Bites of The Big Apple

We just finished a weekend tour of New York City! Although, we didn't do the normal tourist fare - in fact, we didn't go inside a single famous landmark (well, we did stop into Tiffany's for a peek) although we did walk past and photograph most.

Our trip involved three key elements: eating, walking and resting. Here's the recap:

Jason was already in town for a business trip, so I met up with him on Friday after my first Amtrak Acela ride! It's much more comfortable and low-key than flying. I arrived at Penn Station next to Madison Square Garden and navigated my way via the subway to our hotel just south of Central Park.

Another first is that I ate "street food." Jason had a lunch meeting with clients, so I got a falafel pita from the street cart outside the hotel. It was very tasty. We have mostly hot dogs and a few burrito carts here in D.C., but I've never eaten at them.

Our first adventure in New York was a stroll through Central Park.

Friday's dinner was at Tom Colicchio's craftsteak. He is the head judge on Bravo's Top Chef. We met up with friends Danielle and Chad (formerly of KC, now of NYC). They're doing the same two-year program we are - only in our World Financial Center office. Everything at craftsteak was served on the side with the idea of sharing. The best appetizer was a melt-in-your mouth tuna tartare. The steaks were good and came with four sauces on the side for dipping - horseradish, chimichurra, cilantro-vinagrette and bearnaise. For dessert I had a strawberry shortcake "soup." It was a biscuit and a dollup of ice cream in a bowl that the waiter poured a thin strawberry puree over.

Saturday we slept in before heading down to the World Trade Center site via the subway. We walked all around in Lower Manhattan (I may make a second post with some pictures soon) and then took the train back up to Midtown. We got off at Grand Central Station and walked through Bryant Park, Times Square and Rockefeller Center. After Times Square, I was so exhausted that I stopped taking photos (and it started raining right after my video).

Dinner on Saturday night was at the China Grill - again, with dishes designed to share. We had a fabulous mixed green salad with tempura goat cheese. But, what's not to love about warm, fried cheese?! Another highlight was the trio of creme brulee - vanilla (the best), ginger, and chocolate-chai.

Sunday was another morning to sleep in as we battled a carb coma from the day before. Our first appointment of the day was with Bobby Flay at Mesa Grill for brunch. Unfortunately, Bobby wasn't around, but his team served up an excellent spicy scrambled eggs for me (with jalapenos, green onions, and more goat cheese) and a lovely mahi-mahi for Jason. Afterwards, we really needed some exercise, so we started the walk back uptown. More than an hour later (although we made several stops to watch the Pride Parade down Fifth Avenue), we had made it from 15th Street to 54th Street - and just in time! Another downpour blew in about 10 minutes after we got to our hotel. We had considered a trip back up to Central Park for a museum, but the storm discouraged us and we watched golf on TV instead.

Our last supper - yet another family-style meal - was at Carmine's in Times Square. This time it was an Italian feast with enough salad and pasta for a family of 8. We couldn't decide on what to order, so we got the Four Pasta Special: ravioli with pesto sauce, ziti bolognese, manicotti and vegetable lasagna. We hated for so much food to go to waste, but we were headed home and couldn't take any leftovers.

Now that we're home, we're having salads for the rest of the week!

Internal Revenue Service

I went over to the IRS today to see if I could convince them to cut my stimulus check any quicker. . . .

Actually, I got a short tour from a friend who works as a tax lawyer in the Office of Chief Counsel. The exterior is pretty dramatic, but the inside looks a lot like a big high school built in the 50's or 60's - something like a Shawnee Mission East.

The tip you can see over the roof is the Old Post Office tower - not the Washington Monument.

Wikipedia provided the picture and the following facts:

• This building on the National Mall (1111 Constitution Ave) is the main headquarters building for the IRS.
• Over 2,000 employees are located in this building - the basement of which was flooded up to 20 feet deep in summer 2006, causing the temporary relocation of all the employees.

Happy (Late) Father's Day

I did get to spend Father's Day with my dad, but we didn't take any pictures. Instead, I am posting a picture from Father's Day 2001 - the day we got Rachel.

We were newlyweds with one dog already (Jason's childhood dog, Daisy). Daisy lived most of her 16-plus years in the pre-digital camera age, but I did find this picture from a series that we took her last weekend with us in March 2003. No offense to my childhood dog, Pooter, but Daisy may have been my first real dog love.

Kansas City Live!

My travels last week took me to Dallas for a week of tax technical training. Nothing much to report about Dallas. It was hot outside and cold in the conference center. Lots of food and little exercise.

