Walking through Times Square is something akin to a trip through a giant television.  A giant, crowded television.  With street vendors.  Oh yeah, lots of street vendors.  Including one big black guy dressed as a hat-wearing Superman.  Neon lights and gigantic video screens surround you, there is a clamor of noise and pedestrians, and all along the streets are stores and restaurants selling at premium prices on one side with vendors bargaining on the other.

Following a brief detour through Times Square so I could experience the gaudily eclectic area, Ian and I took the subway down to Battery Park.  There we found a small local pizzaria and got the classic duo:  a slice of sausage (something you might not realize - they slice the sausage lengthwise) and a slice of pepperoni.  I've found that everywhere I travel, I do enjoy their particular style of pizza.  Chicago thick, California eclectic, or New York wide, it's all tasty and definitely better than the Des Moines fare.

Our grease and mozzerella urges sated, we hopped a Circle Line ferry at Battery Park to tour down the Manhatten shorelinea past Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, and underneath the Brooklyn Bridge.  The tour was reasonably priced (only $10 which is pretty cheap for NYC touristy entertainment) and afforded a great view of the city and Lady Liberty.  The best part of the cruise was the narrator, this older gentleman with a dulcet voice like Barry White reminiscing about New York history and offering tips on visiting certain places that were, according to him, "not the quickest route but certainly the safest."

The aquatic voyage complete, we rode up to Chinatown so I could see the mass of street merchants selling jewelry, knicknacks and ever pirated DVD you can imagine, including movies like Kill Bill and Scary Movie 3, which had just opened the day before.  Those who know my fondness for early-release movies will undoubtedly be surprised to find that I didn't purchase any.  Before you claim a victory for the MPAA, I'll admit that the thought to purchase a few crossed my mind before I realized that the Internet had the same movies available - I mean, if I *wanted* to get some "outside legal means" movies.  Which I'm not saying I do...

We trekked north through Chinatown to Little Italy than turned west to Soho.  Our destination:  the Jobsian mecca known as the Soho Apple store.  Nestled in a very hipster part of NYC, the Apple store is a construct of glass, wood, clear thick plastic and brushed metal, almost as if assembled from the same materials as their computers, though with less garish colors than the old iMacs.  What I find fascinating about Apple stores - and this is true for both the one I had previously visited in Palo Alto as well as this Soho store and, I presume, all of their locations - there is nothing sold at the stores that one could not buy elsewhere, especially online, and indeed, most of the computers on display are the same configuration and models with prices listed not for the particular computer you're demoing but rather a "starting at" price.  It seems that demoing an Apple is more about the experience and the task, whether viewing pictures, editing a video, whatever, than the particular details of the computer's innards.

By this time my feet were killing me.  Note to self - despite the short-term confort brought about by the liner in Born shoes, bring some sneakers on next trip to NYC.

Following Soho, we returned north for a brief stint at Ian's so that my feet could reform from the gelatinous pools they felt like into proper appendages.  A look online showed that the Met (aka The Metropolitan Museum of Art) was open until 9pm, so we trekked the nine or so blocks over.  I loved The Thomas Crown Affair and really wanted to see one particular painting - the one of man in a bowler hat with an apple covering his face whose name doesn't spring readily to mind.  After searching the whole of the museum, we finally found a childrens' book with the very painting on the cover.  Looking in the appendix, we found that the painting we sought was not actually in the Met at all, but was owned in a private collection.  So The Thomas Crown Affair has lied to me.  Liars!  Carrie points out that the irreality of the painting not being there is a far second to when he folds a painting being stolen in half without damaging it.

Dinner consisted of burgers at Jackson Hole.  Thick and juicy burgers.  Mmm.  And then Lena and Jay met back up with us for some bar hopping around 2nd Avenue.  Good friends, good location, and dark beer:  a fine end to a full day.