Free Kayaking in NYC

One of the great things about New York City is that there’s always so FREE stuff to do. One free activity Chris and I have been meaning to do for the past couple of weeks is kayaking! Free kayaking is sponsored by the New York City Downtown Boathouse and is every Saturday and Sunday from 10-5 (but they usually CLOSE at 5, meaning the last kayaks go out around 4:30). You take them out for 20 minutes (although there’s no way to really monitor how long you’re out) and enjoy the water. Chris and I got into a double kayak and floated around, enjoying the views of New York and New Jersey:

People were getting swept away because they didn’t know that you have to row together (it’s all about teamwork!) Actually, these two girls got into a kayak and floated in the wrong direction right away. One of the volunteers had to go out in a kayak and rescue them!

The area that you can row around isn’t that large, but it’s a fun afternoon activity, especially if you have friends visiting. You can also volunteer by just showing up (it’s nothing formal) and helping out for the afternoon – another fun activity!

Sarabeth’s West

If you are an avid reader of my blog :), you’ll remember my post on Sarabeth’s being less than favorable. If you are a new reader (or you don’t remember it), you can read it here. We wanted to give Sarabeth’s another chance (and to go to Sarabeth’s West, not just the bakery) so we headed up to the UPPER WEST SIDE (uncharted territory!) for brunch. There are a lot more menu options at the UWS location (thank goodness!) and I ended up ordering the lemon ricotta pancakes with fresh berries:

Yum! They were DEFINITELY better than anything from the Sarabeth’s in Chelsea (although they still don’t beat the pancakes from Clinton St. Baking Company!). The lemon ricotta pancakes were fluffy, moist, and had the extra zest that made them delicious. I added a little butter, but they definitely didn’t need syrup since there was so much flavor from the lemon and the ricotta.

Chris ordered the potato waffles with apple sausage and apple preserves:

The potato waffles were a little tough on the outside, but smooth on the inside (probably because the potato toughened up a little when they put the batter into the waffle maker). They reminded me of potato latke’s I used to eat – add a little apple preserve and a little sour cream and it’s a party in your mouth! The sausage, on the other hand, was NOT good at all.

Maybe it was just what we ordered but we weren’t that impressed but we were glad to have finally gotten the chance to experience the Sarabeth’s everyone talks about.

Sant Ambroeus

On Friday night, Chris and I walked to Sant Ambroeus for a romantic dinner. There are two Sant Ambroeus’ in New York City – one on the Upper East Side (right by my apartment, actually) and one in the West Village (right by Chris’ house). The one in the West Village is more…chic…so we decided to go there (even though the original one is on the Upper East Side). The restaurant is really cute – very family-Italian style and all of the waiters wear cute pink oxford shirts. I was in the mood for meat and pasta, so we decided to order one meat dish and one pasta dish and switch halfway through the meal (that’s why it’s always better to eat with a companion!). I started out with the Costolette D’agnello Al Forne (roasted baby lamb chops with fresh herbs):

The lamb chops were cooked to a perfect medium rare and they were juicy, fatty, and delicious. The vegetables were also delicious (I’m a huge fan of the broccoli-cauliflower combination). The only downside to the lamb chop deliciousness is the price – it will set you (or your date) back $34! Sheeks! Quite expensive, but definitely worth it.

Chris ordered the homemade spaghetti with truffle mushrooms and lobster:

I love when pasta is cooked to a perfect al dente – it has a bite to it that isn’t difficult to create, yet so many restaurants overcook their pasta and you end up eating limp noodles. The lobster was also tasty, but there wasn’t enough (nothing like the amount of lobster they pile onto a lobster roll) and the mushrooms had a great meaty taste. Fresh basil added a wonderful flavor to the dish and we both enjoyed it.

Overall, I really loved my experience at Sant Ambroeus – the food was delicious and the atmosphere was great. Prices are a little steep, but it’s definitely worth it. (And if you don’t want to shell out $30+ for an entree, you can always go for brunch – lots of famous artists go there during the weekdays!)

