Perfect Day

Recipe for a perfect day.

Take two best friends in need of cheering up.

Order Eggs Benedict at Nice Matin, eaten alfresco in the still warm air and brilliant sunshine.

Decide to walk off brunch, with no particular destination in mind or aim other than soaking in the atmosphere of the bustling streets.

Stop over at Columbus Circle and literally bump into the actress playing Hermione in the Harry Potter movies. Fake ignorance but can't help feeling star struck.

Take 8th Avenue down and chance upon one of the last street fairs of the year. Buy freshly made lemonade and check out the various stands. Stop at a palm reader's booth and decide it's a good idea to have your palms read for the first time in your life. Learn that you will both live until 91 and that it's important that you "close the door", which can only be achieved with the help of $125 crystals ... which can handily be bought from the psychic. Politely decline and walk away laughing hysterically.

Continue strolling down 8th, nearing 34th street and decide that you are too far down to stop now. Remember the Bansky exhibition in the West Village that you've been meaning to see and walk until you reach it. Experience the surrealism of the small space, set up as a fake pet store - http://thevillagepetstoreandcharcoalgrill.com

Realise that it is now early evening and that the Meat Packing district and the wonderful rooftop bar of the Gansevoort is not that far.

Sip champagne on said rooftop until the sun sets.

Repeat all the above as often as necessary until blissful happiness is reached again.

I Hate New York

I know I said I love New York over and over again on this blog, to the point that it is probably boring.

But what I failed to mention is that I, and many of my friends, have a love-hate relationship with the City too. As I mentioned before, this is a transient place - most people weren't born here and have come to the City on some kind of quest for the perfect life. Our expectations of New York are very high, higher than they would be of any other cities in the world because in most cases living here is a life-long ambition, a fanciful dream that finally became reality.

And reality is invariably not as glamorous as the dream. Living here doesn't make you happy if you weren't happy before you moved. In many ways, New York has a way of blowing out your previous "unhappiness" (regardless of how small it was before) to new proportions. If you felt lonely before, New York will make you feel lonelier. If you felt you were not achieving enough, New York will make you feel like you are achieving nothing. If you were looking for love ... well, let's not even go there!

It is the City where every single person you meet is an over-achiever. Where it's normal to have pre-dinner drinks with one friend, dinner with another, and post-dinner drinks with someone else. Where we cram everything we can into the very little time we have. Where relationships of any kind are either passionately intense (and therefore short-lived) or dreadfully casual. Where the palpable energy can stimulate you and suck you dry at the same time.

As a few of my friends are leaving the City after 3 or 4 years, disillusioned and exhausted, I am making a conscious effort to enjoy New York until I cannot stand it's frenetic pace anymore. I do feel lucky - I have the career I always wanted to have, friends who love me and are always there for me and I live in a place that provides me with endless excitement and intellectual stimulation.

But New York sometimes has a way to make me look at my half-full glass as decidedly half-empty. Nothing is easy here - you always have to fight for everything, all the time. I have seriously considered leaving the City a couple of times already - going back to more familiar, safer, quieter territory like London.

But a taxi ride from downtown Manhattan to the Upper West Side gets me every time - catching a glimpse of the neon sign on top the New Yorker Hotel, going through Hell's Kitchen's bustling streets, crossing the West Side Highway bridge with it's amazing view of the glittering skyscrapers ... It always makes me realise that I am not quite done with New York yet. It may have thrown me on the floor and kicked me in the guts a couple of times but the battle is not over.

New York 2 - Steph 1. The next move is mine.

Manhattan Nights

I realise that I haven't blogged much about some of the most entertaining nights out I had over the summer. I've always liked a party - I take it from my Dad who always has to be the last one to leave, just like me. This is especially true since I became single two years ago. With no-one to answer to or to alert of my whereabouts, the party girl in me has truly been unleashed ...

Singing Queens

One of Marie's friend is a DJ who regularly plays in New York. He invited her to dance boat party where he was DJing and we decided to make a girls night out of it with two other girlfriends, Lisa & Libs. Donning our best summer nights outfits we made our way to Chelsea Pier, the idea being that we would sail around Manhattan for around 3 hours while drinking and dancing.

