Fool For The City: I took a quick weekend in NYC, early in the month just to try to shake some blues.

Because of weather in NYC, my flight to LGA was delayed an hour and twenty minutes from taking off in Detroit. Blah. So I cleverly went a few gates down and got myself on a flight to JFK which was leaving at exactly the same time as my LGA flight and was, strangely, not delayed. Of course, instead of waiting in the terminal for my original delayed flight, I got to spend the equivalent time circling JFK with my tray table lifted and my seat back in an upright and locked position. Bad weather is bad weather, you're either going wait to take off and know you can land on time, or you're going to take off on time and circle before you can land. I should have realized...

Combine that with the fact that the cab ride from JFK to Midtown took is about 30 minutes longer than it would have from LGA because of construction, the result of my brilliant adaptation was that instead of spending the delay in the relative comfort of McNamara Terminal in Detroit (one of the nicest airline terminals you will ever see, no kidding), I got to spend it wedged into a coach seat on a packed plane and in the back of a cab slogging through construction delays in Queens. Who's a clever boy, eh?

I stayed at the famed Waldorf=Astoria, which was something of a let down, as you can tell from my review.

Still, whenever I hit the Manhattan streets, I always feel like everything will be OK. And once again, it was. I wandered down to this top notch tapas restaurant, Solera (real Spanish tapas, made by real Spaniards, not Puerto Ricans from the Lower East Side), because that is the kind of thing you do in The City, you wander down the street to get tapas. Then I hopped on the E train over towards the Theatre District and caught the early set at Birdland because that is also the kind of thing you can do in The City, you hop the subway to catch some live jazz.

The next day, a Jamba Juice Mango Madness for breakfast, then up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to check out a fairly minor display on Tibet, which has special relevance for a certain project I'm working on, then a walk across Central Park, with a stop for a pretzel and a nap on the Great Lawn. Then over to the American Museum of Natural History to see the Darwin exhibit. While there I also took some snaps of the nature displays, like Sugimoto (see last month), to see if I could turn them into beautiful photographs. Sadly, I don't think mine turned out as well (Ostriches (350k), Birds (410k), Rhinos (390k)). But it's a fair bet Sugimoto was working with something a bit more sophisticated than a 4MP Kodak point-and-shoot and Photoshop Elements.

Back down town to Le Parker Meridian hotel, where there were people lined up out front in anticipation of some celebrity or other, which was fine with me because I wanted to hit the Hidden Burger Joint, which is something of a tradition for me. I had ordered, been served, and completed my meal and the celeb still hadn't arrived. Never found out who it was.

Another Jamba Juice breakfast the next morning, this time Pineapple-a-Go-Go (Is there a valid reason we cannot have a Jamba Juice in Ann Arbor? Or better yet, Dexter?), then some time for writing and all that was left was to hop a cab to LGA for a thankfully uneventful flight home.

A great weekend getaway. I should do it more often, but New York is as expensive as everyone says.

I have three favorite urban places that I like to visit once a year: Manhattan, the Vegas Strip, and the French Quarter. Two to go for 2006.