A 5 hour flight to New York seems like nothing when a month prior you had a 13 hour flight across the Pacific Ocean, but I guess when you consider all the preparation it took to get to this 5 hour flight, you’d rack up a lot more than 13 hours…so let’s back up.
So what brings little nikki to the big apple? The 2011 Model UN conference with delegates from all over the world, of course. Think what you want about Idaho and its universities, but I think it’s pretty bitchin that my very small and underappreciated international studies department wrangles its students up for the Model UN conference every year. It’s kind of a big deal. But what is the Model UN?? It’s essentially students representing countries on different committees to discuss the most relevant issues at hand. For me, this means representing Ghana in the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice for the issues of transnational organized crime, youth offenders and the proper treatment of migrants. I’ll have a better answer for you when the conference actually starts in 2 days…
Arriving into NYC in my usual sweaty, haggardly tired state of traveling, I was happy to not have the additional stress of waiting for checked luggage because I somehow managed to fit a week’s worth of clothes into a carry on and opted to just buy the necessary “liquid” items when I got here. Now that I’m out walking around in the streets seeing some great fashion (though not even 1/20 as great as Korea…sorry, NYC…) I wish I had brought that shirt, those shoes, another necklace and better clothes. This is usually my problem when I travel (ok, I actually have a lot of problems when I travel) this issue with not feeling fashionable—I unzip my suitcase and suddenly have the realization that THAT is what I packed for THIS city?!? But you can’t pack everything, and I saved myself $50 for it.
Driving into the city, I got that little flutter in my traveling bones when I saw the cityscape just outside my window. While NYC has nothing on the LED, rainbow skylines of Asia, it does have that historic city charm. The windows sparkle like subtle illuminated diamonds from afar. Things got more and more illuminated the deeper into the city we drove until finally we reached Times Square, aflame with advertisements. Suddenly our bus stopped. At our hotel. In Times Square!? And I’m not talking “in” Times Square, as in 3 blocks over, I’m talking “I can look out my window and see all the little tourists below lit up by Forever 21, LG, the Lion King and Coke”. Frank Sinatra and Alicia Keys/Jay-Z are dueling in my head to find the words for my first steps in the city.
Having the night to roam free, we decided to meet up in the “lobby” (the actual lobby is on the 8th floor and there is no lobby on the ground floor, so we met on ground floor). And if you know anything about me and traveling with large groups, you know I’m gonna cut out about 90% of ‘em before by the time we reach the subway station. As if by fate, the subway wouldn’t accept bills to buy passes, and having only the $100 bill in my bra, I was out of luck to buy a subway pass. With just about everyone on the other side of those scarier than prison subway gates, Bethany and I just walked out of the station, being that I couldn’t ride it…among other reasons…
And so the 2 free spirited traveling girls meandered about Times Square knowing full well that any restaurant in the area would be 4x as busy and 5x as pricey so we started walking away from the advertisement tourist inferno and into the streets nearby. Frustrated by only seeing nasty chain restaurants (you are in NYC, arguably the restaurant capital of the world and you’re gonna eat at Applebees…?) we stopped and asked a crazy comedy show proprietor (aka, screaming guy on the street) if he could tell us where to eat and after explaining that, no, he wasn’t a lesbian, we had to get our asses away from “this nasty shit” and get to Hell’s Kitchen, 2 blocks thattaway. At first we thought he literally meant a restaurant called “Hell’s Kitchen” but we shortly realized that Hell’s Kitchen is the name of a restaurant row lining several blocks in the heart of Manhattan. On the way to restaurant row, a huge rumble of thunder broke out above the city and began a light drizzle thereafter. Not having heard such a booming of thunder in a long time, both Bethany and I broke out in the squeals of girls caught in a city thunderstorm.
Being hungry and curious, we spent an hour deciding where to eat and after sadly discovering that the Argentine restaurant’s kitchen was closed (and, looking back, there was nobody else in the restaurant and I deeply regret not staying, getting drunk and having a laugh with the [presumably] Argentines running the restaurant…), we decided to eat at a groovy pizza place called Two Boots. Two Boots is literally groovy. It has psychedelic posters on the wall and kitsch from the 60s. Pizza by the slice is named after random characters from TV shows or movies. While we devoured our cheese and tomato pizza (which was ok, but a little too spicy and crunchy for me) we talked to a guy from Singapore who has probably attended more Broadway shows than many natives to the city. He gave us the rundown on how to buy theater tickets (which I’m still not sure if I’ll have time to see) and which shows were surprisingly OK or totally shitty. He said Mamma Mia sucks. Hmmm…maybe he’s not an expert? But I am biased because I’ve only seen the movie…(btw, Meryl Streep, any time you wanna get drunk and make a movie, I am all for it).
After pizza, we stopped at one of the millions of delis to get some breakfast food. Though we didn’t order anything from the deli part itself, I can say with pure foodie goodness that everything looked absolutely delectable. Everything in every deli looks delicious. Not to mention that many delis feature my favorite brand of turkey. Top notch. (Side note: How any Subway stays in business here is a total mystery. As far as I’m concerned, if you want something shitty associated with the word ‘subway’, just go to the actual subway). And as a girl on the quest for a perfect turkey sandwich, I gotta say, I’m hoping I can find it here, because after all…now I’m in New York and there’s nothing I can’t do…
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