A week in The Big Apple

Quick Tips:

Look into pre-booking show tickets for the David Letterman and Regis and Kelly shows - this way you are almost guaranteed a seat. Set aside a day for shopping, and a day for museums and culture. It's hard to do both in one day. If you are there for several days, rotate these activities to make the trip more enjoyable.

Best Way To Get Around:

Take taxis instead of subway for short distances. It's cheaper and tends to be much quicker.

What a beautiful hotel! The staff members were so helpful and accommodating. Be prepared to walk the stairs a lot, as there is only one elevator, and it can only fit so many people.

The rooms are spacious. You can have about six people in the rooms at once and still be comfortable.

Located in the beautiful Greenwich Village area. Plenty of things to see and do locally. Within walking distance from Time Square (about a 40-minute walk).

The hotel does have a website, which can provide you with more information (i.e. accommodations and room rates).

On 7th Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets, an emporium of delightful delicacies reveals the true range of fabulous New York City eateries. The Carnegie Delicatessen is the home of lean, tender, tasty pastrami and corned beef sandwiches that you and your appetite will never forget!

Heavenly sandwiches such as these emerged from Eastern Europe in the 1700s and were brought to perfection when Germans, Romanians, Poles, and other Eastern Europeans immigrated to America.

Many Jewish immigrants started restaurants featuring the cooking of their youth. From the 1850s to today, these wonderful dishes are still sold in delicatessens dedicated to these rich, incredibly delicious foods, full of flavor, so enchanting to the taste, and so satisfying to the appetite. The traditions started long ago in Europe are now carried on by families like those owning The Carnegie Delicatessen.

My b/f and I decided that we had to eat at the famous Carnegie Deli. We anticipated that we might a few famous people, as it is known to attract some stars.

We sat and people watched until we were served the most gi-normous sandwich either of us had ever eaten! If you ever go, order the roast beef sandwich, and don't forget the homemade pickles!

With its captain's-chair barstools and dilapidated décor stand unchanged by time, trend, or tide, the current crowd consists of NYU students and after-work revelers from Fifth Avenue's various publishing houses; later on, people come from points east, west, south and north in search of hearty meat, fish, and potatoes served until 2am or 3:30am, Monday through Saturday.

In the forties and fifties, still-semi-starving artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and Robert Motherwell took time from the abstract expressionist search for contours of truth seen and unseen to hoist a few, get into fistfights, and hoist a few more at the Cedars. Successor to the Club, at 39 E 8th Street, the Cedars stood amid the mid-century boho belt, close to the Brevoort Hotel (11 Fifth Avenue), sometime home to Isadora Duncan, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Theodore Dreiser. While de Kooning and his wife, Elaine, used the Cedars to play out their 50-year, alcoholic, co-dependent soap opera, Pollock was banned for ripping the men’s-room door from its hinges. Beat writer Jack Kerouac was likewise tossed, supposedly for pissing in an ashtray.

Though it looks as if it's been here since the Dutch first settled Manhattan, Cedar Tavern actually moved to its current home in the early '60s; the original location was a few blocks south.

Haunting yet thought-provoking. I could not help but feel moved. A must-see in order to truly believe and gain perspective. There is so much to take in. Be sure to take a camera, and some flowers to pay your respects if you feel so inclined.