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Day 7:
Today was my last day in New York. Got up early and grabbed a bagel and headed over to Rockefeller Center and watched the Today show for a little while. They had Nicole Kidman on and then Matt, Katie, and Al came out to the big crowd area and did a little segment. After that I wandered around the area taking a few last photos and went back to my hotel to check out. I took a cab to Laguardia Airport and waited for my American Eagle flight to Toronto.

When I arrived in Toronto, I headed through customs without any strip searchs and waited for Mike to pick me up. Vlad and I had both arrived within 5 minutes of each other so we were coordinating Mike picking us up. He drove us back to his place through rather sucky traffic. We rested up and played some GTA: SA while we waited for Chris, Shona and Joe to arrive. We went out to dinner at a nice french place not too far from Mike’s house where I had some great steak tartare and horse with a small piece of lemon and chocolate cake. After we walked back we played some more GTA and Katamari Damacy. People were getting tired so we all crashed.

Day 6:
I slept in this morning. After finally forcing myself out of bed, I headed out for lunch at Afgani Kebab House #3 near my hotel and had OK but slightly over-cooked lamb kebab. After lunch, I headed to the International Center of Photography to take a look at their Looking at LIFE, JFK for President: Photographs by Cornell Capa galleries. I was moved by many of the wonderful photos. I hope that some day some of my photos can be as meaningful.

I headed over to the Empire State Building. I had to walk through some long lines that reminded me of an amusement park. I guess this is the most mainstream touristy thing I’ve done in NYC. I got suckered in to buying their awful Skyride “flight simulator” thing. Wow was it bad. Every other moving flight thing I’ve ever been on has been hundreds of times better than this one. Oh well. After that, I took the elevator up to the 80th floor and picked up the audio tour and then walked up 6 flights of stairs (to avoid the long lines) to the observatory. The view from up there was simply wonderful. I took a large number of photos from up top with my 18-70mm lens, wishing I had something around 300mm for some better shots of Central Park and the Financial District. The audio tour wasn’t too bad and gave some interesting data on what the buildings were. On a side note: I know T-Mobile sucks, but how can I have no signal up there? I figured I would have full coverage.

I headed down and out and off to dinner at Nick and Stef’s Steakhouse under Madison Square Gardens. I had a lovely lobster bisque, 12oz fillet and some wonderful cheesecake. The steak was as good as Harris’s in San Francisco (and that’s saying something).

After dinner, I headed over to B&H just a block away and picked up a Lexar USB2 compact flash reader. I love the store. I could easily spend hours in there looking at all the camera gear, but I needed to go pick up my Lion King tickets so I headed up and around 6:45pm picked up my tickets. The house didn’t open until 7 and the show didn’t start until 8, so I went back to my hotel for a few and dumped off the day’s photos on to my laptop and then headed back to the theater. New Ambassador theater is the biggest of the ones I’d been to with three levels and a very large stage. I had 2nd row seats again, although this time on the leftmost side. The show had brilliant props and costumes. The story was pretty much that of the animated movie so it was easy to follow. The cast seemed pretty solid with Patrick Page (Scar) sticking out with a great performance. He has a great voice for Scar and good stage presence. After the show, I walked around for a bit taking a few more photos before finally returning to my hotel for the night.

Day 5:
My feet are hurting quite a bit when I walk around, but I’m determined not to let that stop me. I headed over to Rockefeller Center where I stopped by outside The Today Show just long enough to get on camera as they were cutting to commercial (around 9:45 EST). I headed over to the subway station and took it up to 80th and walked over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That is one big museum. I checked out various exhibits including an Arms and Armor one I enjoyed a lot. I had lunch at the Met in a seriously over-priced cafe looking out in to Central Park. After looking around for a bit longer, I left and headed up a few blocks to the Guggenheim Museum. The building, a Frank Lloyd Write work, is quite amazing itself. I enjoyed the Aztec Empire exhibit and the audio tour.

