Queens, Shop, and a Pub Crawl on Top

Our last full day. Trying not to make too big a deal out of things and not wanting to further annihilate ourselves we made a pact to take it easy. Our main debate was to either go to the Metropolitan Museum or to Queens. The Met is purportedly one of the best museums in the entire world and a major hole in our sightseeing resume. Regardless, we decided to try to get a little more city life experience and made plans to go on the "international tour" in Queens.

First, I really wanted to find this magic shop. I've always had this image of myself pulling off really impressive tricks and have the crowd gasp in amazement. Alas, it was not to be as the magic shop was long gone. We seemed to mixed luck with the guidebooks -- quite a few highly-touted places have been closed. There does seem to be an incredible amount of turnover for both retail and restaurants. I suppose I place gets hot, ramps up on staff, and simply can't maintain it once things level off. Since we were up that way we decided to give Lohmann's (a discount clothing store) one more shot. Laurie and I both had some luck and we're surely not going to have enough room in our bags for everything.

Unfortunately, our Lohmann's adventure took a little too much time and we were going to have to cut our Queens tour short. The area of Queens we were heading for has several distinct neighborhoods with very different ethnic groups. Starting in Flushing and working back West to Manhattan there are Chinese, then South American, then Indian, then Irish, and finally Italian neighborhoods. Instead of going all the way out to Flushing and walking back, we decided to head straight for a curry shop in Little India. The subway ride out was surprisingly simple and quick and we emerged from the train into a different world.

Leaving the subway station we were immediately surrounded by sights, smells, people, and businesses unlike any other I've seen. The immediate area around the train is largely Hispanic (or whatever the proper terminology for South American immigrants is), but quickly turns to Indian. Walking down the street was very odd -- sort of packed like Chinatown, but with an entirely different feel. Instead of the average teenage kids handing out flyers on every street corner there were older men in elaborate dress wearing turbans. We were astounded by the jewlery shops on the way to the restaurant and planned to check them out once we took care of our hunger.

The restaurant was buffet-style and reminded me a lot of an Indian place near our house in Boulder. However, things seemed more authentic as not only were the waitstaff Indian, but also all of the customers. The food was wonderful, but I have no idea what I was eating. I've had many of these items before, but not with the intensity of flavor or unusual ingredients (I stayed away from what looked like pig's feet). Halfway through I had a frightening memory of all the bad Indian food jokes and recalled Laurie's earlier bad experience, but we made it through without any problems.

After eating we wandered Little India a bit. The jewlery was truely incredible -- the most detailed and intricate gold work you've ever seen forming large elaborate necklaces. I'm not sure, but I think the necklaces are for weddings and are supposed to be melted down immediately afterwards. Hard to imagine destroying this work (especially after shelling out thousands of dollars).

Leaving Little India, we hopped on the subway for a short distance to go to an ethnic Irish neighborhood. Though we saw a smattering of pubs and shops, the Gaelic-named streets were largely filled with a mix of people like we've seen throughout most of the city. Still, fun to walk around and see things and get a first-hand idea of what it used to be like to live here (not sure I would now, especially considering the deafening elevated subway racing by every few minutes). With a nice introduction to Queens behind us, we hopped back on the subway and enjoyed the nice views on the way back to Manhattan.

We raced around trying to make connections on the subway in an effort to catch the end of jewlery sample sale back downtown. Our overconfidence got the best of us and we hopped on a express train that shot several miles past where we needed to be. Thouroughly checking the map and finding the correct train, we finally got to our destination. The jewlery sale wasn't all it was cracked up to be and we left emptyhanded. We decided to go out to the Hudson river and enjoy the sunset. We sat out along the river for awhile and wandered up to a bar serving tasty watermelon margaritas.

The daily hassle of trying to figure out what to do began. Settling on an activity is next to impossible. There is simply too much to do with countless options regardless of the obscurity of the activity. Looking through Time Out isn't always helpful since the listings for each day go on for pages and the reviews tend to be written in cool-kid speak which makes finding something good even harder. There were a few neat-sounding African music events, but not interesting enough to stop considering other options. Then Laurie came up with an outstanding idea -- go on a pub crawl of our favorite neighborhood places. We decided to go in the reverse order of our first visit to each of the places and planned a few possible side activities and food stops along the way. Our route would take us on a good looping tour of familiar, and our favorite, streets. We left out a few down in Tribeca/Soho (disapointingly not including Toad Hall and d.b.a.), but even so our plan seemed like it was still going to be a lot of work. We raced home for a nap before heading out to The Half-King, White Horse, Chumleys, McSorely's, the Corner Bistro, and finally the Blind Tiger. We hoped that the low elevation, walking distance, and the 6 hours we had available would keep us upright and happy.

So, leaving out all the details, we had a really good time and revisiting all the neat places provided a wonderful backdrop for Laurie and I to reminse about our experiences. Can't believe we're leaving tomorrow . . .