a few days in NY

New York was fabulous. We arrived on Saturday and went to Salaam Bombay, an Indian restaurant on Greenwich Ave. I must have looked confused, because they kept asking me if I needed help on deciding what to eat, like the poor little white girl who has never eaten ethnic food before. They thought Colette was Indian - India Indian, not Native Indian like she really is. The food was excellent, and there was a live sitar player.

Our hotel was lovely - http://www.hoteldeauville.com/ - the front desk was staffed by a nice guy with (semi-creepy) big blue eyes, and had a hand-crank elevator and purple bathtubs! (the guy said they were chartreuse, but they were really lavender...)

Went to mass at St. Pat's cathedral on Sunday, it was beautiful and smelled like incense. Everyone was dressed in black. The cathedral is huge and reminded me of Europe. It was a little odd attending mass when there were tourists in the church. It was also weird attending mass, since I haven't been to a Catholic mass for years, even though I was raised Catholic. Lately I've been attending Lutheran church with my mom when I'm home, but I don't take communion there, the Catholic-ness in me thinks that it's wrong, since the Catholics don't let non-Catholics take communion.

Walked up 5th Ave, looked in all the bourgeois shops selling ugly $1,000 handbags and past million dollar apartment buildings overlooking Central Park, watching fancy people walking their fancy dogs; ended up at the Met museum. Spent most of our time looking at the Egypt exhibit and the thousands of scarabs and other tiny carvings on display. I remember going to the Met when I was in 4th grade or so - that was the day I found out that I had motion sickness. The only thing I remember about that visit was rushing past the mummies and spending the day in the infirmary. This visit was much better.

Had the best pizza in the world for dinner that night - Delizia's restaurant, on 92nd St. @ 2nd Ave. Sausage, mushroom and onion, of course. Wandered around the city a bit more, then back to our cute little room with the purple bathtub.

Went to the American Girl store on Monday, to get Colette the latest doll and so I could finally see all of the dolls that I wanted when I was younger. Spent the afternoon at NYU, meeting with a stuck up professor (who essentially told me that the lack of diversity in higher education is due to the fact that people of color would rather make money than stay in academia), going to bookshops and peeking in apartment windows around Washington Square Park. Went to Chinatown for dinner, where I ate an ok meal of shrimp and eggplant (that's all it was - shrimp and eggplant) and picked Colette's delicious mango chicken. Saw "House of Flying Daggers" later that evening, the movie is beautiful, but annoying - the girl dies 3 times, and it goes from summertime to blizzard in a 10-minute span. The best part of the movie was when they were throwing bamboo shoots at each other, and they whistled as they flew through the air, and when I started laughing uncontrollably when I really shouldn't have.

Tuesday I finally decided to go to Rutgers, aka the boonies of NJ. Eww - Jersey. When you grow up in New York, you have an innate dislike for Jersey. Even though I've been away from NY for 6 years now, I still don't like Jersey. I tried imagining that I was back in Europe on the train (where do you think I really want to go? this is the second time I've mentioned Europe...now 3rd time...) but the landscape was so gross - industrial waste, big metal things, dinky towns, etc. - that I couldn't. Anyway, Rutgers itself sucks, the campus and the town (New Brunswick) are both in the middle of nowhere, and there is not much of a "town" anywhere. BUT - the psych department is awesome. The focus of the department is social psych, specifically inter-group/inter-racial relations. Which is exactly what I want to do. The woman I met with was fabulous, extremely friendly and casual, as were all of the members of the faculty that I met with. I think it's my dream department. Only problem is, it's in Jersey, and in the middle of nowhere. I'll apply there, but it's gonna be a tough call.

Got back into the city around rush hour and spent WAY too much money at H&M. Had a late dinner at Veselka, a Ukrainian restaurant in the Village. - http://www.veselka.com/ - yum. Beef strogonaf (sp?), Ukrainian beer and 3 desserts. Definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

On Wednesday we went on a tour of some of the best bookstores in the city - Bluestockings - http://www.bluestockings.com/ - coffee, book on the Rwandan genocide and a book of life stories of homeless NY'ers, The Oscar Wilde Bookshop - http://www.oscarwildebooks.com/ - where I got my very own Oscar Wilde action figure and an anthology, and The Strand - http://www.strandbooks.com/home/ - 18 miles of books, I don't even want to say how many books I got there...think Paul's Books in Madison, then think big - like 100 times bigger. The bookshops we visited were excellent, and it gives me an appreciation for the excellent bookstores that we have here in Madison. Both Bluestockings and Oscar's are great, but both Rainbow and Room of One's Own have more space and a larger selection of books. I only wish that we had more time to spend in the bookstores - we practically ran from the Strand to the towncar that took us to the airport.

Flew to Chicago - after being racial profiled (f-in america...) - and ended up getting stuck in Chicago for the night because of thunderstorms - yes, thunderstorms in January. We saw lightning from the plane. I didn't think it was scary at the time, but now that I think about it, an airplane is probably one of the last places you want to be when there is lightning. So, we got stuck in Chicago, stayed in a suite, got ate and drunk at Outback, then got to Madison a full 24 hours after we left the City.

I love New York, and can't wait to go back.