill the dumplings - one by one. We really appreciated the craft and effort in every one. Look at the link on the site that says Dumpling TV - it is really something to behold.

When the dumplings arrived so fresh and hot it was time for the taste test. The proof of the dumpling is in the eating! Outstanding. Our favourite was the seared pork dumpling, with the steamed shrimp just behind. If there was a dumpling man in Wellington, I would soon resemble a dumpling (in fact I am starting to by now anyway).

We then went home for a great sleep... which lasted til 11.30 on Sunday. eeeeeek

we made up for lost time and bought the NYTimes Sunday edition ($4 as thick as a phone book) and went to another of Carlos's haunts, Cafe Brama

http://www.cafebrama.us/

At last after 2 weeks a great coffee - not Nikau but not far off. And an absolutely delicious breakfast. I had a beautiful omelette of feta, sesame, roasted tomatoes and avocado, enough to turn me into an Omelette Man. Megs had Brama Toast - French Toast with Omelette and Cheese on top served with Maple Syrup - sounds crazy but it worked.

Apart from the food the other best thing about breakie was the paper. Great Journalism, beautifully written stories about the world, and interesting features about everything. The book review would swallow a month worth of the NZ Listener's content. The magazine looks like it could be bought alongside Vanity Fair. It really makes you realise what a rag the Sunday Star Times is - if only we could get it at home!

We had a plan for the day. Explore the local area thoroughly in daylight. Winifred and David had given us a great deck of map-cards for walking trips around New York. We picked out the 5 walks closest to our second home. It was now 2 pm, we were off!

Walk one was the East Village walk it took in some of the same real estate we explored on Saturday night, but had a completely different feel by day. It was brisk, about 8 degrees Celsius, but was clear and calm. The city is alive. New Yorkers all go about their business at pace, but seem to be very friendly when they stop to talk. People bellow into cell-phones, you see folks of all persuasions; Emos, wrinkly old gents, bohemians, Christians preaching on the street, cool reggae dudes, bejewelled hip hoppers, people of every ethnicity and dogs - so many cool dogs.

We paused in a place called Tompkins Square Park, to watch New York Dogs at play. They have two sized runs, one for tiny dogs, one for the rest. The tiny dogs make sense in NYC - they are pint sized and easy to look after. They come in every shade of cute. It seems NOBODY has a bitzer mongrel dog here, they are all pedigree, and half of them have clothing. It is very sweet.
We also saw a farmers market and old historic cemeteries and churches on this journey.

Continuing on the next walk card to Lower East Side, brought us into a more Jewish community - not the people wandering about but the food. Kinishes and Bagels and Lox all for sale in amazing Delis bulging with customers and unusual looking and smelling treats. We regretted our big lunch, as it was hard to not need to try and taste these delights also. We went past a quaint looking place called TEANY owned by singer Moby, but he didn't seem to be there. Things were looking good it was about 3.30. 2 walks down 3 to go, but a refuel was in order. We stopped at a bar that looked as rough as guts, the stereo spitting out trash rock, the furniture looked like it came from a Dunedin flat, a sad faced Corgi flopped in the middle of the floor. We both enjoyed a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and a brief return to Cuba St. We made friends with a nice 38 yr old Tattooed chick who had spent time in New Zealand. We thought about staying longer but it was now 4pm and walks through Nolita (North of Little Italy), Little Italy and Chinatown beckoned. Heading West through the Bowery we passed a pub which made me smile. The Marshall Stack.

http://nymag.com/listings/bar/marshall-stack/

Now Marshall make musical amplifiers and legend has it that the only thing that sounds better than a Marshall Amp is a stack of them. The more Marshalls in the stack the better the sound. A Marshall Stack is better reportedly than the sum of its parts. Our friends Nic(Thump/Nanky) and Kate(Chubb) Marshall know this - they told me and produce their wonderful musical productions under the "Marshall Stack" name. We had to stop to get a photo of the bar's logo. While we were waiting a charming Black business man, finishing his cigar and curious of our accent tried to persuade us to join him inside. Night was approaching and we still had the walks to finish, but of course we went in.

3 hours and way too many drinks later and we are best friends with Justin Green who is having us on Thursday to his apartment in Brooklyn for drinks and Japanese, to meet his French wife Laurant and his 5 year old son Miles. His view (we saw it from his phone) is right across the Hudson looking at the sunset over Manhattan. We don't know how this friendship bloomed but it did, the event has been confirmed via text message and e-mail already.

Megan was now three sheets to the wind. I guided us home while we babbled to each other through the city streets. We stopped by a place which Paul Schrader recommended to us for the best Pork Buns and Japanese beer in the city. We didn't need the beer but wolfed down Pork Buns so transfixingly good they will get a post of their own once we photograph them.

It was now about 11pm, the day had disappeared in a blurry smiley haze. We love New York. Megan has a sore head, but seems to be rising now, it is noon, looks like we are set to start again.

Miss you all

Love Hudsie