I'm in a New York State of Mind

So today we did something that we hadn't done before. We didn't venture to another borough. Although we are staying in Manhattan, we've been going to baseball games and other things so we really didn't have a chance to see the borough we were staying in. We've been catching the subway so the only part of Manhattan we've seen was the walk between the hotel and the station.

Now we thought about taking one of those bus tours but at the last minute Keao's friend Yong came to our rescue. Like many kids from Hawaii, Keao went to the mainland for college. But instead of going to the west coast like so many people, she decided to pick a college on the other edge of the country, Boston College. There she befriended a great guy named Yong who happened to grow up in New York City. It was Yong who would guide us through the city.

For the most part, Manhattan is built on a grid system. That makes it fairly easy to get around and navigate through the city. Today our tour (on foot) traversed an area at least four blocks wide by almost fifty blocks long. When we figured it out using Google maps, we must have walked at least 6 miles today (before getting on a subway and then walking some more). No wonder we're so tired!

But it was a very great tour. We started by going to Madison Square Garden, then heading through the fashion district to Times Square, then up Broadway and then finding lunch at the Carnegie Deli.

The home of many New York Knicks heartbreaks

You know you're in the fashion district when you pass by Parsons

Look at all the billboards and lights!

John and I outside the Ed Sullivan Theater

At long last we break for lunch

The Carnegie Deli is one of the most famous deli's in New York. They have a shirt in there that say, "if you finish our sandwich, we must have done something wrong" They weren't kidding. The late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said that he hates the sandwiches at New York Deli's because they put so much meat in them. He said it's like, "an entire cow with two crackers on either side. They ask you if you want anything else, yeah, a loaf of bread and more people!"

As we were getting ready to order, our plan was for me to order a corned beef sandwich and for John to order a pastrami sandwich. But Yong implored us to order a Woody Allen (with waitress, who called us "Lovely Hula Hands" warned us that it wouldn't come with a fifteen year old girl). That's a sandwich with both corned beef and pastrami. Big mistake. The sandwich was so huge we could barely pick it up with our hands!

At the end, only Yong finished his sandwich. John tapped out first (even after answering, "it's done" to the question of whether or not he could finish). I didn't do much better. I would say it was a tie (okay, maybe I did have the slight edge).

Looks so innocent doesn't it?

That's the Woody Allen!

It's as tall as a can of soda and that's only half!

Yong, the champion of the Carnegie Deli

Yong said John and I deserved to be on the Wall of Shame

That's what was left after I completely stuffed myself silly!

After lunch we decided to walk off our lunch and walk we did. The Carnegie Deli is somewhere around 55th Street. I wanted to see Strawberry Fields in Central Park which is on 72nd Street. If you do the math, that's almost 20 blocks! Whew, no wonder our feet were so tired afterward.

We got to Strawberry Fields and got there just in time to hear some dude give a little speech about the area. I don't know why I thought it would be a bigger area, but it's really the only thing to see was a little tile mosaic with the word "imagine" in the middle.

"Imagine all the people living life in peace"

There's a tour you can take that will show you famous places in New York's film and television history. Yong helped us see a lot of that for free.

The musem featured in Night at the Museum is the American Museum of Natural History

The Plaza Hotel, home of Eloise

The piano from Big can be yours for only $250,000

The store that inspired Breakfast at Tiffany's

The home of the Apprentice

Live from New York it's Saturday Night! and other NBC shows

Then after our walking tour we headed over to the SoHo district. SoHo is short for South of Houston Street. Once it was kind of a hippie area, but now it's a lot of high end stores and other expensive things. My brother wanted something from a Diesel outlet and the only Diesel store I went to was in SoHo. When we first walked in there I looked at a t-shirt and noticed it was $110. Then I picked up a polo style shirt and that was $130. Definitely not a discount outlet. I called him to tell him that I couldn't find anything cheap and as I was telling him, "I don't think there's anything discout here" I guess I told him kind of loud because this woman actually turned around from walking to see who made such a comment and to laugh at me. So shame.

After SoHo we went to dinner. Now John and I were both really full, but since we had reservations at the Old Homestead we decided to honor that and go. Like the Carnegie Deli, this was one of the most famous steakhouses in Manhattan. I must say it was pretty disappointing. Since we were so full from lunch we ordered a salad and a steak to share. We ordered a ribeye, which is a pretty hard cut of meat to ruin. When it came out, it was rather flavorless and somewhat warm. I think it would have been much better had it been hot and a little more tender and flavorful. Either way, it wasn't that good of a steak.

Serving steaks for 130 years

The roasted garlic was the best part

After that we headed back to our room or an early night.

To view the rest of our day's adventures click here.