My first leg of the journey…NYC for the day. It only took me 1½ hrs to fly to NY from Detroit but took me over 2 hrs to get to my hotel from the airport. What a crock. Of course, I had to catch a shuttle from LaGuardia to JFK and another shuttle from JFK to my hotel. The biggest waste of time was waiting for an hour to catch the shuttle between airports for just a 20 minute ride. If you’re ever in a hurry to get between those two airports, couch up the $40 and take a cab!
I wanted to start out my trip to Africa by exploring a little of my own cultural background in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint Polish neighborhood. I read an article recently in the New York Times about a few places to eat that I had to try. It took me about 40 minutes to get there by subway from my hotel at JFK. It must’ve been Polish Pride day or something ‘cause everything and everyone was decked out in the red & white colors of Poland. Cars draped with Polish flags cruised down the streets honking their horns.
I stopped to eat lunch at a place called Restauracja Relax that the Times recommended for its Bigos. Bigos is Polish for Hunter’s Stew, a great “everything but the kitchen sink” type of stew. It’ s widely known as Poland’s national dish that contains many different types of meats including beef, pork, kielbasa mixed with sauerkraut, mushroom, cabbage and, in my recipe, apples. Many of the cooking traditionalists put in game meat like rabbit, pheasant, and deer, hence the name hunter’s stew. Of course, I couldn’t have that without having a big bottle of Zwyiec- a Polish beer. Although the Bigos was good, there’s nothing like your own home cooking. I wondered the streets for awhile before stopping in the Peter Pan Pastry shop (another recommendation from the Times) to try a black raspberry Paczki – punchki for all you Fat Tuesday enthusiasts. Excellent!
The rest of the day I spent traversing Manhattan by subway and walking around SOHO, Greenwich Village, a little bit of Chinatown and, oh yeah, a stop to Garrett’s popcorn shop to pick up some of the best caramel corn anywhere. You can only get it in a few places in Chicago and only at the Penn St. station at 7th and 34th street in NY. If you’re ever in Chicago or NY, you need to try the caramel along with the cheese corn!
I headed back to the hotel around 5:30 and pretty much stayed around the hotel watching some football and bs’n with people at the bar - not anticipating the 15 hour flight ahead of me on Monday morning.