As soon as we started queuing to get on the boat, we realised that it might not quite be our scene. Our fellow party goers were clearly avid clubbers and on the young side. Our fears were confirmed when we eventually boarded. We went straight to the bar and ordered some white wine, only to be told, after the barman poured us a glass each in a plastic cup that this was the last of it ... Clearly, wine was not the tipple of choice at this party and we suspected that alcohol was probably not the vice of choice in any case.

We managed to find an awkward corner in which to stand, surrounded by sweaty crowds. The hard house music was deatheningly loud. I was bracing myself for three hours of hell when Libs and I exchanged a panicked look and I knew then that she felt the same way as me. We hatched a hurried plan to get off the boat as soon as possible. Marie and Lisa also shared our feelings and we literally jumped off the boat minutes before it sailed.

Instead, we went to the rooftop bar of the Gansevoort Hotel, in the Meat Packing district. Sipping cocktails in real glasses, with cool music playing in the background, is much more my idea of fun these days. It came to that time of the night when, after a few drinks and lots of chatting, our feet started tapping along to the music and going to a Karaoke bar seemed like a very good idea ... We hopped in a taxi to Sing Sing in the East Village and while the rest of the night is a little blurry, I do know that we spent hours in our private room, belting out 80s hits until the early hours of the morning.

Friends Melting Pot
Paul, an old friend of mine, was in town from London and staying with me for a week back in July. On Friday night, we made separate dinner plans but agreed that we would meet later at a birthday party he had been invited to in the Lower East Side.

So I first met up with Kimmy, Debbie, Joe and some of his friends at Kum Gang San, a traditional Korean Barbeque restaurant in Midtown. One of our dinner companions was Korean and ordered everything for us. It was a wonderful way to sample new and exciting dishes. One of them was a seafood soup: plump prawns and scallops were floating in a fragrant broth as well as something round, dimpled and white, which I could not identify. Joe and I happened to take a bite of "it" at the same moment and our faces convulsed. Upon biting on the chewy exterior, a bitter liquid came out of it and we both immediately spat out the offending "thing". Joe's friend laughed and told us that we had just tried something called "sea squirts". We googled it on our blackberries and were horrified to find out that it was a slug-like sea creature, known for eating its own brain when it found a rock to set up home. I won't be trying that again.

I left my friends who were going on to Soho and went to meet Paul. The party was on the rooftop of a newly built apartment block, with amazing views of the City glittering in the night. As Paul started to wholeheartedly embrace my love of living in New York (not difficult when you're sipping a cocktail with a view like this), Marie called me and we decided to leave the party and join her and a few other joint friends at Toy Company on Norfolk Street.

No, we did not go to a children's toy store. The Toy Company is a "secret" bar that could easily be missed if it wasn't for the small sign on the entrance gate, surrounded by burly bouncers. A short walk through an underground tunnel leads you to a bar that looks like a Victorian living room, complete with a huge fireplace, antique chandeliers and velvet paisley wallpaper. There is also a back room which can only be accessed through a sliding bookcase. The main quirk of the place is that all drinks are served in tea cups. It was impossible not to lift our little fingers as we drank from our dainty cups and I had to convince myself a couple of times that it was indeed wine I was sipping and not the finest Earl Grey.

Brooklyn Barbie
Strictly speaking, this event did not happen at night and did not even take place in Manhattan but it is one of my favourite summer memories. Larry hosted one of his infamous barbecues at his house in Brooklyn on July 17th. He spent hours cooking southern style pork and twice baked potatoes, bought enough meat to feed an entire army and a group of around eight of us made the trip across the East river to attend it.

Larry lives on the ground floor of an old factory, set in a quiet residential street populated by families and elderly people. The barbecue was set up right on the pavement and thankfully one person in the group actually had any kind of meat grilling skills. Pop music was blasting out of his appartment and competing with a rather odd-looking group of teenagers who were practicing line dancing in the park across the street. Evidently, we drawned out their music and engaged in an hilarious dance-off with them. Phil had the best dance routine, writhing around on the balcony in suggestive ways.

More salacious entertainment was brought on by the children's paddling pool Larry had also placed on the pavement and we spent hours throwing water at each other. I believe that Larry changed outfits a record number of five times due to the constant soaking, while we were left to dry off as best as we could until the next water fight.

Other highlights of the day included putting make up on Phil's face while he was "resting" from drinking a little too much vodka, as well some rather rude things being done to a Little Mermaid Disney figure ... I don't think the neighbours have quite recovered from our antics yet.