The 21 Club

For New York’s Restaurant Week (July 16 – August 10), I headed to the 21 Club with three girlfriends to enjoy the lively atmosphere and a great meal (well, keep reading). The 21 club was once a speakeasy (which I think is pretty awesome) and now is known for their great food, award winning wine list and interesting decor:

If you look at the table in the picture, you’ll see a small picture of Steve Forbes, who dined at the table next to us. Also, it doesn’t hurt to have some of the most well-known people in New York have permanent tables at the restaurant (Donald Trump, Barbara Walters, Les Moonves, Brian Williams, George Clooney, the list goes on and on). Interestingly enough, *almost* every president since FDR has gone to the 21 club – the only exception? – George W. Bush. So, enough with the history of the club, onto the food!

The prix fix menu isn’t too bad, you can view it here. I started with the Grilled Spicy Shrimp (with apple and potato salad, micro celery, and lemon aioli):

Joyce, Charlene, Leena, and me at the table with our appetizers:

Leena ordered the Smoked Trout with fennel and cucumber salad, crème fraîche, and trout caviar dressing:

Appetizer wise, the shrimp was definitely better. It wasn’t too chewy (always a good thing) and there was a nice grilled flavor. Also, the potato salad was dressed well (not too much mayo). On the other hand, I wasn’t a fan of Leena’s smoked trout – it was way too salty, tough, and the smoky flavor was just lacking. So, if you go to the 21 club for restaurant week, don’t start with the trout :).

For our main courses, we had four options (but no one wanted chicken or fish). Leena and I both ordered the Grilled Flat Iron Steak with broccoli rabe, roasted cipollini onions, potato purée, Cabernet sauce:

The steak was cooked to a nice medium rare, but it didn’t have a fresh taste to it. I looked over at Leena and asked what she thought of it…she nicely said it was “okay,” but that’s just because Leena is too nice to say something mean. I didn’t think the steak was juicy, the cabernet sauce didn’t pair well with the steak taste, and the only two things good about the dish were the broccoli and the “potato puree,” which is a fancy way of saying MASHED POTATOES.

Joyce and Charlene both ordered the Duck Leg Confit frisée salad, wild mushrooms, toasted peanut vinaigrette:

I wish I could say something better about their dish, but it wasn’t good AT ALL. The duck was dry, there wasn’t any taste to it, and the duck SKIN wasn’t even tasty. I mean, how could something so good be ruined like that?! I was NOT a fan of the main courses at all. I’m not a fan of restaurant week in general – I mean, all of the good restaurants only offer their prix fix meal for lunch (and who has time to have a long lunch in Manhattan during the weekdays) and the restaurants that offer a prix fix dinner usually don’t offer great options. I prefer to just spend money and get a good meal out of the place, you know?

For dessert, there were four choices and all of us decided to get something different so we could switch it up:

Joyce ordered the Chocolate Marquise with chocolate shortbread and fresh raspberries:

It was rich, creamy, and delicious. No complaints from anyone at the table 🙂

Charlene ordered the Lemon Pucker Cake with summer berries and lemon cream sauce:

Out of all four of the options, this was my least favorite. The cake was sticky but not moist (possible, right?). It wasn’t BAD, just not memorable.

Leena ordered the Blueberry Tart with Passion Fruit Cream and mango coulis:

My favorite dessert of the night. Look at how many blueberries they piled onto that tart! The mango/passion fruit combination was also tart and sweet.

I ordered the Vanilla Bean Crème Brûlée with orange-pecan biscotti:

Good, but not great. There was still sugar that wasn’t burnt on top (who wants to know how much sugar they’re actually consuming?!) and the actual crème brûlée wasn’t solid enough for me to fully enjoy the dessert. Shocking, I know.

