IKEA

Last Saturday, our housing staff put on a "plant your own plant" event to help make our rooms "greener."  I planted spearmint and Pat planted a zinnia, both from seeds.  So yesterday, as our plants turned 1 week old, we were amazed to see that Pat's zinnia had sprouted overnight...

It was partly because of this that we decided to go to IKEA in Brooklyn - our plants need fancier pots.  It took nearly an hour to get to IKEA by train and ended up in a slightly questionable-looking neighborhood.  It was nice, though, because IKEA provides a free shuttle from the station to their store.  I've never been to an IKEA, but the Brooklyn store is huge and right on the waterfront.  The first floor is like their warehouse and the second floor houses all of the showrooms and a cafeteria.   Their food is super cheap ($2-4 per meal) and we ended up eating there for dinner.  The food was tasty.  Pat had the Swedish meatballs...

I had their pasta with meatballs...

The view from the cafeteria wasn't bad either.  In fact, it was gorgeous...

It took us a long time to get through the whole store, and it was really fun to look at the different studio apartment setups.  When we were ready to leave (by this time it was dark out), we weren't sure if we wanted to go back through the semi-sketchy neighborhood, so we opted for the other free IKEA shuttle: a watertaxi.  The ferry takes shoppers through the New York Bay, from the front of the store to Wall Street in Manhattan.  The watertaxi was fun and we got to see downtown Manhattan all lit up and the Statue of Liberty for the first time.  I wish we would've known about the watertaxi earlier because we could've taken it to IKEA too.  I highly recommend visiting IKEA and taking the watertaxi!  Here's the front of the store from the taxi...

I, of course, ended up buying more than some pots for our plants.  It's extremely difficult to resist all of the trendy wares and I bought this cool blown glass lamp...only $12!...

On a completely different note, last week was our last week of dodgeball.  I actually managed to catch a winning ball during one of the games.  Unfortunately, I also took a hard hit to the calf...

I believe our team ended up ranked last and we, obviously, didn't make it to the playoffs.  On Wednesday night, however, there's an award night and the word on the street is that we will probably win the "spirit award."  Oh boy!

Sushi and Jon Stewart

Today, Pat and I went to a place that I thought only existed in my dreams: an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet.  The restaurant is called Ichiumi and is the tastiest sushi restaurant we've been to here.  It's not a bad deal ($18/person for lunch) if you calculate that a sushi combo at most restaurants costs about $15 anyway.  It's nice, too, because we were able to try sushi that we wouldn't have otherwise wanted to chance our money on...

The restaurant is in Koreatown, which is dangerously close to where we live...

The sushi/nigiri is awesome here and is, in fact, better than the other restaurants that we pay per piece at.  The fish to rice ratio was excellent (lots of fish) and the spicy rolls were amazing. Here is my first plate...

Pat's first plate (oh my gosh, did I eat more than him?)...

My second plate.  This time I tried some of their hot food (crab cake and shish kabob), goma wakame (my favorite part of the meal!), and tuna tartare (too strong for me)...

Pat's second plate (geez, I think I did have more than him)...

Even though we were both stuffed, we had to try their desserts which were mostly these delicious tiny cakes...

I'd recommend Ichiumi to any sushi lover who comes to the city, but be warned the the prices are much higher for weekday dinners, and then even higher on the weekends.

Later, we attended a taping of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  After a 2 hour wait outside in the cold, we were let into the building.  The set is very cool in real life, but other than that, the show was not very fun.  This is the first show we've seen that's only 30 minutes long and it was the longest we've had to wait in line, so it was not worth it.  Furthermore, the music during the commercials and the introducer's mic were WAY too loud and made my head hurt.  However, Jon Stewart himself seemed very nice and genuinely funny before the show and during the commercials. Otherwise, I would not recommend this taping to anyone.  

Toys

Yesterday it was a wonderful 68 degrees in the city and we ended up walking around all day. The day was kind of kid-themed so we headed out to our first destination: the Times Square Toys"R"Us. We live pretty much right in the middle of the Garment District and we passed the giant button/needle sculpture at 39th and 8th on the way...

Another giant thing we passed was the huge lobster on the side of the Times Square Red Lobster...

Surprisingly, Times Square wasn't too unbearably crowded...

The front of Toys"R"Us...

The store is kind of hidden among all of the signs and lights, but inside, it is amazing. The first thing you see when you enter is the 60-foot indoor ferris wheel...

My favorite part of the store were the enormous Lego sculptures...

