Ingrid and Tony's Travels

A great recommendation by Anthony Harrison saw us wander up to 29th St to check out this independent coffee roaster – from our apartment in west 14th Street. Stumptown originates from Portland but is obviously making a huge name for itself as a great coffee haunt, judging by the numbers of people waiting in line to get their coffee or coffee products.  Well worth the walk.

Great coffee, buzzing with the people and who should walk in? Tobey McGuire of Spider Man and Brothers  fame.

So a few photos from this great little establishment and of course, a sneak shot of Tobey ordering his coffee!

Big day today –  went out for breakfast and passed yet more piles and piles of trash.  Not sure what the yanks are doing with their garbage, but it seems very little.  We pass these piles of garbage everywhere.  The photo in the gallery was just along from our apartment.

Went straight uptown to wrest with my (Ingrid’s) demons by going up the Rockefeller Centre, and failed! Serious meltdown in the lift going up and coming down – it is a dark lift that gets pitch black as it ascends and descends so that you look up and watch where you are going or coming from.  Needless to say my eyes stayed firmly fixed to the floor.

After I survived the anxiety attack, we walked around uptown, then around Times Square and did some shopping for us and others, had an early dinner in yet another great Italian restaurant before going to a fabulous play on Broadway starring Henry Winkler – The Fonz – and Alicia Silverstone.  It’s called The Performers and revolves around porn actors. Great script, excellent acting, pretty blue, but absolutely hilarious!

Our picture story:

Another great find just down the road from us is Buddakan. Pretty extraordinary actually. The food here is Asian fusion and the restaurant is modern and chic. Quite an experience and still priced reasonably. If you are in NY, this is a ‘must’ experience at 75 9th Avenue.

These are just three of our six courses – photos not good because the restaurant is very dark which puts a pall over the colours. But you may get an idea and you have to trust us when we say that this is ‘seriously good’ eating.

Went to the Institute of Culinary  Education today to do our cooking class and while it was a great experience, perhaps a little more order to things was needed.

Our head chef went through the recipes we were to cook: bibb lettuce salad with warm cider vinaigrette and Asian pears, cedar plank salmon with blood orange glaze accompanied by asparagus, peas and fresh basil in a butter sauce, served with herbed quinoa. The whole lot was finished off with a Greek yoghurt panna cotta with strawberries soaked in a balsamic reduction.

We then set about doing our mis-en-place (our prep work) before starting the dessert  as it needed to set.  It all sounded good in practice but once everyone began, it was sheer pandemonium.  Trying to find the fresh herbs, the olive oil, the red wine vinegar, even some of the cooking implements was just the start – everyone just took all the ingredients and grabbed cooking utensils keeping them on their work benches (or hiding them so we couldn’t find them – even chef had a struggle locating some of the vital elements for cooking).  So it was the survival of the fittest and even though we were in fighting mode, the young New York women who have the ability to quadruple task – prepare, cook, talk and check their iPhones throughout, certainly came out best. They were sitting down and sms’ing while we more measured folk were still getting our menu finalised to eat (and cleaning up).

At the end of the day it tasted great even though I (Ingrid) could teach them a thing or two about tidiness and a sense of order.

The concept is a good one – perhaps we had a less than organised chef who really needed to raise her voice a few times to get people back on track.

After three hours of prepping, cooking, watching the ovens, cleaning our bench tops and then eating, we were well and truly ready to go home!

Check out our  culinary skills.

We have found a great restaurant, virtually across the road, called Crispo serving authentic Italian cuisine and which is in the NY top restaurant guide –  it certainly doesn’t disappoint.  We went on the night it snowed because of convenience and we decided to go again tonight because the menu is so superb.

After a pretty amazing Italian salad with a red wine dressing, I had a crispy duck done in a pomegranate reduction and Tony had a steak, medium rare, both cooked to perfection.

There are restaurants all around us and all top quality with great ratings on Open Table (which has been a godsend for reviews and bookings).  Tomorrow, we are trying Anthony’s suggestion, a superior Japanese restaurant, Buddakan NY, which again is just along the road from us and again thanks to Open Table for getting us in.  Because of its popularity Buddakan was booked out tonight.

