Unpublishable 1: journey to NYC

[Bossy Monkey]

I'd be grateful for comments, but there's a reason the word "unpublishable" is in the subject line. It was a lot of fun, though, both the trip and the piece. I hope you like it. There's a little sidebar bit at the end; I guess I'll designate the change with asterisks.
Note: I edited the title and first paragraph to take out Alice's real last name. Figured, better to stay on the safe side.
Here's the piece:

The First Mrs H.
Alice wanted to get out of town for her 29th birthday (No, really! It was her actual 29th birthday) and I suggested NYC because I love it and finally felt able to face the yawning hole in Lower Manhattan. She checked New York City against San Francisco (her preference) on Hotwire and found that due to the shorter plane trip, New York won out. She found us a good deal for the days she had available (July 1-5) flying Northwest and staying in the prestigious or at least very kicky Barclay Hotel. (The Barclay put us on the register as Mr. and Mrs. Alice H., hence the title.)

To get the low fare of course, we had to fly Charlotte to Newark. Thursday the first therefore found us driving Charlottewards, listening to NPR on the way to improve our minds or at least to get into a New York state of one. Alice felt neurotic wanting to go straight to the airport almost 2 hours before flight time, but if we'd stopped for lunch first we just would have driven ourselves crazy worrying about getting to the airport on time, so this proved to be the right move. We got checked in without any problem, and found that Charlotte Douglas International Airport offered the exact same goddam tripe found in every major airport in North America, and probably on every other continent, too. Observing this, we stopped at the Chili's Bar and Grill (that's a Chili's with a limited menu) and ate hamburgers. We resisted the temptation to rat out the various folk who left their luggage unattended in spite of the grave security warnings everywhere, or to mess with said luggage, and hustled on to our gate where, almost as soon as we'd have preferred, we boarded. The first leg of our odyssey to Newark was a hop to Northwest's hub in Detroit. We didn't have to change planes, but interestingly they threw us off anyway, ostensibly for cleaning. Detroit's airport was largely interchangeable with Charlotte's except that there were trams to get you around if you so desired and all the signs were in Japanese as well as English. Oh, and the number of clueless folk rambling randomly through the airport was greater by a factor of ten; good practice for New York, though.

When we got back on the plane our seats were the same (in the back next to the auxilliary jets; wheeee!) but the crew was different and we fell into conversation with a stewardess doing a great deal of black humor about terrorists and hijacking. We, uh, walked carefully around this subject, not eager for the express flight to Gitmo, but could understand how when this is your everyday life, you probably have to joke about it to relieve the tension.

The flight to Newark was blessedly unremarkable, lacking the bouncy bounciness we'd had coming into Detroit which had me considering swearing off flying forever and ever. As the Weather Channel had warned of 45 minute delays at NYC area airports for this afternoon, we were profoundly grateful to have the weatherman be wrong for once when we wanted him to be. In fact, the weather the entire extended weekend was ridiculously beautiful, breaking our longtime hoodoo that had seen us suffer inclement weather almost every time we traveled together anywhere.

Newark Airport was reasonably easy to negotiate; NJ Transit was similarly strightforward though if their trains to Manhattan had been more frequent and more nearly on time, we would have been better pleased. The train, when it came (20-odd minutes late and after several announcements that it would be along in about 5 minutes) delivered us to Penn Station, which is to say 34th St. Our hotel was at 49th St. Your mass-transportation correspondent here made the first of my many miscalculations. Alice just wanted to hop a taxi, which, as with all her suggestions, was the correct one. I figured out a route on the subway which, had I stuck with it, would have been pretty good, too. However, when we reached 50th St Station, I leapt to the conclusion that this would be good enough. Note here that walking across midtown Manhattan with luggage, even though the luggage is on wheels, is less than the funnest experience one can have. We walked from 8th to between Park and Lexington avenues, which isn't far compared to say the Appalachian Trail, but is probably a lot to ask from folks who've already been traveling all day.