Pat's favorite part was the 20-foot animatronic T-Rex from Jurassic Park...

The giant K'nex pieces on the walls were pretty cool, too...

On the second floor, there's a huge wall of bulk candy, and, in keeping with the kid-themed day, we bought a big bag of candy...

We got 2 pieces of pretty much every gummy candy, including chocolate covered gummy bears and giant gummy coke bottles...

After Toys"R"Us, we headed northeast to FAO Schwartz. On the way, we passed Carnegie Hall, Central Park, the famous Plaza Hotel and the 5th Avenue underground Apple store...

Surprisingly, FAO Schwartz was a bit of a letdown after visiting Toys"R"Us...Most of the toys at FAO Schwartz are "classics" like teddy bears and puzzles...no where near as awesome as a giant T-Rex robot and indoor ferris wheel...Their candy room was pretty neat, though. They have a giant soldier covered in Jelly Bellies...One of FAO Schwartz' other attractions is their giant keyboard...They, too, have giant Lego statues, most of which are Star Wars themed...There was also a Lego Batman...Parked outside of FAO Schwartz was possibly the best marketing idea ever...And, to finish out the day, on the way home, we witnessed the most hilarious impromptu drive-thru ever...

Yum!

We are in an everlasting quest to find delicious and reasonably-priced food, and have decided to post some of our latest finds.  First off, there is a diner connected to our hotel called the Tick Tock...

We've been twice and both gotten the standard burger platter both times.  The burgers are decent, but the food is a little overpriced for how much food you get.  I don't think we'd ever go if not for the 20% discount we get for living at the hotel and the convenience of it.  Last week, we tried another diner called the Skylight Diner, that's 1 block away...

The inside of the Skylight...

Eating here made me sad that we ate at the Tick Tock at all!  The food is amazing and you get a lot of it.  Plus, it's cheaper than the Tick Tock even without a discount.  The burgers were huge and delicious and the fries (I tried the sweet potato fries and Pat had the regular kind) were possibly the best fries I've ever had...

Next time I'm craving diner food, I'm definitely walking 1 block over to the Skylight and not settling for the Tick Tock.

On the opposite spectrum of these down-home diners is the trendy Soho resturant Rice to Riches.  Rice pudding is the only thing they serve, but it comes in a rainbow of flavors.  Pat and I came here last summer and, after finding out that it is only 2 blocks from where we play dodgeball, we returned to Rice to Riches last night before our game...

The inside is small and super modern...

Their rice pudding comes in these cute re-usable plastic containers with a little re-usable paddle spoon...

With so many flavors, it's hard to decide which one to get, but luckily, they'll let you sample any of the flavors before you commit.  I couldn't decide between "Coast to Coast Cheesecake," "Sex Drugs and Rocky Road" and "Cream-cicle Tickle."  Pat got "Honey Graham for Mr. Smith" and I finally settled on "Cream-cicle Tickle"...

Both flavors were amazing and the pudding is super filling, I could barely eat half of mine, which was the smallest size.  If anyone is ever in New York City that even remotely like rice pudding, I strongly suggest coming to Rice to Riches...

Flea Market Finds

Because we had so much fun looking at the junky treasures of the Chelsea Antique Flea Market, we decided that today we'd go explore the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market which is pretty close to our hotel.  Their Web site makes it look like a fairly organized affair so we were expecting a fun time. Hell's Kitchen is a pretty shabby area that I often see referred to as a wasteland.  Some of the buildings there are pretty cool, though...But guess what? We never found the flea market!  Maybe it just wasn't happening this weekend, I hope it's not gone for good!

Pat didn't bring enough cables to find out if our treasure from the first flea market is in working condition, so we then took a train to the Guitar Center in Union Square to find out...

Will it work?

The helpful associate at Guitar Center plugged in the pedal, plugged in a bass and turned on an amp...and...the pedal worked!  And it sounds hilarious, I might add. The last one on e-bay sold for $122.50 so we could make about $70 profit.  Then, we could almost afford one burger from the steakhouse in Chelsea we want to go to.

Also today, while cleaning out our fridge, I was reminded of a gift from the second Martha taping that I forgot to blog about...

I'm not sure what it is, but she used it on the show when she made some sort of extravagant steak thing.  When she said everyone in the audience is getting this, we were all less than thrilled...who the heck uses this?  This got stuffed in the back of our freezer right away, what are we going to do?  Pour it over our mac and cheese?  The ingredients are tempting, though...