Stalker

Barack Obama is stalking me ...

He really is. I get almost an email a day from him, his campaign manager or his running mate, Joe Biden. Sometimes even his wife emails me. I admit it is because I have donated to his campaign 3 times now. Of course, the irony of this is that I am not actually "allowed" to donate to a presidential campaign as I am not a US citizen but I ticked the box anyway. I did it because I am absolutely terrified that John Mc Cain will win.

This election is fascinating to me. While I am sure that Obama will not be able to deliver on all his promises, this country has the opportunity to change and show the world that it does not support the terrible decisions Bush made during his tenure, that it is in fact a liberal and progressive country, free of old-fashioned bigotry and prepared to help it's people.

The reality, however, scares me. The country is so divided. Look at an election map showing which states are Democrat or Republican, and you will see a big red area in the middle, while the East and West coasts are resolutely blue. I believe that race is not as important at this stage of the campaign now (it should never have been in the first place of course) and it is now a pure left-wing versus right-wing decision and a matter of who can demonstrate that they have the interest of the "average American" at heart. I am not convinced that Middle America is ready to make the change and cannot imagine the consequences of having yet another aging, conservative leader at its helm.

I am awaiting the 4th of November with bated breath, watching the candidates debates with a passion I haven't felt since Le Pen came close to be elected in France a few years back. I will be starting a new course at NYU next week on the language of American Politics - studying some of the most important political documents and speeches from the days of the Constitution to present time. I'm sure it will be fascinating and will give me more insights into the intriguing political landscape of this country.

Intervention

Marie staged an "intervention" on me for Labor Day weekend, a few weeks ago.

I was at least 2 weeks past my "I have to get out of the City" point and was feeling sick and frankly quite low. We had talked about going to the Caribbean that weekend but by the time we looked into it more seriously, the prices had soared so I was bracing myself for a long weekend in New York, while desperately needing some peace and quiet, away from the noise and the energy of this place.

But Marie came to the rescue and called me announcing that she had booked us train tickets to Poughkeepsie and a motel room in Kingston, Upstate New York.

To be honest, we really had no idea where we were going but we were on a mission to relax and take long walks in the woods. Exhausted but excited, we boarded a train from Penn Station to Poughkeepsie at lunch time on Saturday, but not before loading up on a stack of gossip magazines and a copy of the New York Mag of course. The journey itself was great as we travelled north past beautiful lakes and white picket fence houses. I love American trains as they are so large that they almost feel more like a plane. They also have old-fashioned controllers who punch your ticket on the train, which I find so quaint.

We arrived at Poughkeepsie Station where we expected to take a train to Kingston, only to be told that there were none and that we would have to take a 45 minutes taxi trip. Little did we know at the time that it would be one of the many taxi rides we would take that weekend ...

Our motel in Kingston was like the ones you see in the movies - a few buildings of connected rooms, with doors facing the car park but ours had the added advantage of a swimming pool. When we checked in, the clerk asked for our car registration number and when we told her we didn't have one, she looked at us as if we were aliens. We hadn't thought of renting a car, assuming that the country side in the US is the same as in Europe in that you can walk everywhere. How mistaken were we!

We ventured out of our motel only to find a residential street on one side and the motorway on the other. We wanted to find a convenience store to buy water and cigarettes and therefore bravely crossed the motorway on foot ... yes, you read this right. It was quite something ... But there was no store to be found so we went into a pizza restaurant to grab a coffee. The owner chatted to us and upon hearing our plight called his girlfriend (who was on her way over, by car of course) so she could pick up some cigarettes for us! And he refused to let us pay for the coffee ... at least, we found out quickly how friendly people were.

The lack of car was not such an issue in the end however, as we called upon the services of the local taxi company to take us to and from places we wanted to see. They thought we were mad too and perhaps this is a sign that Marie & I have spent too much time in Manhattan already ...