My left foot had been hurting pretty badly for a while, so I grabbed a cab and headed back to my hotel. I took a nap for an hour and then headed off to dinner. On my way, I headed over to the Golden Theater to pick my up my ticket for tonight’s showing of Avenue Q. After waiting in a short line, I walked over to Joe Allen’s pub on 46th where I had some great meatloaf with sautéed spinach and mashed potatoes and some excellent pumpkin cheesecake for dessert.

I still had about an hour and a half until the show started, so I walked over to the Virgin Megastore at Times Square and picked up the new Grand Theft Auto and a couple CDs. While I was there, Simple Plan was there signing copies of there new CD. Their music sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. After I left the store, I headed over to my hotel to drop off my purchases and then walked back to the theater and waited for the show. I didn’t really know what to expect going in to the show, but I had heard it had puppets.

Avenue Q is absolutely hilarious. The only way I can really describe it is Sesame Street gone totally wrong. It worked well with my sense of humor. I see how it won the Tony Award for Best Musical.

Before bed I picked up a ticket for tomorrow’s Lion King show.

Day 4:
I slept in for a while this morning. After I finally got off my ass, I headed over to John’s Pizzeria for some awesome thin crust pizza. At home we have Amichi’s, but I can’t stand their pizza. I headed down to Rector St. in the Financial area and walked around Wall Street. There were a lot more people than there were on Saturday. I spent a good bit of time just looking around at all the busy people.

Next up I hit the Staten Island Ferry. Only about 25 minutes each way, it provided a nice view of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline. I headed back up to 42st and walked to the TKTS booth which had almost no line and picked up a ticket for tonight’s "Chicago" performance at 25% off. I headed back to my hotel for a while to rest my feet and bought a ticket for "Avenue Q" for Tuesday — 2nd row, 3 seats from center. Should be sweet.

Around 6:30pm, I headed over to Virgil’s Real BBQ on 44th and was pleasantly surprised. No brunswick stew, but they had good pulled pork and excellent banana pudding for desert. After dinner I headed over to the Ambassador Theater on 49th for Chicago. It was a very good show, though the voices weren’t as solid as those in Wicked. I headed back to the hotel after the show to plan tomorrow’s museum expedition.

Day 3:
I got up around 9:30am and packed up to in order to move across the street to the Comfort Inn. It is nearly $150 cheaper per night than The Muse and the rooms are about half the size.

My friend Mimi from OSAF happens to be in NYC this week and had some free time so we met up and set out for more walking. She grew up in NYC so she knows where things are. She had the whole day planned out. We started by walking over to 9th Ave and started heading south. There is an excellent cupcake shop that she wanted to stop at, so we each got a cupcake and continued our walk down to central Chelsea and then headed west to the Chelsea Piers and looked around for a bit. After that we headed down to the Meat-Packing District and down in to Greenwich Village. From there we headed over to Washington Square park and then up to Union Square. We stopped for lunch at Moustache for fantastic middle-eastern food.

We took the subway up to 59th and looked at the Plaza Hotel. It is pretty stunning. We headed in to Central Park at the SE corner and started walking north. We walked past Wollman Ice Rink. It was pretty cool and I can only imagine very spectacular in the snow. We continued along and saw a bunch of people on skates dancing to music and some guys with African drums. We then headed in to The Ramble and somehow managed to come out at Belvedere Castle. At this point, Mimi had to go so we headed out the west side of the park at 81st in the Upper West Side. My feet were killing me so I went to see "Friday Night Lights" at a Lowes theater on 84th and Broadway. The movie was really good and my feet were feeling a bit better.

After the movie, I headed over to Celeste for dinner. The place was tiny, and there was a few people in front of me waiting but the food smelled wonderful. The people there seemed to be mostly locals who seemed to know the staff there. The owner was running around opening the door for everyone, taking orders, etc. It was kind of loud, but very cozy. I had their sausage pasta special for dinner. It was amazing with the fresh pasta made in house. For dessert I had some tiramisu which was equally great. After dinner I took the subway back to Times Square and headed to the hotel for some sleep.

