New York City

As part of a large project to relocate part of DC Entertainment to Burbank, a group of us are travelling to DC's offices in New York to conduct programming interviews. I wasn't about to let a trip to NY pass without some personal time, so I tagged on a weekend before and a Saturday after the official business.

I arrived on Friday, coincidentally around the same time that Wilson and Ming were returning from a trip to China to show off their 5 month old daughter Penelope to Ming's family. I had a set of keys to their coop in Chelsea so I was waiting for them when they got in. We ordered in Chinese take out and I got to meet Penelope who is just adorable, and catch up with Wilson and Ming.

On Saturday, I headed to the West Village to a restaurant called 'ino that was recommended to me by a friend who had just been to the city. I had a delicious sausage, egg and fontina panino washed down with capuccino.

After brunch, I walked east towards Washington Square Park, which was packed with people since it was a beautiful warm fall day. There were all kinds of performers in the park including an a capella quartet, a violinist standing in the middle of the dry fountain, a piano player with her instrument on rolling carts and with the case open to show the hammers and strings, and a trumpet player among the trees. An artist was painting with coloured sand poured onto the pavement with his hand.

From the park, I headed north to the Morgan Library. Although the permanent collection was closed for renovation, they had a couple of wonderful shows. The first was a small show of Degas drawings and sketches, including several studies made for paintings. The subjects included dancers, horses and people, and several of the drawings included water colour. The second show was of black and white Lichtensteins. I'd only ever seen his full colour works, which look like they are machine printed. The black and whites are mostly using graphite, pencil and other similar materials. They also show how he tried various methods to create the look of the Benday dots that are his trademark. Not all the techniques worked, but you can see smudges and other mistakes. The cartoonish quality of the drawings are somehow transformed by the lack of colour. These two shows made me appreciate the way that drawings and use of pencil and graphite really can reveal an artist at work. The third show at the Morgan was of Mark Twain documents, which were interesting historically, but although the writings are there for you to read, I ended up mostly reading the captions, which somehow made me feel like I was reading a history book.

From the Morgan I headed back to 5th Avenue and up to Rockefeller Center. The skating rink was in operation, and the area was packed with people. A newly married couple were getting their picture taken in front of the sign. After hanging out with the crowds for a bit, I walked over to 6th Ave. for the long walk back to Chelsea.

For dinner, Wilson suggested checking out Eataly, which is a new Italian marketplace and restaurant complex by Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich. The place was packed with lines everywhere. It's divided into sections like meats, fish, pastas, cheeses, and each section has its own restaurant. The seafood restaurant seemed to have the most reasonable wait time, so we put our names in. Half hour later, we got our table. We started with the crudo plate, which is basically Italian sashimi. The fish being offered were fluke, skipjack and sea trout and I thought the skipjack was incredibly tasty. I'm not a huge raw fish fan but these pieces were so fresh you could practically taste the ocean in them. My entree was a roasted bronzino. The fish came whole with the skin just opened up in the middle. Again, unbelievably fresh and delicious for a very simply prepared dish. Dessert for me was pistachio and hazelnut gelato, again amazingly good, strong nut flavours and wonderfully creamy. The lines here would be daunting for a regular visit (and the market prices are very high) but this was a wonderfully delicious and unique dining experience.