3 nights of New York

The beginning of my adventure on my journey to Israel began in the city of NYC. I've had a busy 3 nights and have the sorest muscles and a mean limp to prove it. When I arrived at JFK and met up with my cousin it was straight to Brooklyn to drop off my luggage followed by Times Square at night. Already overwhelmed by the skyscrapers and urban culture in the city suddenly I'm hit with dozens of billboards advertising broadway shows to m&ms. It was very hectic with thousands of tourists like myself standing in this light show taking pictures and so on and so forth. For dinner Zach and I headed to Katz's deli in the Lower East Side. Mind this is just Saturday night the same day I had arrived from LA. The next day I continued with the New York tour beginning with a bike ride through Central Park where I spotted the famous Balto statue, the Guggenheim museum, and plenty of bike riders and fitness enthusiasts. After the bike ride we headed to the Strand, the 18 mile store, but its not an 18 mile long store; it's 3 floors with hundreds of very narrow bookshelves where awkward situations can happen easily just by trying to look into an aisle for a book, I have a hunch that it's called an 18 book store just by the sum of every bookshelf in the place. After that we continued to Chinatown where we got lunch at the Great NY Noodle Town, where I got a killer roast duck and noodles in soup and baby bok choy, we continued walking through Chinatown and then walked through Little Italy, continued through to SoHo and then back to Brooklyn to drop off our stuff to go to an apartment party in Prospect Heights where Zach lived to visit he old roommate, my camp counselor from 11 years ago we didn't get home that night till about 12-1am, it was a very busy day. One thing I found cool about Manhattan is that almost everywhere you are the Empire State building is peeking out somewhere. On Monday I continued my quest starting with a trip to the Met only to discover that its closed on Mondays, a little heartbroken I went on a wild goose chase for a camera cord that included two Best Buys and a Radio Shack at Union Square. Where I then met Zach after he was done work and we walked to SoHo to a store he needed to go to to exchange some things. We then went to Washington Square Park where I surprised two of my friends at their dorms at NYU, a friend I haven't seen all year and a guy from my grad class he was shocked to see me, I think he was pleasantly surprised though. After I parted ways with my friend while she went to dinner with her Mom. I met with Zach after he went to get a camera lens at B&H. We went to dinner at a pizzeria under the Brooklyn bridge, called Grimaldi's; now I've never seen such a long line for a pizza about an hour we stood with another 50-75 hungry people for this pizza, the classic older Italian host where to stand what path is wanted for the empty table in the restaurant. I thought up a game called Grimaldi's says, a play off of Simon says, it would be entertaining for the people in line but could cause some fist fights, the prize for the winner if the game would win getting pushed to the front of the line to get the next available table; it would be pretty funny to see about 100 people on a Brooklyn sidewalk playing a game like Simon says just to get some pizza. But that pizza was definitely worth the wait it had fresh mozzarella, crushed tomatoes and basil, crispy crust, delicious parmesan on the table, an Olde Brooklyn Coney Island cream soda is hand I was set, Zach and I knocked off those 8 slices of the large in no time, we ate like we had just trekked hundreds of miles for food as opposed to riding the subway and waiting in a long line. We went back to the apartment aka Home Sweet Brooklyn and hit the hay. I'm using this day to recover I have a long night ahead on my continued journey to Israel. I have a red-eye flight to Tel Aviv and plenty of books and apps to keep me entertained on the 10 hour flight ahead.