Day 12 - New York City
Today’s goal was to get out to have a look at the Statue of Liberty, so we set off all the way downtown to the ferries at Battery Park. There was a one-hour queue for tickets, followed by a two-hour queue for security, which were a bit daunting until Katie had the good idea of one of us lining up in each queue at the start - genius!
After queuing like cattle for a few hours and going through security, we finally ended up on the ferry heading out into the bay. It was a foggy day, but still gave us great views of the Statue as we arrived at Liberty Island. The weather cleared a bit as we were wandering around the island and we took plenty of photos of the Statue and the Manhattan skyline.
A few hours later, we were back on the ferry that next stopped at Ellis Island. We decided not to stop off there as, once again, there were queues to get on and off the ferry. We stayed on and were soon back at Battery Park.
All trip, we were looking forward to the evening and our booking at Daniel, one of the five three-Michelin-starred restaurants in New York. We ventured into the upper-east side and found the place easily. The restaurant was beautiful, decorated with flowers throughout and was arranged like a big dining room with plenty of service and no music. We had a corner seat and could look over the whole room.
We started with some champagne, although they no longer served Katie’s favourite, we managed to find a pretty good replacement with the help of the sommelier. We settled on the three-course option, but everything on the menu looked amazing. The appetiser from the kitchen was an ‘homage to peas’, including a pea puree and a small lobster salad. That was followed by our entrees: Katie had the peekytoe crab salad and I had the wild herb ravioli with ricotta. Then the main event: my ‘trio of milk fed pig from Quebec’ was outclassed by Katie’s ‘duo of beef’ - although both were simply amazing and were accompanied by a beautiful bottle of Corton-Pougets burgundy. Dessert, though, was still to come… I ordered the blackberry and fromage blanc vacherin, while Katie ordered the ‘warm guanaja chocolate coolant, with liquid caramel, fleur de sel and milk sorbet’. In addition to these amazing dishes, the kitchen also offered freshly-cooked madelines and a range of tiny flavour-infused chocolates with our coffee and espresso martini. Pretty much a perfect meal if you ask us!
We reluctantly left Daniel and headed south, wandering down Madison Avenue. We didn’t’ get too far before we thought we’d drop into the bar at Gilt for a nightcap or two. A couple of cocktails later, we continued window-shopping down 5th Avenue until we got to the theatre next to our apartment building. There was a crowd gathering out the front, so we had a look to see what the commotion was - Ben Stiller was just to leave from the stage door and we hung around for a few minutes to watch him come out to his car and sign a few autographs on the way. We’ll see him in action when we go to see his play on Saturday night!
