cheezepie.com

That’s right folks.

cheezepie.com/blog is now no longer living. It is dead. It is a blog no more. It is a deceased parrot, sorry blog.

I’m finally biting the bullet and killing this blog off. I’ll leave everything up here for a while to make sure all those links around the place that lead here still work, but no more updates will ever appear here and at some point soonish I’ll pull it all down.

All is not lost though, I’m still going to blog, only from now on in a brand spanking new location over at cheezepie.com (OK, so it’s not exactly brand spanking new, but I’ve not blogged there before…)

If you’re one of the three people that has subscribed to my feed, please kill it and come and subscribe to the new feed.

If you’ve bookmarked this page, delete it and add the new, fresh URL to your list.

All that’s left to say is thanks for making the journey fun. Come and join me on the new trip over at cheezepie.com

I’m rubbish at this whole blogging thing lately.

I’ve not had, nor tried to find the time to sit down, think or write about anything here for months.

This is a reflection of where my priorities have been for the past few months as I moved into a flat in London with my girlfriend, started a new job for a “global management consultancy” and generally have been having a great time away from the web.

It’s been nice to have a break (not that I’ve ever been a major hardcore blogger) from thinking about this site.

But now I’m thinking again. Things are settling down in work and in life generally. I have ideas about things I could write about.

I have ideas about things I’m doing in work. I have opinions and observations about the things I’m doing outside of work.

I have that nagging itch to start writing again. Only this time, properly. This time I’m going to do it right. This time things will be different.

So with that in mind, I’m closing down this version of cheezepie.com.

I’m extending my break until the first of January 2006. Giving myself enough time (I hope) to get all the ideas sorted into more than just abstract thoughts.

Expect a new look and feel. A new focus on specific topics, and (reflecting my entry into the corporate World) a new way of separating my personal and “professional” lives.

After buying our 48 hour sighting seeing pass the previous day, on our third day in New York City we decided to take advantage of the Northern tour and see some sights while catching a ride to the Guggenheim.

The northern tour takes you up the West side of Central Park, stopping at Strawberry Fields and Grants tomb. It then heads up through Harlem and back down the East side of the Park along Museum Mile.

Strawberry Fields is a memorial to John Lennon in Central Park. The Dakota building (where he was shot) is just over the road from the memorial. The memorial centrepiece is a circular mosaic of the word Imagine. The mosaic is in the middle of the path (and was fenced off the day we were there), under the dappled shade provided by the surrounding trees. Around the tiled word there are several benches. As well as the 7 or 8 people from our bus tour (the morning tours are always quieter, with plenty of seats.) there were about 20-30 other tourists and visitors who had come to see the memorial.

One woman sitting with her dog was explaining that a ring of flowers laid out in the shape of the CND logo, had been arranged by her husband. Apparently he visits the site every day and lays out a ring of flowers in memory of the singer / songwriter. It seems there were quite a few people who go on a daily pilgrimage to the site to remember John Lennon and his life.

We had fifteen minutes at Strawberry Fields before we got back onto the bus and headed to Grants Tomb.

This is an incredibly impressive building that very few people I’ve spoken to (even those that have lived in New York) know anything about. Our guide did try to explain the history of the place and the story of Grant, but I think she was new to the job and was struggling to explain things (didn’t help that her English wasn’t 100%, still it was better than my Spanish!). I did manage to grasp that Grant was a General during the Civil War. You can read more about the memorial and the man at www.nps.gov/gegr/.

After looking round the memorial we came outside to find that there had been a plane flying around writing some messages in the sky. We were too late to read what they said, but the aftermath of the message did make for this interesting photo: Holy message?

Continuing on our tour took us through Harlem. Often talked about as a place to avoid if you’re a tourist, I personally think the place looked really interesting. Extremely different from the other parts of Manhattan that we’d seen, the streets looked much more vibrant and interesting than much of the mundane high streets that we’d been walking around on previous days. Again, the tour guide wasn’t as good as the guy we’d had the previous day on the night tour, and I think she let the tour down slightly. We didn’t really learn much about the place, the history or the people.

Having said that, she was kind enough to persuade our driver to let us off the bus at the Guggenheim museum (not a regular stop) to save us walking from the official stop.

Nerys had really wanted to visit the museum even before we’d left Britain, and I have to admit that I was really looking forward to seeing the building in person.

The building itself didn’t disappoint. It’s an incredible piece of architecture, both inside and out. The ring like outside is replicated inside, with a long coiled ramp that takes you all the way from the ground floor to the top floor (there is a lift or “elevator” too for those who don’t fancy the walk). We took the elevator to the top and worked our way down.

Unfortunately, the art work that the magnificent building housed was not as impressive as it’s home. While it was interesting, most of it was by the same artist (I forget her name) and not particularly well organised (in our opinion).

For the both of us the displays in the Metropolitan Museum had been much more enjoyable. Only our opinion though.

I’d still recommend visiting the Guggenheim, purely to see the building.

After the museum we caught the next tour bus back to Times Square and walked back to our hotel to plan our evening out.

We decided to head down to Little Italy for dinner, and Nerys found a couple of recommendations for places to eat in our trusty guidebook.

We took the subway (our first time) down the Little Italy that evening and wondered around the surrounding streets looking for the strip with all the restaurants. On our way we saw our one and only proper New York City taxi. I was really disappointed that there weren’t more of these around.

After a nice stroll around we found the restaurant in our book. Da Nico. A popular place, we had to queue outside for about half an hour to get a table for two. The good news is that they let you jump the queue if they have a table that is suitable and no one in front will fit on it (eg they have a table for two, and all the groups in front of you are three or more).

The restaurant itself looks deceptively small from the outside. There are a few tables on the “sidewalk”, then inside there aren’t that many more, but the building goes back a long way and has a walled garden out the back that has enough room for roughly 100 people.

The food was fantastic, reasonably priced and came in huge quantities. I now understand why there are so many “large” Americans. I have a large appetite by British standards, but by the time we’d got through our seafood-platter-for-two-starter, I could only manage about a third of my massive main-course, and Nerys couldn’t finish all of her smaller meal either.

It was a shame, because the food really was good, I just couldn’t physically fit any more in me. Worryingly they had a special option on the menu for an extra large pasta dish, one that came with a special napkin for tucking into your collar while eating. A napkin that both advertised and celebrated your ability to consume such large quantities of food.

There were three guys there that night eating this dish. Each of them made the Stay Puff Marshmallow man from Ghostbusters look small! Each to their own I suppose.

After our meal, we decided that we needed to walk it off rather than take the subway back, and the decision really paid off.

As we wondered back through Washington square we found a whole host of different performers singing, playing instruments and doing stand up routines. There was something really cool about standing next to a large, atmospherically lit fountain surrounded by some really good musicians and performers doing their thing at night in this public place.

One group that attracted our attention were sitting under a tree having a bit of a jamming session. Their music was cool, their style their own, and (most entertainingly) they were joined by some old lady who couldn’t help but dance to their beat.

It was definitely one of those moments that you can’t recreate, will never read about in any guide books, and will always be a special memory that we can both share and smile at while talking about it in years to come.

I even managed to catch a little of the ladies dancing in this short video: Shake It Lady (it’s a MOV file and may take some time to load…I’m open to suggestions of how to make it smaller)