On Sunday, we decided to walk around the Ashokan Reservoir, which provides water to New York City. The size of it took us by surprise as it spans 34km2 but the sense of wide open space was amazing and very calming. We quickly realised that we would only be walking a very small portion of it and strolled along the banks, admiring the lush trees and the completely clear blue sky.
When we were ready to leave we realised much to our horror that we had no mobile phone reception and therefore no means to call a taxi! Thankfully, our driver had originally dropped us off near the only police station in the area (with the words "this will be a safe place for you to come back to", which we laughed at at the time) so we made our way back there and asked the nice police men if we could use their phone ...
We decided to go into Kingston itself, which is a lovely town, set by the Hudson river. The city was in a very cheerful mood as the annual Irish Festival was taking place, meaning that there were a number of stands in the streets and bands performing. I'm not sure how many Irish descendants still remain in the town, but it certainly looked like everyone wanted to be Irish for the day! This made for terrific people watching and it was wonderful to witness the sense of community and neighbourhood of a place where everyone seemed to know each other.

We ended our trip with a long, leisurely boat tour on the Hudson and got back to New York refreshed and ready for City life again.

Yankee

My long-time friends Sam and Claire came into town for a few days and had the genius idea of buying some tickets to see one of last baseball games at the 85 years old Yankee Stadium, which is soon to be demolished (the new stadium is being built just across the road). Although I cannot be described as a sports lover by any stretch of the imagination, I really wanted to go so that at least my first baseball game would be a historic one.

The excitement was palpable as soon as we got off the subway at 161st street - probably the most northern point I have ever been to in the City (cue jokes about me getting a nose bleed of course).

The game had already started but crowds were still slowly making their way into the stadium. There was no doubt that this was indeed a historical moment for die-hard Yankees fans as proved by the 55,000 or so of them who came that day. Our very first stop, once inside, was to the merchandise shop where we bought big foams hands and branded caps. The next stop was at the food counter to get a hotdog and a diet coke. I always said that if I ever saw a game, it would be like an American: waving a big hand in the air and eating junk food.

While I was excited to be there, I fully expected to be bored and leave the game early, rather than stay for the 3 or 4 hours it lasts. Much to my surprise and enjoyment, I was not. I never really got into the game though as I don't understand the rules. Sam patiently tried to explain them to me but my eyes would glaze over each time. Nothing to do with Sam's communication skills at all but my brain is somehow unable to process the rules of sports or card games for that matter! So the excitement I felt came from the atmosphere, the beautiful weather, the constant clapping, singing along to the frequent musical interludes (mostly cheesy 80s anthems - think "Rocky" and "Enter the sandman"), the messages displayed on the huge TV screens (there was a marriage proposal of course) and making as many hand-related jokes as possible.

We did look like complete tourists in our attires and I didn't help matters by asking Sam rather loudly, half way through the game, who the Yankees were actually playing against ... But we didn't care and had a fantastic time.

If enjoying baseball games does not make me sort of an American, I guess that getting the green card I am applying for might ... I promise not to lose any of my French/Britishness though!

Pride

Having a Gay Best Friend (GBF) may seem like a terrible cliche, the stereotype side-kick to girls around the world ... But I have always had a GBF from as long as I can remember - although unbeknown to me at times as my first male best friend when I was a teenager was gay but didn't come out until we were in our mid-twenties.

Any girl will understand me - there is nothing better than having a gay guy as one of your closest friends. You love and trust each other to an almost romantic level, but without any messy attraction getting in the way. Yet he is still a man - a man who tells you that you look pretty in that dress or that your hair looks good today, but also tells you that your bum does look rather big in that outfit!
In a way, it is the best of both worlds - you can check out boys together and talk about relationships, yet your GBF will be the one telling you the hard and hurtful truth when a guy is messing with you, whereas your girlfriends will try to understand and make excuses for him (in the very same way you are).

I feel very unapologetic about how much I enjoy hanging out with gay boys, which is why I was very happy to join Larry and some of his friends to watch the New York Gay Pride a few weeks back. The atmosphere was wild as rain poured on the most eclectic set of people I have ever seen gathered in one place - from punks to rastafarians, bikers, yuppies, hipsters, families and OAPs ... all waiving the rainbow flag.

I had a blast, standing up on the banquette of the very packed Duplex (one of NY's flagship gay bars) as I was craning my neck to watch the parade, dancing to classic club anthems and sipping Pride specials (vodka & pink lemonade). We went to a house party afterwards and I remember being perched up high on a fire escape and watching the colourful crowds below causing chaos in the streets while discussing sex and the City (and I don't mean the TV show) with a boy wearing nothing more than a tiny pair of speedos and glittery eye shadow ...