Overall, the meal wasn’t memorable but the service was great and we had a great time people watching. I would like to go back to the 21 club after restaurant week and try their actual dishes because I don’t think their options did the restaurant justice. Afterwards, we took some pictures outside (since the restaurant is also known for the jockeys outside the townhouse):

If you’re going to partake in Restaurant Week, I definitely recommend going to lunch…or just save your money and splurge at the restaurant ordering off the regular menu!

Top Five things to see in Berlin, Germany

I went to Berlin, Germany, for the first time this summer and it was such a great experience. Berlin is a culturally rich city with lots of things to do and it’s easy to do it on your own (or with friends/family). I went with my mom and brother and met up with my brother’s friend, Dovi, who has been living in Berlin for a couple of years. He showed us around the city all week and from our “insider’s tour,” I made a top five list of places you MUST see when you visit. In another post, I’ll have other notable places.

Berlin is an easy city to get around on foot or by subway. On the first day we were in the city, my brother and I took the subway to get around:

The subways are partially elevated and partially underground and the train cars are very short compared to the ones in New York. One interesting thing about the Berlin subway system is that it’s all based on trust – they don’t have gates that you have to pass through or anything! You have to buy a ticket and get it validated before heading onto the train, but no one checks! Well, there are people that OCCASIONALLY check, but I’m guessing it’s not very often. But, I wouldn’t recommend not validating your ticket because if you get caught, it’s a 40 euro fine (which is a little more than $40USD). A great thing about the Berlin subways is that even though it’s underground in parts, you can get cell phone/blackberry service everywhere.

1. Brandenburg Gate/DZ Bank/Reichstag/Holocaust Museum (okay, I cheated because technically that’s four different places, but they’re all very close to each other so you can catch all of them in one short walking tour).

a. Our first stop was the Brandenburg Gate:

The Brandenburg Gate is one of the major historical landmarks in Berlin. If you don’t know the history, you can look it up here. I pulled this from wikipedia to give you a short summary of what the significance is: the gate has played varying roles in Germany’s history. First, Napoleon took the Quadriga to Paris in 1806 after conquering Berlin. When it returned to Berlin in 1814, the statue exchanged her olive wreath for the Iron Cross and became the goddess of victory.

When the Nazis rose to power, they used the gate to symbolize their power. The only structure left standing in the ruins of Pariser Platz in 1945, apart from the ruined Academy of Fine Arts, the gate was restored by the East Berlin and West Berlin governments. However, in 1961, the gate was closed when the Berlin Wall was built. Another way you would know about the landmark is through Ronald Reagen, because he said “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” while he was giving a speech at the Brandenburg Gate:

b. DZ Bank

From the outside, it looks like a normal building….but if you go inside the bank, you’ll see THIS:

It was designed by Frank Gehry and I’ve heard people say it reminds them of a horse’s head. I don’t know if I can see that…but, to each his own. There are private apartments behind the work of art and the rooms on the side are actual office buildings. I’ve heard it looks pretty cool if you’re in the basement looking up, but you can’t go in unless you have a pass to get through security.

c. Reichstag

Reichstag is behind the Brandenburg gates and is home of the Germain parliament. You can actually go into the building and watch parliamentary proceedings, but David and I didn’t have time to do it (you have to reserve a spot the day before). The building suffered some damage from World War II, but in the 1990’s, was remodeled by British architect Norman Foster in the 1990s and features a glass dome over the session area:

d. Holocaust Museum/Memorial

The Holocaust Museum/Memorial is in the general vicinity of the Brandenburg Gates and Reichstag. There was a lot of controversy over construction and design of the memorial, but it was finally unveiled in 2005:

There are 2,700 stone slabs, which was designed by Peter Eisenman in 1999. There aren’t any names on the stone slabs (the designers feared it would look too much like a graveyard, which they didn’t want), but it’s meant to be somewhere people would go everyday, not just for holy reasons. Underneath the memorial is a museum:

This mirrors the idea of the stone slabs above – on each of these slabs, there is a postcard/letter/some form of correspondence between family members separated due to the Holocaust. It’s very sad to read the desperation some of the letters, especially the ones children write to their parents.