Regardless, we arrived at the hotel without Alice actually killing me, registered, and went up to our room. We were impressed that the Barclay and their owners, the Intercontinental chain, were so far from superstitious to have a 13th floor in the building. We were more impressed still by the room. Though it was small, it contained a bed that would sleep a good-sized family and their pets. (We didn't actually get out a tape measure, but it appeared to be 6'6 by 6'; queen size?) Also the artwork on the walls was interesting and the bathroom was understatedly magnificent. On the whole, if not a steal then quite a deal at $950 for roundtrip airfare and 4 nights double occupancy in a 4 1/2 star hotel.

Exhausted, we crashed for a while, then decided that the better part of valor was to visit the restaurant on the premises. They had a rather odd menu, basically a buffet, but you had the choice of going for either the hot or cold buffet for $18 or the whole hog for $35 which included a glass of wine. We were neither of us on the ball enough to negotiate such intricacies and basically just went and got what we wanted. Somehow I talked the proprietor into just charging us for one hot and one cold. I don't mean to seem cheap, but the cold buffet was very limited except for dessert; it just didn't seem fair to be charged twice as much for a couple of items we didn't particularly want. Beverages were outrageous in the bad way; this was our first experience of NYC's $3.50 soft drinks. Desserts were outrageous in the good way; I vaguely remember a coffee cup shaped out of sweet dark chocolate, and other things equally wonderful. We trundled up to our room, where I'd set the air conditioning to Polar Explorer, and were off to dreamland.

Friday: slept in, Fifth Avenue, Duane Reade, Fleur de Sel (oh my god. Fleur de Sel. that veal. those little chocolate covered cookies with caramel in the center. YUM. I was less enchanted with the suckling pig/foie gras terrine, but then again I am not very fond of squishy things.--A.) , walk to Washington Square Greenwich Village NYU Noho/Bleecker St, laying about in Central Park, Metropolitan Museum of Art (Temple of Dendur, mummies, medieval art, Spanish courtyard which the Met doesn't even rate worthy of putting on the map, European Sculpture Court (damn Leda, damn swan), Childe Hassam American impressionist (made famous in the Guns n Roses song), Byzantium Faith & Power, Hey! That's a Monet! (John forgot to mention that I was so determined to get to a TKTS outlet that we just ran by the Cezannes and didn't look back. At least, I didn't. I'm so ashamed--A.)

First TKTS fiasco, but at least the lady at the Met info desk gave reasonably accurate directions. You gotta have cash or travelers' cheques, unfortunately. (John also politely forgets to mention that I had a total hissy fit in the middle of Times Square due to said TKTS fiasco and he had to shoot me with a tranq gun. Kidding.--A.)
Neapolitan instead of New York style pizza at Naples 45, but we should have known better. (In the Pan Am building, dammit; I don't care if they're bust and Met Life is paying for the sign now) Best ricotta ever in the calzone, but the usual dry-feeling stuff in the ricotta cheesecake; go figure. This is where we had the pleasure of paying for our refills to the tune of $11 for a total of 4 soft drinks. Wheee!

Maybe it's best not to trust WOR-AM personality Arthur Schwartz on the subject of pizza.

When we were considering dessert, the waitress put on a Dessert Nazi act (No dessert for you!) but we kind of assume that every waitron in New York and indeed the rest of the country probably does this now and again just for the heck of it.

This is also where I forgot my man-purse (containing the AlphaSmart and two cameras). Fortunately, the light when we came out was really beautiful, leading to the thought that I ought to photograph it, leading to the thought, "Where in hell is my camera?" and I hustled back in to find the waitress and hostess looking for us in hopes of giving the bag back.