Day 2:
I figured it was time to figure out the subway system and to check out the financial district. I hopped on the N from Times Square over to some scary station in Brooklyn with lots of cops. After realizing that I didn’t want to stay on the N past Canal, I took the R back to Whitehall St.

I took some photos of the Statue of Liberty from around the Staten Island Ferry Terminal before taking a stroll down Water St. towards South Street Seaport. I was going to check out the TKTS booth there as it was rumored to have shorter lines than the Times Square location. While that might have been true, the lines were still really long and the shows they had tickets for didn’t really excite me. I called my hotel concierge and had them get me seats for "Wicked.&quot I don’t know the first thing about Broadway shows, but I’m told this is The show to see right now.

At this point I’m pretty hungry and decide that I’ll go eat at MarkJoseph Steakhouse recommended by Frommer’s. I arrived only to find out that it was close for lunch on weekends. My guide has no good restaurants listed nearby, so I just walk for a bit.

Eventually I hit City Hall park and sit for a little while absorbing the atmosphere. My map showed that Ground Zero of the World Trade Center was near by, so I walked over there. Tons of people were around the fences surrounding the area. Being there brought back feelings of sadness that I hadn’t really felt since the attacks happened. There were lots of photos of what had been there and how things looked before and after the attacks. I’m sad that I never got to see the giant buildings. I walked around 3 sides of the site and headed north to TriBeCa.

My guidebook recommended a place called Buddy’s in TriBeCa for brunch. It was super crowded and they claimed 30-45 minutes for a table, but said I could eat at the bar — so I did. I had brunch: eggs, bacon, grits, toast! Mmm, grits. They were the best grits I’ve ever had and I’m from Georgia. The place had a nice atmosphere and I was very pleased with the food. It was nice finding a place that didn’t seem to be filled with tourists so I could get a glimpse of real New Yorkers.

After brunch, I headed over to Chinatown. All I saw was a lot of signs and people I couldn’t understand, so I headed up to Little Italy. It was about this point that I realized my my feet could use a break. I hopped on the subway to Canal where I transfered to the 6 and headed to Grand Central Station. The trip didn’t take as long as my feet would have liked. I looked around the station a bit and headed out to a nearby Starbucks. I enjoyed some hot chocolate and sat for a good 30 minutes.

Spending more time with my map, I saw that I was at 41st St. and Madison Ave. and that 49th St. and 5th Ave. wasn’t far away. I walked down 41st to the New York Public Library at 5th Ave. and watched some street dancers do some dancing to Michael Jackson music. I headed down 5th to 49th where Saks 5th Avenue is and continued down to 59th where Central Park is. Lots of neat stuff on 5th Ave. between 49th and 59th like the The Trump Tower. I was impressed, but my feet were killing me. I headed over to Broadway and back to my hotel to pick up my ticket for the show and to rest my feet for a little while.

I headed over to the Gershwin Theater for the 8pm show of “Wicked”. The show is a prequel to “The Wizard of Oz” based on the book “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of The West” by Gregory Maguire. It was completely sold out and I didn’t see any empty seats. The role of Elphaba (one of the two leads) was being played by Shoshana Bean, the standby for Idina Menzel. This had me a little worried at first, but it didn’t take long to see that she was amazing. The whole show was wonderful. I was blown away by the voices of both Shoshana Bean and Jennifer Laura Thompson (Glinda) and the rest of the cast. The story was fun and fit in well with the Wizard of Oz. The tickets were well worth the money.

After the show, I headed back to Times Square for a bite to eat. I wandered around a bit and then finally went to bed.

Day 1:
I left San Jose around 9:45pm on a brand new JetBlue airplane. The on board DirecTV and impressive leg room made me quite happy with my choice.

