Fond Farewells, New York, May 2012

Still catching up with adventures from the last couple of weeks… eeep! 🙂

Big Booty Bread!
Chelsea, New York, May 2012

Wednesday May 2nd – Charlie and I rose fairly early – our last morning together before his holiday ends, and before the next stage of my adventure begins. I felt a bit sad that my trusty travel buddy was heading off, but also excited at the idea of spending the next couple of months in New York. I thought that we should finish as we had started – with a giant foodfest! Huddling against the rain, we made for the Comfort Diner, one of my favourite hangouts the last time I was in New York. Sweet potato fries with maple dip (or blue cheese dip, as was my preference)… yum! Sadly, as we approached, I realised that the damn place had closed down… HOW DARE THEY!!!! This left us with the difficult task of choosing one of the many, many other good food places in the immediate area of the hotel. Before doing that, though, we paid a visit to the Flatiron building, which was just a stone’s throw from the old site of the diner. An iconic skyscraper, it was finished in 1902 – fairly early in the high-rise annals of New York. It is wedge-shaped and highly impressive – unusual and beautiful. Sadly, it lost a bit of its lustre in the rain, but I still love the way that it looks like a different building from every angle; sometimes thin as a sliver, and sometimes like a normal square until you round the corner and go, ‘Woah!’

We went back along 23rd Street and paid a visit to the infamous Hotel Chelsea, where Sid Vicious killed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, and where numerous literati and famous folk laid their heads. Stanley Kubrick, Jack Kerouac, Mark Twain, Dylan Thomas, Leonard Cohen, Jean-Paul Sartre, Dennis Hopper, Iggy Pop… the list goes on. Sadly, the Hotel recently closed its doors to guests… there is apparently a handful of permanent residents still living there, but some random investment firm (Japanese? I can’t remember) bought it and has plans for its redevelopment… yikes.

After bumbling around the neighbourhood indecisively, getting more and more hungry, we eventually stopped for breakfast in another of my old haunts – the New Venus Cafe on 8th Avenue. I remember once having great waffles with bacon here, so that’s what we ordered. Sadly, after waiting a wee while, the waitress informed us that despite numerous attempts, the waffle machine was chucking a tanty and would not be serving us today… would pancakes do? Yes, they would! And so instead of yummy waffles with bacon, we ate yummy pancakes with bacon. 🙂

We went back to the hotel room and Charlie packed his last few things, and then we went to the lobby of the hotel to wait for the airport shuttle to come and get him. I think we both got a little bit tense, as the shuttle seemed to take forever getting there and in the end was fairly late… we had left a very large window of time for him to get to the airport, but things like that can still put you on edge because you never know if the van will actually turn up or not! Happily, the van eventually came… although sadly, its arrival meant the end of our adventure together. Charlie got into the van, and that was that. I was alone in New York, and he was on his way home to England. Goodbye Charlie – see you sometime in the not-too-distant future, I hope!

I had granted myself one more night in the hotel by myself. The next day, I would (for budget reasons) be moving into a youth hostel and I knew that sleeping in a dorm room is usually a pain in the ass, so I had decided to give myself this one night as a sort of break between one stage and the next. It was the smartest thing I could have done; I had a great evening of doing absolutely nothing, and I had a great night’s sleep, and it turned out to be a godsend as my time in the hostel was very busy and almost sleep-free, for numerous reasons.

After saying goodbye to Charlie I made a pitstop at the fantastic Garden of Eden Gourmet (not the last one for this trip by a long shot), and picked up a packet of Kettle Chips, a tub of hummus with cilantro (that’s coriander for those of you who speak my language!) and a box of chocolate-covered graham crackers (god’s gift to the universe, in my humble opinion). I then went back to the hotel room and built a nest. I caught up with my reading, I nibbled on my snacks, I wrote an entry or two for this blog, and I got into my New York guide books. I turned on the TV and watched a bunch of stuff I would never normally watch. First I watched the movie adaptation of Phantom of the Opera, starring Gerard Butler as the Phantom… who would’ve picked him as the a sparkling, buff King Leonidas after that? I guiltily admit having enjoyed this campy musical… although, gosh, her boyfriend/husband was a bit of a wimpy sort. Even with the mangled face and murderous drive, I think I would’ve picked the Phantom! 😉 Then I watched a couple of episodes of House, which I’ve always meant to watch but somehow never quite got round to (verdict: awesome). Following that, the TV presented me with the last half an hour or so of ‘In & Out’, an oldish movie starring Kevin Kline, Matt Dillon and the ever-delightful Joan Cusack (whose brother I still love unconditionally, even after the laugh-fest that was ‘2012’). I actually really enjoyed what I saw; I’ll have to go back and watch the beginning some day!

I really just enjoyed having nowhere to go and nothing to do, to be honest. I listened to music that I was given in Cuba, and thought of the friends that I made there; I considered my options for the next 6/7 weeks, and I slept like a baby.

Awesome afternoon.

Thanks for stopping by,

Tara.

Tags: chelsea new york, food, new york, travel