LIVE FROM NEW YORK

Sites from NYC




Wow - what a trip... My friend Abe and I arrived in NY last night (Sunday night). Caught a cab from Laguardia to our hotel located in the SoHo neighborhood. SoHo refers to the neighborhood south of Houston street (New Yorkers pronounce it "How-stun" street...) in the lower east side of Manhattan. We are smack dab in the middle of China Town, Little Italy and not far at all from The Village. The SoHo neighborhood is a very trendy, artsy and creative area. It's made up of a lot of "flagship" stores that we all go to in our malls all over suburban America. It's also full of specialty boutiques and art galleries not found anywhere else in the world.

Our first night here we walked and walked and walked... We walked through Little Italy and over to the Village. It didn't take long for us to get our hands on a NY style pizza (see pic). We ordered the margherita w/ fresh mozzarella, basil and light sauce. It was so/so - about a 5 on a scale of 1-10. We are making it our goal to find the best NY pizza in Manhattan, so if you have any ideas, shoot me an email!

Today was not a good day. I woke up early this morning sick as a dog. In fact, I didn't even leave our hotel until about 5pm and that was just to buy a Gatorade. I've spent a great deal of time bowing down in worship to the porcelain god. I'm guessing it's food poisoning. I'm feeling much better now. I finally felt good enough to get out so we took a double decker bus tour of Manhattan and Brooklyn. It was a great time until about 1/2 way through when my soul began longing for the great white throne. We actually had to have them stop the bus so that I could find my temple of worship - McDonalds. I'm not going to get into the details here, but it was a GOOD thing that we had them stop the bus. And the McDonalds - let me tell you... This was not a Yorkville, IL McDonalds. This was a NYC McDonalds.

SOOOOOOOOOO.... Tomorrow we are planning to visit Ground Zero. We are only a few blocks from there. I have tried to prepare myself emotionally for that visit, but I don't think I can even comprehend what we will feel.

We are also planning to visit Times Square again. We took the subway there tonight and it is just absolutely amazing! It's like standing on a sidewalk surrounded by 10,000 large screen TV's all playing something different. Pretty wild...

Signing off - more later.