Here’s a picture of the areas in Europe where Jews were affected:

The museum is free and it doesn’t take too long to go through (there are only four rooms, one of which is a darkened room with a projector listing the names of each person that died from the Holocaust and their age).

2. Check point Charlie

Check point Charlie is the crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin, and important area during the Cold War. There’s a private museum that has artifacts from East and West Berlin:

The museum shows a lot of ways people tried to flee from East Berlin (if you were successful, you were allowed to stay in West Berlin, which was safe). One family escaped by a hot air balloon that they built themselves:

There are a lot of heroic tales – a bunch of them were of boyfriends saving their girlfriend’s (and the girl’s entire family) by smuggling them out through cars, guys that dressed up as US soldiers to deceive Russian soldiers, and true tales of bravery.

3. Berlin Zoo

David and I took a morning to visit the Berlin Zoo, one of the largest zoo’s in Germany with the largest amount of species in the world:

The zoo has a LOT of gorillas:

When I travel, I usually don’t go to zoo’s (I dunno…too kiddie like, maybe?) but it was a great excursion and if you go to Berlin, you definitely have to visit the zoo. Recently, the zoo’s been in the paper a lot because of Knut, a cute polar bear that was rejected by his mother. Some people say the zoo should’ve killed Knut (oh no!) but zoo keepers decided against it. I mean, Knut was the first polar bear born at the Berlin Zoo in over 30 years! Thomas Dörflein, shown in the picture below, took on the task of taking care of Knut 24 hours a day while he was still a baby cub (he was born the size of a little guinea pig):

Knut and Thomas were playing peekaboo with the blanket (it was so cute) and whenever Thomas hid himself, Knut would paw at the blanket to find his friend!

Another great area is the petting zoo – David and I stopped by and said hello to some animals:

I was about to pet this fella (I was already a little scared to pet him) and right when I was about to pet him, he let out this huge BAAAAA and then stuck his tongue out at me! He wouldn’t do it again for my picture, but I literally jumped and my brother thought it was the funniest thing ever.

The weather in Berlin this summer has been very cool and somewhat wet. On the day we went to the zoo, it would shower on and off – scaring the animals, especially this tiger:

There’s an indoor area where you can see all of the animals that are inside cages or through glass windows and this tiger just get pacing back and forth. I snapped that picture when the tiger was inches away from my face!

4. Potsdamer Platz

Potsdamer platz is a major intersection in the center of Berlin – actually, it has one of the first traffic lights in Germany:

And the Sony Center, where the European headquarters are located:

Potsdamer Platz is actually close to Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gates, so you can theoretically walk to all of these places (and we walked to Checkpoint Charlie from here, too).

5. The Pergamon Museum

The Pergamon Museum is based off of the ancient Greek City, Pergamon. The museum houses original-sized, reconstructed monumental buildings such as the Pergamon Altar, the Market Gate of Miletus, and the Ishtar Gate, all consisting of parts transported from the original excavation sites:

When you initially walk in, you go past the gift shop, security, etc, walk around a hall, and then enter the massive reconstruction of the Pergamon Altar:

It is really quite breathtaking!

A model of the Pergamon Altar (how it used to be):

Inside, you can walk around all of the ruins and it’s so magnificent!! The Market Gate of Miletus was actually under construction when we visited, but we did get a chance to see the Ishtar gate:

The Pergamon Museum also has a large Islamic collection, which features a ton of antique rugs. It takes a couple of hours to get through the entire museum, but it’s definitely worth the walk.

I’ll be back with updates of other notable places to visit while you’re in Berlin, things to eat, and little treats that make Berlin special. Hope you enjoyed the update!