On the way back, we stopped in at another Duane Reade in the Helmsley Building to get bottled water and a replacement Snickers bar for the one Alice had eaten from the hotel room's snack bar; it was that or pay $3 or so for a $1 candy bar. (We're such rebels. --A>
Saturday: I woke up with my sense of direction upside down, apparently incurably so. We headed vaguely toward the nearest subway stop, breakfasted at Ess-A-Bagel which we loved extremely. Our directions to the other TKTS office, the one where you can get evening tickets even in the morning, were on the sketchy side: just a subway stop and a street address. We wound up in front of St Paul's Chapel hard by the WTC site, looking confused faced with a sign showing a map of the area. A very kind New Yorker directed us the right way towards our destination, which turned out to be South Street Seaport. The address was on Water Street, where there appeared to be a permanent street fair but no TKTS office; we asked in a coffee joint, maybe Starbuck's and were directed to the back of the building. Here was another long line, but it mostly ran in the shade. (It also had completely disappeared by the time we were eating lunch an hour later, but we preferred to think that this was because all the good tickets had sold out.) We waited in line (or to go all native and shit, on line) for around a half hour and finally, miracle of miracles, Alice had her tickets to see Rent. Relieved, we tried to follow our noses to the source of a really fine grilling smell we'd been tempted by while waiting in line. (The line ran along Front, or maybe Pearl. My memory is almost as bad as the map we were using. Anyway, on either side of this street were competing boutiques, one called Coach and one called Team. Well I thought it was funny... PS: it was Front St) It wasn't noon yet, so we didn't feel any pressing need to get lunch so we lazed a while on a bench in the shade. Still, it smelled so good... The scent was coming either from a Mexican/Southwestern type place called Red or another establishment with a name along the lines of J.C. Mustard's. I am on record as being against the very existence of places with cutesy madeup names comprised of two initials and some random word, and couldn't bring myself even to go read the menu at J.C. Whatever's, so we went to Red. You know, it was pretty good. I got fajitas which were good enough to make me think that maybe this WAS where the good aroma was coming from. Service was a little less than exemplary. Apparently only busboys are allowed to refill beverages, and when busboys were scarce the rest of the staff just stood around and looked pretty and traded recriminations about why the busboys weren't there. There was a juggler outside delighting the little tourist children, the only charm South St Seaport had to offer; Alice characterized it as being about as interesting as Columbiana Centre.

This is where I had my moment of something less than glory. The subway map indicated that the nearest station was Wall St. When I failed to find it owing to upside down sense of direction syndrome, I also failed to take Alice's very sensible advice that we go back to the station that we had arrived at (Fulton St-Broadway) and instead struck out for what appeared to be the nearest station to the point we were at. Unfortunately, I missed it completely and we wound up walking all the way to East River Park, which is to say twice too far. Alice asked someone for directions and he pointed us back to the station I had been looking for but missed. She wanted to take the bus, but one did not materialize and I somehow persuaded her to walk back. The station, it turned out, consisted of one stairway on the other side of the road. The thing that made me kick myself was that when we hit the cross street for the East Broadway station (Rutgers St) the first time, I knew there was something important about it but wasn't smart enough to check the map so we wasted inordinate time and energy walking pointlessly on the Lower East Side. Our Gray Line tour guide, Priscilla, the Queen of Being Wrong About Everything, would later tell us that natives call it the LES; we would agree that the LES said about the Lower East Side the better. Those buildings might cost a million dollars for each apartment, but they still look like public housing projects. At least the sidewalks were well-shaded or even I would have bailed in favor of a taxi.

On retrospect, I probably should have mentioned that my favorite thing in the world is trying to get lost in a strange city, preferably where I don't speak the language...

I can't even remember how we got to the hotel. The F train would have taken us to 47-50 Sts/Rockefeller Center which is fairly convenient to the Barclay, and I vaguely remember being there, so I guess that must be it. Alice just wanted to nap, so I went out to try to get locked into my memory once and for all the location of the World's Greatest Bar, P.J. Clarke's. Once and for all it's at 55th and 3d Avenue; for some reason I got the wrong cross street fixed in my memory 20 years or so ago and could never get it straight. Anyway, I went in, chatted with the bartender and checked out a menu. It was less extensive than I remembered but I was still hopeful that I could persuade Alice to come.