Tomorrow is our culinary class at the Institute of Culinary Education, so expect some ‘interesting’ pics!

Our train trip was stress-free.  Who knows, I (Ingrid) may be the new convert to this type of travel?  Union Station in Washington DC is quite beautiful however unfortunately there was some refurbishment being undertaken so we couldn’t really show it off in pictures as we would have liked. Here are a few for you to check out. And our new header pic shows the type of food available in front of just about every major tourist spot. This, and about three other similar vans, was outside the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Healthy as!

Sadly, we are now on the train after a fantastic but short visit to Washington DC.  This is a truly amazing city and we were fortunate to see as much as we did in such a short period of time. Food here is fabulous.  Not the stereotypical junk food you expect in the US.  We found great restaurants, fresh food (and greens) and at ridiculously cheap prices.

We (Tony) made some great choices, and top of the list was getting a train in and out.  This cut travelling time down enormously ie not having to get to an airport, go through massive security and then wait in anticipation, for  connections.  Within 10-15 minutes of leaving our accommodation both in NYC and in Washington we were in both Penn and Union stations ready for departure – and the trains run on time! As some would know I have not been a big fan of train travel but this trip was easy primarily because we only took what we needed for a couple of days and left the rest in the apartment.  Handling large amounts of luggage is a different matter. A couple of photos of Union Station  come in the next blog – it is a fantastic station in its own right and while not as large as Grand Central Station in NY, is still quite beautiful.

The other great decision we made was to hire a driver to see the monuments.  This might sound excessive but it was a practical way of getting to where we wanted to go in the shortest amount of time.  All of the tour buses go everywhere – whether you want to or not.  And then you have to battle crowds of people getting in and out of the major tourist spots.  Our drive was comfortable and we saw what we wanted to see, and in our time!

Big pluses.

Today was museum day.  We checked out The Smithsonian Institute’s National Air and Space Museum which maintains the largest collection of historic air and spacecraft in the world. It is also a centre for research into the history, science, and technology of aviation and space flight, as well as planetary science and terrestrial geology and geophysics. Heavy stuff.

We then headed to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History which was opened in 1910, and was among the first Smithsonian buildings constructed exclusively to house the national collections and research facilities. Plenty to see and plenty of people on a Saturday so hard to take photos.

Then for a totally different experience we went back to George Town to Georgetown Cupcake co-founded by  sisters Katherine Kallinis Berman and Sophie Kallinis LaMontagne. They have a hit TV series DC Cupcakes and have featured in Cupcake Wars.  Their cupcakes are … well …. amazing! The line up of people outside their very small store  demonstrates how successful they have become.

Thanks to Joseph our limo driver who took us around all of these fantastic memorials.  We would not have been able to do it without him.  There’s a lot of walking, which we did (our personal trainer would be proud) but to get from one site to another is massive –  we did it in about six hours.  Would have taken us two days which we don’t have.  Tomorrow the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum,  The Newseum — a 25,0000-square-foot museum of news on Pennsylvania Ave and then to Washington DC Cupcakes  in George Town, just down the road from us.  Yep, you heard it, they’re pretty famous and if you watch Cupcake Wars (as Ingrid does)  they are the numero uno of cupcake makers (and Felicity wants us to bring some home)!

The ‘W’ in Washington DC is for Wow.  This is such a magnificent city and we were so lucky to see the monuments and memorials we set out to see on such a gloriously sunny day. We decided to hire a car and driver and we managed to get around this vast expanse without too much hassle. We went to Capitol Hill and learnt all about Congress – the House of Representatives and the Senate, and boy are they proud of their democratic history and legislative system.  Almost made us want to renounce our Aussie citizenship.  Then onto the Jefferson Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr Memorial (newly-built), the World War II Memorial and then walked up the reflecting pool to the Lincoln Memorial  (not in the reflecting pool like Forrest Gump). Final stop was Arlington National Cemetery where we went to the grave sites of JFK and Robert Kennedy, and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  Lucky to witness a 19-gun salute for the visit to the Tomb of the Singaporean President even though we thought the salute was for us! ‘Dang’, as Forrest would say.

Here are some pics …