New York day 1 and a half

I took my trip from SFO to JFK on Wednesday and it was completely uneventful, which is the way I like plane travel, or any travel for that matter. We made it to JFK in a shocking 4 hours and 45 minutes, which I didn't think was possible, but the pilot mentioned that we had a nice tail wind at our back and maybe that's the usual result of something like that. The things that I noticed right away as I walked from the deplaning ramp to the baggage claim was more diversity in the people than I'm used to, which feels funny for me to say, feeling like the Bay Area has a fairly diverse set of folks. But I guess coming from white bread Wisconsin, there are definitely different levels of diversity. The two groups which seemed more represented were those of Jewish descent, which wasn't too surprising, but still somewhat eyeopening to see folks dressed competely in black with the black top hat (not sure that should be called) and long beards, and those of African American descent. For whatever reason, you just don't see many black people in the Bay Area. In fact, I feel that see more black people when go back to Wisconsin of all places. Anyway, enough talk on that...just one thing that I noticed right away as I was acclamating myself to being in NY.

The in-flight movie was The Italian Job, a movie that I've heard good things about from several acquaintences and friends, but I've never had a chance to see. So there was my chance. I'd say that it was good movie to watch on a flight. I'd call it a poor man's version of Ocean's 11, kind of a "heist" type of movie with a variety of characters and a sense of humor. I say "poor man's" because it doesn't quite have the star-studded cast of Ocean's (Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Don Cheadle, Andy Garcia, Matt Damon, Julia Roberts), but a pretty good B+ cast (Edward Norton, Charlize Theron, Mark Wahlberg) and it showed. The characters aren't quite as appealing and I think expected a little more from Norton whom I've enjoyed in previous films (Fight Club, Rounders, 25th hour). But it was still an enteraining film, with some nice chase scenes through Venice (on boats) and in L.A. (I think) with mini coopers ( did they get the idea from the Bourne Idenity?) and pretty funny interactions between the characters. I give the movie 2.5 stars, probably perfect for a in-flight movie.

So I checked into my hotel near the airport and tried to go to sleep to get used to the time difference, but it didn't quite work, falling asleep close to 2 AM. I'm hoping I can beat it a little tonight. I took a cab ride that that took a little over an hour into Manhatten from this Indian guy that I could barely understand, but understood that he had a lot of family, including in his son, living in the east bay (small world).

He dropped me off at my hotel near Central Park and I proceeded to deposit my stuff and proceed directly to a Italian deli-looking place that I had spied as we got closer to my hotel. Iammo Bello is its name and looked exactly like a place I'd like to eat, kind of a little cafeteria, hole-in-the-wall type of place with plenty of pasta dishes, salads, pizza and a lot of local-looking folks coming in to pick up some lunch. So I picked up some mosticelli, a little ham and cheese sandwich, and worked my way towards Central Park to find a nice bench to sit on and enjoy some eats.

And that's where I'll end this BLOG, for now, because in 1 hour I need to be the Shubert theater, watching Spamalot...later I'll talk about my visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art...as well as spamalot