I do enjoy visiting Manhattan. The bustle, the sea of skyscrapers that block the sun, the endless list of things to do to keep the mind occupied. The way people don’t bother me.  But I adore it in the way that I adore art; I respect and admire it without wanting to become it or immerse myself in it permanently.  Sure, I could live there for a while, but the sun would certainly set on my ability to handle it.  It’s why I didn’t move here a few years ago when I had the great job offer.

Maybe it’s too fast for me.  Maybe I don’t enjoy the social scene that much.  Maybe I have a limited appreciation for the features that New Yorkers find valuable (that would be my economist explanation at least).  Or maybe I just prefer cars that stop and let me cross the road to ones that actively try to trample me.  Either way, I enjoy a lot about it and wouldn’t mind spending more time here.

My brother and I took the train in from NJ to midtown Thursday morning after he interviewed in Parsippany.  We’re spending two nights in midtown only a couple blocks from the Empire State Building.

Nikko Japanese Restaurant

Before heading into NY, we had dinner at Nikko Japanese Restaurant. They only had chopsticks, which upset my brother, but I didn’t care because watching him struggle was entertaining.  Watching people become increasingly frustrated is actually one of my favorite things to do.  I had a tofu teriyaki with cucumber sushi rolls.  The tofu was very soft which isn’t really my thing, but the vegetables and sushi was good.

Midtown & Times Square

We checked in around 4 and decided to just start with a walking tour of midtown Manhattan.  Mostly through Times Squares… got to see grown people dressed as puppets and giant, glitzy billboards of guys in fedoras.

The Breslin

Met Amanda out after her class and listened to her brag about her exceptional book binding skills for a couple hours.  Her drink of choice was Bulleit, neat, reminding me why we are friends.

Empire State Building

Pictures of the views from the Empire State Building are a dime a dozen I tell you.  Actually they’re free.  Here’s one at night, and here’s one during the day.  The Disney-esque lines wrap throughout the building on multiple floors telling all about the history and construction, and hundreds of people go through every day and can say they’ve seen the views.

But how many people do you think can say they’ve gone up at 1am when it’s 30 degrees and there’s 0 visibility?

Well, at least 2.

There wasn’t a single other person in there (aside from the security staff) and we walked through the velvet ropes without a single second wait.  It looked like it could take hours to get through there on a clear night.

Once we were up there we were greeted by some spectacular fog (kind of like this).  We could see a little better than that (it was just fog, not rain), but we had the security guards personally tracking our location – “Northwest corner:  clear.”  So that was fun.

I don’t really care about taking pictures, so I didn’t take any, but I’ll try to get better at that.