Went back to the room and couldn't persuade Alice to move, let alone visit Clarke's, but eventually showtime approached so we headed towards Times Square. Our tourist map actually showed the location of the theater, but as the map was rather threadbare by this point we had pretty nearly quit consulting it. I assured Alice that Broadway theaters are by definition on Broadway (completely inaccurately, as it turns out, but I got lucky just this once), so we took the choo to Times Square, came up the stairs and there was the Nederlander Theatre. We wandered a bit looking for food, even looking in at the Red Lobster, but there were a lot of dissatisfied-looking folk standing around looking like they'd been waiting a while to be seated, so we felt that this was no place for us. We tried the other direction and were pleasantly surprised to find a Chinese buffet in Times Square, all squeaky clean and shiny new and ready to make us happy and well-fed for only $10 each. They had wondrous teriyaki chicken skewers and either included Alice's coke or forgot to charge her for it. We felt that the buffet was the perfect solution to the pre-show meal problem.

Rent was a delight. Three of the top 8 or so cast members were replaced by understudies, but all were outstanding and the ensemble never missed a beat. I thought the roommate chemistry was missing between the two leads, but if anything that was the fault of the regular cast member rather than of the understudy. Standouts were Mark Richard Ford and Frenchie Davis. The latter Alice tells me was an unsuccessful American Idol contestant. Justin A. Johnston, the understudy filling in for the Queer Eye guy as Angel, did a phenomenal job. Maggie Benjamin as Maureen did a hilarious if 20 years late take on performance art. I never did quite figure out why there was a lunar lander hanging over the stage, but what can you do. Scary Spice did a very nice job, better at ballads, acting and dancing than at Broadway-style belting, and the accent slipped here and there, but she was certainly better than adequate.

The show let out about 10:30 and we rode on back to the hotel pretty largely exhausted. (We were also amused by the irritating lady on the subway who kept snapping at her husband and daughter, and figured that she was going to file for divorce the minute they got home. --A.)

We spent more time on the 6 than JLo

Sunday: We had had it, so we set no alarm and just got up when we got up. We had decided that we had had quite enough fun walking so we would cross the street to the Waldorf-Astoria, swallow our pride and catch the Gray Line. As there were no buses nor Gray Line ticket agents evident, we wandered the gigantic Waldorf lobby, looking for Hilton sisters, but none were evident either. We went outside again and a ticket agent appeared so we signed up for the Downtown Loop to catch up on our Soho/Greenwich Village/Chinatown/Little Italy visiting. It might be worth mentioning that these aren't the Gray Line buses of old but rather are double-deckers with the roof cut off the upper deck. Many have air conditioning in the lower deck but many don't; these latter are hell. Over the course of the day, we rode three buses and took the loop twice. We started and ended with a tour guide named Priscilla who was very sweet and charming, but whose grasp of facts was a little less than perfect (ie the greatest abolitionist of all time Horace Greeley, the famous Catholic priest Norman Vincent Neal and his book, The Power of Positive Living, etc, etc, etc. It kind of made us doubt the accuracy of all the rest of her information). So we got to see the Rockefeller Center and Radio City and smell the nice horsies at the southern end of Central Park, return to Times Square, see Madison Square Garden, Macy's and the Empire State Building, the Flatiron again, Greenwich Village and the Stonewall, and jumped out at Soho. We were besieged by tourists, or maybe it was Claire Danes, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon in incredibly cunning disguises, so we got the hell off Broadway winding up at Fanelli's Cafe, which Alice realized to her surprise that she had visited before. It was good regardless, although they scared us to death by charging us twice for our desserts. We thought it might be some kind of tasting fee since we had switched, but it was just an honest mistake, easily corrected. I had quiche lorraine as my main dish, though the dessert I ordered and quickly traded to Alice slips my mind (it was a pecan bar -ed.). I enjoyed finishing her chocolate grand marnier cake, though. Fanelli's, like Clarke's, is a holdover from the 19th Century. Unlike Clarke's (as far as I remember) they have their liquor licenses from the 1860s posted on the wall, which tickled me to no end for some reason.

