First-Time Traveler: Hunting for pizza on the last days in New York






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Leading up to this trip, New York was like a fairy tale. The
city, in my head, was constructed by word-of-mouth tales — rumors of sites,
sounds, lifestyle and, oh, yes, even the large subway rats was a part of the
imagination.

 

For my travel buddy, I believe his idea of the city was
built around hot dogs and pizzas.


To satisfy his love for these foods, we
squeezed in many searches to find the illustrious street dogs and New
York-style pizzas for our last two days. It made me laugh every time we were at
a site and he would turn to me to ask, “Are you hungry?” This just meant he
was.



We started day three with a quick trip to Times Square, a tourist heavy area originally named after the New York Times that reminded us of Las Vegas for its flashing signs and store chains. We weren’t very interested in visiting its shops since we could see most of them back home, so we walked down 42nd Street for a few minutes before heading to our next destination, Sony Wonder Lab.

 

Call it the geek in us, but we were pretty excited to visit a museum dedicated to an electronics powerhouse like Sony. It is without a doubt the Sony Wonder Lab did not disappoint either one of us.

 

They give you a key card that contains information you input at the start of the museum, such as your first name, photo and song identification. As you make your way through the lab, you use the key card to play with the interactive stations. In two hours, we played as anchors for a news broadcast, created avatars and made computerized characters dance through motion animation.

 

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After getting our fill, we visited Rockefeller Center, then ate dinner at Japanese restaurant Sake Bar Hagi nearby and had delicious desserts at Magnolia Bakery.

 

We finished the evening with a pass by the Chrysler Building and visit to the Empire State Building. We used a New York CityPass admission to the Empire State Building Observatory, which took us to the 86th level, where we got a great night view of New York City.

 

Today, we stayed around Central Park for a museum day. We used our CityPass tickets to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum. (Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to use our tickets for the American Museum of Natural History or the Museum of Modern Art.)

 

The Met has a wonderful way of submerging its patrons into its exhibits. Each courtyard has artwork and history displayed throughout, including a tomb in the ancient Egypt section and European statues in another courtyard.

 

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At Guggenheim, its current exhibit is on modern art of the early 1900s – displaying art from Picasso, van Gogh and my favorite among the artists, Delaunay.

 

Although the weather was nice out, we decided to end our last day early with dinner at Uva Wine Bar. We weren’t disappointed about turning in early since have a train to Philadelphia at 7 a.m. tomorrow.

 

New York was good to us. We’ll see what Philly has to offer.


(Photos: New York City from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building; Radio City Music Hall at Rockefeller Center; view from the lobby to the ceiling of Guggenheim Museum)

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