A city of world bests

That’s New York – where everything is the best you’ve ever had. On an island of 8.5 million, the harshest natural selection process for retailers has resulted in a finely sieved selection of the very best. If you’re crap, you don’t last here, no matter what wares you’re peddling.

We spent the morning cleaning up Tom’s place on account of it being filthy, and at around midday, headed out. The skies are finally starting to clear up (no rain today, a first since I got here) and we took advantage of the good weather to do what New Yorkers do best: walk.

We headed east, having walked to the west side of the island yesterday. Along the way, we stopped at the world-famous Katz’s on Houston Street for their legendary pastrami sandwiches. They’re every bit as good as advertised. The pastrami is unlike the stuff we get back home – instead of being thinly sliced and cold, it’s served on a rye sandwich piping hot, thick and juicy. While they’re making your sandwich they give you a bit of pastrami to nibble on, and it melts in your mouth like butter.


Katz's deli on Houston.

The sandwich itself was epic; of such a fiercely high calibre that future generations will recount tales of its tastiness in song and dance. I cannot express with my limited command of the English language just how good it was. There’s a reason why they’ve been around for decades – the amazing service, the enormous portions, the ingredients so fresh they can bring a grown man to tears. Granted, at around R100 for a sandwich it’s not cheap, but definitely worth the asking price. Sadly, we left Vilo to look after the apartment, so he missed out.


Wow wa wee waw!

From there we walked to Chinatown, which is quite frankly, an epic shithole, a massive eyesore on what is an otherwise amazing island. The buildings are dirty and run down, the streets are in terrible shape (they reminded me of Mozambique), and the entire place smells of drunk hobo. Not a lot of fun.

We reached the East Hudson, which offers as amazing a view as its counterpart on the west side of Manhattan. Still feeling pretty fresh, we decided to walk the Brooklyn bridge. After a somewhat scary mistake where we accidentally walked up the highway onramp, we found the pedestrian onramp and made our way across. It’s a fairly decent walk, but well worth it – the views are spectacular.


Manhattan bridge.


Brooklyn bridge.


On Brooklyn bridge, headed away from Manhattan.

We grabbed a train back and stopped off at a middle-eastern joint on our way back for a hubbly and some beers. That was a pleasant change of pace – we sat and watched the busy people of New York go about their business as we puffed away.


Nothing like a hub, and this was a particularly good one.

Just a short block away was a deli (Veniero's Pasticceria & Caffe) Tom was adamant we had to go check out, and we did. It was, quite frankly, amazing. I grabbed two mini cakes and a New York cheesecake with strawberries, which blew my mind.


Hard to choose with cakes that look this good...


...but settled on a NY style cheesecake!

We grabbed some beers from a convenience store on the way home to drink on the fire escape this evening before we head out partying.

Good times.