We looked about a bit I guess, but Tim, Susan and Claire were still too convincingly disguised as tourists and a bus was coming so we hustled back to the stop and hopped on it. We got to see Chinatown and the gathering crowd at Battery Park for the Lyle Lovett show and then got rerouted because of the fireworks preparations back through Chinatown. This was pretty ok with us having seen enough of South St Seaport and the LES to last a lifetime. We did however get to see the federal courthouse four times more than was strictly necessary, but sometimes you just have to take one for the team. We also saw the World Trade Center site, which the city appears to prefer calling what I just called it but the tour guides prefer Ground Zero, four times, twice close up. The girders in the form of a cross gave an ache that won't go away; 7 World Trade Center already rising again caused more uplifting feelings.

Experienced the thrill that is the East Village, saw a lot more hospitals than we needed to as well as the UN and the Chrysler Building, then circled around again. At Times Square, we were told that everybody had to get off the bus, but then they changed their minds so we went back upstairs, now with a new tour guide. This time we rode as far as Macy's, where we went to get our Out-of-Towner Discount Card and Alice shunted me off to the coffeeshop so she could shop in peace. She wasn't long and wound up getting only a maternity top for her pregnant sister. We got on the next bus and there was the magical, the delightful, the completely misinformed Priscilla again. One thing she did know about though was the Gray Line schedule, and as 6:30 and the switch to the Night Tour (which isn't Hop on Hop off) was coming up fast, we decided to ride with her all the way home to add new items of incorrect information about New York City to our already substantial store. We were hoping that when the Battery Park stop came up this time we might at least hear a snippet of a Lyle Lovett song, but because of a major accident we were rerouted even further and didn't get within blocks of the park. The most interesting thing we saw on the trip home was people being allowed to stand on FDR Drive (the waterfront highway on the East Side) for the fireworks. As it wasn't 6 yet and the boombooms weren't starting until 9, this seemed more than a little crazy, but I guess New Yorkers are used to waiting.

Home again home again, I failed again to talk Alice into going to Clarke's (or trying to; who knew if they'd be open on Sunday the 4th of July) so we tried Wollensky's Grill, the supposedly cheaper side arm of Smith & Wollensky's famous steakhouse. The host said he could seat us in two minutes then vanished. When he returned, he rather huffily asked us if we had any questions and I asked what became of the table he was going to seat us at in two minutes ten minutes ago. He found us a table directly and handed us menus that were somewhat out of line with our notion of reasonableness. We said heck with this and walked out, feeling dissatisfied with the service, the table, the prices and in my case, the lack of Clarkeness. We headed up the block and saw a place we'd both been curious about the previous day, La Maganette. It turned out to be a spiffy Italian restaurant somewhat lost in the 70s but no less nice for that. The staff was friendly and tending toward the elderly. They had a prix fixe 5 course meal (if you count the salad) for $27. We figured you can't beat that with a stick and went for it. I remember ordering gnocchi and finally learning how to pronounce it and also "veal a la you guys" (alla maganette, but I wasn't going to mangle another word in the interests of better ordering). I had the fruit tart or torte or torta or something; Alice had chocolate cake she couldn't finish.

Fireworks were at 9, but the plane from Newark was leaving before 7 am, so we figured we'd rather go to bed. Turned out we might as well have jumped on it, because even at Lexington Ave the sound was of one endless shuddering boom and it was alarming as hell. It didn't run too late and Alice was still suffering difficulties from the Four Courses of the Apocalypse so it didn't make any major difference in our sleeping schedule.

