NYC Day 1

We flew JetBlue, so we got to watch President Obama's Health Care Reform Summit. A surprising number of our fellow passengers were doing the same.

old JFK

A familiar face just off the F train in the East Village. Hey Chicagoans. . . is this or is this not Uncle Fun?

I want this chair. . . but the nice people at the Cooper Square Hotel wouldn't let us have it. Whatever.

View from our hotel room on day 1.
(In successive posts, you'll see that once the blizzard clears this view gets decidedly more spectacular.)
Thanks to MandC, I think we lucked into a hotel that would ordinarily be a bit above D's and my pay grade. We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful or convenient location for exploring the city. And situated right next to Cooper Union, I felt right at home. . . almost like I'd never left Columbia's campus.

Dan checks out our crazy shower stall.

After slogging through the slush and puddles of the start of the blizzard with suitcases in tow, we only really had the energy to walk a short way to the Strand and then to hunt down a decent sushi dinner.

Something so pretty and filled with promise, these rows and rows of stacks of books. If there's something after life, I hope there are a few rooms that look like this.

Dinner. I'm not sure it was better than sushi in Chicago, but we were so cold and wet and hungry that it was pretty darn good.

I just liked the wrought iron on this door. This is what all security measures should look like.

Crazy red cross a block up from the hotel. I can imagine it being comforting. . . like a beacon in all of that cold for believers.

Gah! Saw this shop after it was closed and I wanted to check it out the next day, but we had so much going on that I forgot about it until I unloaded my pictures after the trip was over. Poo.

Oldest pub in America? That's what they say. . . We didn't go in, but the color of the facade and the light on the street looked like one of Hopper's paintings of city night scenes.