However, I had a very exciting weekend before I arrived in Dallas via a detour through Kansas City. In addition to a great time catching up with friends and a lovely lunch with my parents, I finally got to see the Kansas City Live/Power&Light District/Sprint Center up-close. Very impressive! I was especially impressed when rain rolled in while we were dining outside at the Maker's Mark restaurant and we didn't get wet! The storm was really loud, but the "ceiling" kept us dry.

Impact Day

Deloitte's annual Impact Day was held last Friday. It's an opportunity for employees nationwide to participate in local community service projects. This year I volunteered to teach Junior Achievement to 6th graders at an elementary school in Alexandria, VA. Here's our group of worn out volunteers at the end of the day. It was tiring, but incredibly rewarding! The 2nd graders made placemats for us to use at lunch, and we all got to take one home. You can see several of those in this picture.

When Storms are Pretty

We've had severe storms over the past few weeks and record-setting amounts of rain throughout May. But, sometimes the sinister-looking clouds make for a dramatic picture. This was one I took from the FDR Memorial last weekend. We cut our trip that day a little short, since we still had over an hour of biking to get home. The rain did not pour on us this day (unlike the previous day at the park). We had a few sprinkles in the last 10 minutes of our ride, but that was it.

Corcoran Gallery and Decatur House

A heat wave swept into Washington this weekend, so I took full-advantage of it. I met up with my friend Darcy on Saturday afternoon and we toured through two air-conditioned museums!

Our first stop was the Corcoran Gallery of Art which is Washington's largest nonfederal art museum. There is also a four-year art college housed in the museum. They have a large variety of types of artwork in their permanent collection which seems to be rotated in and out based on the special exhibits being shown.

Decatur House Exterior

Our second stop was the beautiful Decatur House - the first (1819) and last (1956) private residence on Lafayette Square. The White House is now the only residence on the square. The home changed owners several times and is currently undergoing a restoration which combines the original features built for naval hero Stephen Decatur with parquet flooring that the Beales family had done in the late 1800's.

Dining room floor with the state seal of California inlayed. Darcy, a California native, quickly recognized the seal!

919 Miles

That's how many miles my car has been driven in the past 53 weeks. To put it in perspective, that's an average of 17 miles per week. At this rate it will take me 4,447 weeks (85 years?!) to reach 100,000 miles on this car. The math that I'm not going to do is how much each one of those miles cost me with insurance, taxes and tags!

I realized today that I do miss driving a car regularly -- well, I miss listening to the radio, mostly. And singing to the songs!

First Harvest

Our garden has been thriving in its one week on our balcony. I'm sure it's been due to the beautiful weather and the protective German Shepherd guarding her flock of herbs.

We picked leaves of basil to add to a homemade spaghetti sauce, and it was delicious! I'm thinking Mexican food for this weekend to use the cilantro. We also have one pepper that's doing really well. But, I'm not sure how big it's supposed to get.

Our Anniversary!

It's already been 7 years since my dad walked me down the long aisle at beautiful St. Michael's to meet Jason! One of my favorite memories was the giant double rainbow that came out on Friday evening on our way to the rehearsal dinner. It had rained all day Friday, but the rain stopped about 7 p.m. and it didn't start again until early Sunday morning. So all day Saturday the weather was perfect! Here are the only two digital pictures that I had on my computer from of our wedding.

Courtney, Lisa, Beth and Jana show off the muscles in a pre-wedding pic.

Ryan, Lisa and Jason listening to Keith's toast before the cake-cutting. Three of the four cakes were a layer of chocolate-hazelnut cake and a layer of vanilla cake divided by frosting. One of the cakes was banana. All were delicious!

FDR Memorial

On Sunday with the threat of rain storms passed, we took our second metro ride with bikes to Arlington Cemetery. We toured Arlington House and saw the awesome view across to Washington. I've posted some new pictures in the original Arlington Cemetery and Mount Vernon Trail post.

FDR and Fala

Then we headed across the Memorial Bridge to the Tidal Basin where we toured the Franklin D. Roosevelt Memorial. It's massive! There is a section for each of his four terms. Several of his most famous quotes are carved into the stone walls. The most surprising part was the presence of various waterfalls tumbling over the granite.

This was my favorite art installation:

Playing in the Rain

We took Rachel to the park on Saturday afternoon. Here is a short video of her displaying her agility skills.

We were considering a bike ride for ourselves, but the radar didn't look promising. Sure enough, the skies darkened, the wind picked up and the rain started pouring. Of course, this was when we were a 30 minute walk from the entrance to the park! We ran back to the car, but were still drenched. Here's Rachel getting the back seat of the car wet and furry. You can sort of see the storm out the back window.

Here's a video of the storm taken once we were home and in dry clothes. Be sure to note the thunder and lightning!