I woke up at 1:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. I expect that our Italian friends had put some caff in my decaf. I was lying there composing the whole story of our trip, reviewing Rent and sketching out a novel. Eventually the wakeup call came and we were off to new adventures. The Amazing Concierge Who Doesn't Know Anything had told us that cab fare to Newark Airport (Sorry; Newark Liberty International Airport) was about $55 and that there are always cabs in the cab rank, even at 4 in the morning, so we were reasonably reassured. The bell captain, whom we immediately liked much better than the concierge, held us up while he checked on the weather (which had just been pouring) and for a cab, then carried our tiny bags out for us. I know we should have tipped, but frankly we had been ready, willing and able to get our own cab and carry our own bags and there are just limits to how much and how often you're willing to tip everybody you meet.

Our driver was Guillermo Reyes, a very friendly fellow who told us from the outset that the fare was $15 plus tolls. Having taken the Lincoln Tunnel and the NJ Turnpike many times, I felt pretty confident that this wouldn't be too brutal. This is what you get for being confident. It came out to $61.80; for reasons I don't understand, I even tipped. To be fair, we also had to cover his tolls back to Manhattan, but still.

Newark Liberty International Airport had the most stringent metal detectors we encountered. We both had to take off our shoes to go through; practically everybody had to take off their shoes to go through. Alice was much less than charmed by the fellow hollering at her a very heavily-accented "Choos! Choos!" by way of suggesting she do so. We sort of felt that the use of verbs might be an intelligent addition to the training regimen of airport security hacks.

But that would not be the only or even the chief annoyance of the flight from Newark to Memphis. You know that baby or toddler who just won't stop screaming? You know how he's always seated right behind you on the airplane? You know how the parents won't do the first thing to quiet him, or even try? He made an appearance. (I like to refer to him as Damian. --A.) He squalled the entire time we were on the ground, then quieted as soon as we were in the air. As soon as we started down again, he went off for the remainder of the trip. Our thoughts toward his parents were not kind ones, and mainly involved tire irons.

Memphis airport is like a gigantic version of Columbia's before the renovation. I was in a panic because I'd forgotten it was in a different time zone and thought we only had five minutes to get to our Charlotte flight. This is no doubt one reason why the pilot always announces the local time before the plane lands; when he did I relaxed to the extent the screaming monster behind me would allow. We had to go from B terminal to C, which was a pretty goshdarned long walk after getting used to Airtrains, trams and people movers. To be fair, there was a people mover or two (moving sidewalk, if you prefer) in Terminal C, but most of our trip was in 70s-style Terminal B.

When we arrived at our gate, there were already two babies there. However, when they became the least bit refractory, the parents would move heaven and earth to interest, amuse, tire out, or otherwise quiet them, and we breathed a sigh of relief. I note in passing that the farther you get from Northwest Airlines per se to the hinterlands of the regional carriers flying under their colors and ever-changing logo, the more generous they get. Northwest asked if you wanted just a cup of your drink or the entire can. The regional carriers just gave you the whole can without asking. Admittedly drinking it all meant pissing like a racehorse by the time the plane landed, but it's the thought that counts. Northwest also only gave a little bag of admittedly tasty braided pretzels. The regional carriers gave Quaker Oatmeal Raisin bars, and the last one gave out the braided pretzels as well. Still, the price was listening to the stewardess' Job-like life story (autistic son, divorce, just had all her possessions stolen in a car break-in); of course we merely paid the price for having good hearing and strong eavesdropping skills. She was talking to a passenger who apparently had gone to the same high school.

Eventually we were freed from the Rime of the Ancient Stewardess and were very happy to be reunited with our baggage with no holdup of any kind, and had similar happy success catching the parking shuttle. Getting to I77 was less fun, but at length we were even more pleased to find that Don Quijote was open in spite of the holiday, and settled in for tapas tapas tapas. We ordered gambas al pil-pil and were hardly even incontroverted when three idiots came in, plopped down at the next table and asked for chips and salsa. The garlic shrimp was so delicious we barely noticed when they complained that "the salsa weren't spicy enough", and spent the rest of the afternoon exchanging aggressively uninteresting stories. Alice got the paella and I got the arroz con something and something else. Pretty sure it was pork, lamb and chicken. Regardless, it was outstanding. Alice liked her paella, too, but for the first time actually had to admit that something tasted salty.

