WhatISee

A friend dragged us here for super cheap Japanese food on St Marks place. It was certainly an experience. By the time we left, there was a huge line out the door.

I havent seen one of these in a while. Guess they are a repeat offender.

They're making a reasonable amount of progress

The city organizes this tree climber school since so many of their trees need work, far away from anywhere the cherry pickers can get to.

I didnt even know this flowered

Every time I come to this theatre, I cringe at the wasted space. It reminds me of the abandoned mall in Miami

I've been biking a lot recently and consequently, am noticing the different bike parking lots like this one

and this one. Nice. I hope more places put them in.

He was very nice, but could not stop talking about himself, the books he's written, the film he's in, the way he decorated his cab, or the various news articles about him. I've had other conversational drivers, who said something interesting and waited to see if there would be a good conversation. This guy did not give that chance a possibility, he just kept talking. Luckily, it was a relatively short ride.

I had no idea that as they finished the work on the 10th Avenue side of the General Theological Seminary that the 9th Avenue building would be ripped down. It looks like they're hoping someone will develop it.

The Shake Shack and Madison Square have different artists put out work each year. This particular video piece (which is already gone) follows on last years William Wegman videos.

The artists took the various daily newspapers and put video sequences over them. They were fun to look at for a few min, but quickly became repetitious.

This place has been closed for a while and yet, is still paying the electric bill. Why?

What caught my eye was the guy in the Con Ed truck, looking like he was passed out. Why didnt he get in the cab of the tow truck?

Afterwards, the "Tow Emergency" angle became my favorite part of this photo

Seen at the airport, an ipod dispenser. Unfortunately, there's no music on these, so I'm not sure how many are actually going to sell.

This is a welcome improvement, especially when landing. It's a live camera view from the tail of the airplane.

Madrid airport

Our first stop in Spain was Granada. This is a view looking down from the Alhambra.

While this is from the Alcazar.

The Alhambra was high on my list of places to visit, so when the Spain trip planning started, I knew it was my chance.

Unfortunately, even planning a month ahead of time, it's almost impossible to get a ticket to visit. They recommend two months if you have a particular day in mind. Looking into it, the other choice is to go with Grana vision on an organized tour. It's 50 euros each, but they give you the ride up the hill from your hotel and a tour guide. If you want to get in, on short notice, you'll wind up giving them a call. Their tour starts at the justice gate above.

Similar to the Patio of the Myrtles, this is the Palace in the Generalife gardens.

Looking over the Palace gardens

Looking back at the Alhambra through the arches

and over the shaped trees

The famous water staircase

The famous lion court

unfortunately undergoing renovation. It's a lot different looking in person than the many many photos I've seen before. Still beautiful though.

The entrance

One of the courtyards

A garden arch towards the end of the tour

A patterned door

Two views, looking at each other. Above, towards Generaliffe. Below, towards the Nazaries Palace

Another back and forth, this time inside the Nazaries Palace in the Court of the Myrtles

The intricacy and delicateness of the carvings that covered the walls and ceilings of the Nazaries Palace was just amazing. We spent a long time examining each room.

We've visited Sunnyside, the home of Washington Irving and certainly read many of his stories about upstate New York and the Hudson Valley. I never knew he had such a connection to Spain, and in particular, the Alhambra. When he visited, it was mostly abandoned and the home of gypsies.

He wrote the Tales of the Alhambra which helped to draw attention to this amazing spot.

PS: If you visit, you dont need to buy the book, it's in the public domain and available widely.

[We interrupt the Spanish Tour with a new restaurant in our back yard]

We visited the highly publicized 5 Napkin Burger in our home neighborhood of Hells Kitchen earlier tonight. It's a second restaurant from the owner of Marseille next door and it replace the never too successful Jezebel.

Unfortunately, they're still working out some kinks in their operations. We waited for over 45 minutes to be seated though we were told 15-20. When we were finally told by the host that we were the next party to be seated, a different manager then sat two other two tops in front of us. I wandered over to the host to ask what was going on and even though I had been in the same seat at the bar for so long, the manager said he had sent out a search party and they had not been able to find us. The host just looked embarrassed.

At this point, we were hungry, so when the waiter eventually showed up, we ordered everything right away. And then we waited another 40 minutes for our food to arrive. We finished up in a short time and ... waited for the check, finally having to flag down a manager to get it.

Interestingly, while waiting, I noticed Adam Kuban show up. He was smarter than we were and ate at the bar. I'm curious what he thought, and even more curious that no one working at a hamburger place knew who he was.

So, onto the burger. Even though I asked for something between Medium Rare (their default) and Medium, mine was definitely on the other side of medium rare. The meat was good and the bun was tasty. It was a larger burger than I've become used to, but it had a good consistency. I especially liked that they kept the fries (which were good) separate.

Overall first impressions: It's got potential if it can work out it's kinks. It's not cheap ($4 for an small glass of iced tea, $15 for the burger) but the food was pretty good. Their biggest weakness is their service, which while good intentioned and friendly, left us waiting for a long long time. It's not good when you make the Shake Shack line look speedy.

After we left the Nazaries, we relaxed in the Partal gardens for a while until we finally got hungry enough to wander downhill again.

We now leave the Alhambra...

This is a former silk market, and it's full of narrow passageways all eager to sell the tourists something.

The cathedral in Grenada is just amazing.

Beautiful and overwhelming, the scale is staggering.

Then you look up and see that each of the vaults are different

Even the stained glass is overwhelming

On a sunny Saturday afternoon, we could not help but notice the larger number of what could only be drinking teams, wandering around Grenada. Each group of men (and they were all men) wore soccer type or tshirts with a team name and their name on it. Then one guy, wore something completely different, I guess like a soccer goalie.

This was one team, but there were a *lot* of them and we saw them all afternoon.

As far as I can tell, if you liked this particular bullfight on May 19th, 2008, you might be interested in some beef from that particular bull.