Wilton in New York

Hello!!!!!!! Finally I have sorted out how to get some decent internet access...get up early!!!!!

Just saw that I have had 66 view on this blog...now I know full well that 66 individuals have not looked, so some of you are fully keen!!!! I really hope this is of some interest...as I said - I want to have the same number of friends when I get home!!!

Ok!! So here we go – day one, and a little bit from the 5th.

Arrive late, blah blah. Got to room at 8:45pm…hmmm – was going to go through my room step by step, outlining the fluffy bathrobe, comfortable bed and spacious bathroom – but instead I will tell you that the room is…bearable. Its pretty bad, but I am choosing not to think about it too much (or look too closely at ANYTHING!!). The one thing I will say though – they are the forerunners in ensuring plastic shower curtains will remain around for generations to come (holy crap – the thing sticks to me every time I shower…so so gross…

Lets move on!

Woke up early this morning after hearing a number of peoples conversation in the hall, and got on with things.

SoHo, Chinatown & Little Italy walking tour. This was really interesting – but there was so much information that I think I retained about 4%.

Learned that many of then suburb names in New York are the creation of lazy developers.

SoHo: SOuth of Houston Street (as in South of Houston St)
NoHo: NOrth of Houston (yeah, you’re good at this now!!)
Tribeca: the TRIangle BElow CAnal Street
Nolita: NOrth of Little ITAly

SoHo was inhabited by artists in the 60’s & 70’s, then came the artist’s friends – the rock stars, then the fashion designers and then the rich people – and the process of gentrification is complete. The artist cant afford to live there, so they move out. The rock stars are too embarrassed to be seen hanging out with the gentrified, so they follow the artists and finally the designers have lost their inspiration so…wait – actually quite a few of them stayed…creating the Garment District. But for the sake of keeping my story consistent (never let the truth get in the way of a good story ay Robert!!!) – some of them move on and all the while the prices continue to rise and as I said – gentrification complete.

The process (sans the designers) has been repeated in a number of different suburbs, most recently Williamsburg – the Hipster Capital of the world.

Now they are in Bushwick where apparently there is amazing graffiti.

We walked past the Dominique Ansel Bakery where the Cronut was invented. Aparently they trademarked the name (!!) and there was a 30 minute line to get one… well you could get 4, but no more. Rules are: no more than 4 per person and only 500 are baked each day. Seriously – its like buying beer at the cricket????

It is also the home of the building that houses the first commercial elevator (see photo) probably not that interesting, but the guide was quite enthusiastic so I took a picture.

This is the building where Heath Ledgers apartment is on sale for $17 million. Needless to say – this is the apartment where he died.

This building (below) was the New York PoliceDepartment up until the 80s. Anyway – it is now a residential building and the dome at the top is one residence. I have decided that I need to live there, so I have advertised all of your (yes, everyone who is reading this) kidneys on ebay, then I think I will be about a quarter of the way there!

It is also where Twelve Angry Men was filmed – great movie!

Next was Little Italy – which has become littler and littler. Most of the Italians have moved to New Jersey or The Bronx.

Chinatown – just like every other one only crazy busy because it was Sunday so Yum Cha was on everywhere!

I ended up eating at Nom Wah which is the oldest dumpling house is New York, in business since 1920. There was literally one seat left at the tiny bar, so I squashed in between 2 couples and ate shrimp and vegetable dumplings. YUMMY.

I also learned a valuable lesson – make sure you put your money under the bill, otherwise they think it’s a tip…which would have been twice the price of my meal…luckily, after a quick consultation between them, looking back at a smiling me, they realized I had no idea what I was doing and gave me the change.

Had to buy some more shoes to give my poor heals a break – and then it was time for Night Court!!!

Night Court was brilliant. Well, bits were brilliant. It looks just like the set for Night Court (the tv show) except the celling here were higher. The cases up were all from yesterday (5^th of July) and ranged from driving without a license, to DUI, to “The defendant stated that he was chased and attacked with a machete”!!

The weird bit, was that there were a bunch of people (working) in the room doing all sorts of stuff. I couldn’t work out why half of them were there.

And the thing I thought was a bit…well…off really – was that they were all having a joke together between cases. Judge included. And its not like the next defendant was out the back or anything – they were all in the room…I just felt like if I was one of the defendants I would have thought none of them really gave a shit about my case. So that was sad.

But over all I really loved it – honestly they all looked like they could have been on tv!!!

I then walked down to the South Street Sea Port. This looked brilliant and I would have loved to stay and had dinner, but its really busy and trying to get and drink and meal and a seat on your own looked like more effort than I was willing to give tonight! I may try again tonight (Monday) to see if there are fewer people...even as I type that I am thinking I am an idiot!!!