I drove us home, which was interesting since I'd slept 3 hours plus the 5 minutes the squalling twerp had allowed on the first plane. (You forgot to mention the fact that my car's AC was kaput, making our drive unbelievably pleasant--A.) Trying to find interesting radio in the wilderness between Charlotte and Columbia and coping with my brain-dead fellow drivers was enough to keep me on my toes all the way home.

Our conclusions are as follows; take them with whatever sized grain of salt you feel necessary: Everybody in NY looks like Derek Jeter; nobody in NY can spell "millennium" (including the Millennium Hilton, and the Millennium Broadway Hotel one out of two tries); I must say though it's an awful goddam foolish looking word.

***************************************************

Good tips:
Order water
TKTS only takes cash or travelers' cheques
The subway is very extensive, but there are big gaps; the Metrocard one-day or three-day pass is best
The Gray Line is your friend, but again the All Tours pass is the best bet.
They have legalized asking for directions. New Yorkers are much friendlier and more helpful than their reputation would suggest
A lot of people think that because New York is a very walkable city and because Manhattan is a very small island compared to say Greenland that they can walk anywhere and everywhere no problem. If you're reasonably fit, have very comfortable walking shoes (and socks) and are wearing underwear that you are absolutely certain will prevent your thighs from chafing, you may be right, particularly if you don't mind schlepping around a gallon or so of bottled water. We were visiting on a very temperate Fourth of July weekend and in general had the good sense to keep to the shady side of the street (those skyscraper canyons turn out to be good for something!) and still wound up sunburned (in spite of using sunscreen every day) and exhausted. So believe you us: use the Gray Line and public transit absolutely whenever possible and keep the walking to a minimum. You'll probably be spending hours on end on your feet in museums anyway; minimizing wear and tear on the feet, legs and ankles is always a good plan.

If on the subway, figure out your route at the large subway maps in every station. Count the number of stops before you're to get off, and count them down as you ride. If your memory isn't what it once was, write it all down. We all worry about the heinous crime of looking like a tourist, then commit it anyway by wandering around looking in all directions because we don't know where in hell we're going. If you inadvertently get off at the wrong stop, do NOT decide that this will be good enough and you can walk the rest of the way. You will almost certainly be sorry. Just get on the next train and ride on to the stop you were originally headed for. If you lose your bearings, get out of the way, particularly if you're in a subway station. Do not come to a dead stop in the middle of the escalator entrance, or you will be very sorry. Likewise, do not shuffle on to the middle of the crowded subway platform to look at the map. You will annoy everyone in your path, and some of them may have tart words for you that you will not appreciate. If this happens, don't complain that New Yorkers are mean, because you were asking for it.

Investing in a larger and more detailed map than the hotels and tourist authorities usually hand out is a pretty good idea. A laminated one is particularly helpful unless you never sweat and have utterly infallible map-folding skills.
Another somewhat less than fun subway fact is that while the trains are mostly air-conditioned (especially the 6), the stations are not and can be absolutely hellish. Many many many people carry bottled water on the subway, presumably largely for this reason.
Plan to buy a lot of postcards. Skyscraper canyons are not particularly helpful for photography.

Here is our advice for parents who wish to fly with babies or very small children: purchase a Lear jet.

[LSparkle]

1. I haven't read the whole thing yet

but I've been to Fanelli's and remember it fondly!

[Tace]

2. I've Lived In Manhattan For 15 Years And Enjoyed Your Trip Story

The map suggestion is good. Also, FYI the Metro cards work on city buses too, which are probably more convenient than Grey Line if you know where you're going.

PJ Clarkes and Fanelli's are fun bars. LES, like East Village, is best appreciated between midnight and 4 a.m. Cheers.