The flight arrived around 6am at JFK and I grabbed a taxi to my hotel, The Muse near Times Square. The cab ride was a flat $45 fee plus a $4 toll and took about 40 minutes. The cabby was nice and when I could actually understand him he was telling me about the city and where we were. We arrived at my hotel and my room was not ready. I dropped off my bags and grabbed a yummy bagel with cream cheese for $1 from a stand on the street.

I walked around for a few in the wrong direction towards Rockefeller Center in hopes of snagging some Conan O’Brien tickets. they didn’t start giving them out until 9am, so I figured I had some time. At first I head west of Broadway towards by the Gershwin Theater, but soon realize I’m heading in the wrong direction. I head back down 50th past Rockefeller center. I see an NBC Studio/Rainbow Room sign, but no one is there so I figure whatever. I walk around the building, notice things like the Today show crowd, and then see that there is also an NBC studio/rainbow room sign on 49th street. This time, it comes fully equipped with a line.. a long one at that. I count around 30 people, so I proceed to wait there. For an hour and a half I get to watch guys trying to sell knock off watches, hand bags, etc. It was amusing, especially seeing the cops telling them to pack it up and go. Unfortunately, the line in front of me seems to grow with people joining their friends and whatnot. By 9am when they bring out the standby tickets, I’m #47. I get my ticket and am free to go.

I picked up some hot chocolate at Dean and Deluca and wandered around for a few and finally I decide to take the NBC Studio Tour. Our group had 30 people or so with two pretty nice pages to show us around. We get to see a few studios including the ones used by Tom Brokaw for the nightly news, Conan O’Brian and SNL. At one point, we are passed in the hallway by Jude Law, tomorrow’s host of SNL. Only a couple of us actually noticed him, so he didn’t get mobbed. After the studio tour ended, I grabbed some lunch, came back to my hotel to see if my room was ready and took a nap until around 3:15pm.

I walked back to NBC studios to wait in line for Conan. I didn’t have a lot of hope, since the night before they hadn’t let any standbys in and I was #47. At first, there was only a few of us there and things were looking promising, but since we all had numbers there wasn’t really any point to showing up until 4:15pm. Around 4:20pm they finally count us off to see how many are actually there and now I’m #46. Great — one person in front of me is gone. I’m still not liking my odds very much. Finally they come back and count us down and get past me and a few people later announce that 52 and higher are cut and that she’d be back in a couple minutes to let us all know. Finally the line starts moving and they’re letting people in. They’re counting off people as they go through to make sure there are enough seats and she stops 5 people in front of me, letting one of a two person group in and says the rest of us will have to wait to see if there is room. There is a group of 4 girls from Tennessee in front of me and a few behind me. They want to move us through security so that when they find out how many seats are available they can get us in quickly. We go through the metal detectors and around that time they say there are 2 seats left. One for the other half of the couple and 1 more. The group of 4 girls in front of me don’t want to be split up so they let me go since it was just me. Thats right, I got the last seat! They hurry me and the couple in front up the elevators and in to the studio. As I had seen earlier on the tour, the studio was small, but somehow fit 189 seats.

Some guy.. one of the producers or writers came out and welcomed us to the audience and told some pretty funny jokes. After a bit they brought out the band. They played for a short while and then finally Conan came out and said hi. The show finally started and he went through his stand up jokes, followed by a Halloween skit with Frankenstein. After a commercial break, Sarah Michelle Gellar came out and talked toilet stories with Conan for a while before showing a clip from The Grudge. Sadly, she left after her interview, but then Will Arnett from Arrested Development came out and gave a pretty good interview. Finally after that some bat expert came out with a variety of bats including fruit bats and vampire bats. The show was pretty cool and seeing them film was pretty interesting. The show was done in a single pass and around 6:35 we were out and done.

I was really exhausted at this point, but I wanted to get some food, so I stopped by The District next to my hotel. I ordered their Chef’s Tasting menu with wine parings. It was splendid. After dinner I went back to my room and went to sleep.