After spending the first part of our New York experience at the Lower East Side, we moved to a new hotel at the 58th street near Central Park to explore different regions of Manhattan. The Hudson Hotel is less than 5 minutes away from the Columbus Circle and offers a unique experience with its large and lovely decorated public areas and its really really small guest rooms.

However, as we spent most of the day with moving (check-in was possible before 3 pm), we did not go to the Central Park as previously planned but took a short walk along Broadway towards Times Square (easily reachable by foot) until we found the probably best and most authentic Thai restaurant outside Thailand: Pure Thai Cookhouse.

Since this post is rather small compared to previous ones, we would like to share some untold experiences we had so far in New York, which were definitely the highlights of our stay. While many tourist just run from one attraction to the next, we were lucky enough to already find some good local friends at our hotel on the first day, who gave us a list with the best (rather secret) locations to explore the local underground punk and rock music scene. And so we ended up at probably one of the coolest places you can find in Lower East Side (and literally right around the corner from our hotel): Arlene’s Grocery. Arlene’s Grocery is a music bar with a great but small concert location in the underground. Its name comes from the previous use of the rooms by a butcher as well as grocery store. Getting there for a quick beer, we ended up dancing and singing for hours to life bands covering The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Green Day (of course including American Idiot, but “coincidentally” the spotlight did not work during that song) and Blink 182, and all with a wonderful and friendly atmosphere and an audience of about 60 at peak time.

Another great place to visit is the locally well-known Brooklyn Brewery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. After we went to Dumbo to see the skyline of Manhattan, we met a local artist and fan of Svenja in the north park of Brooklyn (the way there was rather complicated, as we had to get back to Manhattan first becasue there is no direct connection between the two parts of Brooklyn). The Brooklyn Brewery is an amazing bar with delicious and cheap beer right inside the actual location of the Brewery. Once more, planned for a quick beer, we ended up staying till almost midnight, talking to locals and doing calligraphy with the other artist, before he showed us the park with the best view onto the “night skyline” and we headed back to our hotel.

At this point I just quickly want to thank all of our local guides for the great experiences we made which were only possible thanks to them and clearly changed our thinking about the U.S.