The Cruellest Month...

...although at least at the end of it, I will be rewarded with a trip to NYC and yes, I am counting down the days now, as I am skipping the country one month today. It's so lame that I am already scouring Gridskipper for possible new bars, restaurants, museums and other hangouts, even though I know I'll end up revisiting old favourites. Take this week's new and noted for NYC, from Gridskipper:

New York
• Ago: Tuscan-inspired restaurant — which also has locations in Vegas, Palm Beach and L.A. — has opened in Tribeca's Greenwich Hotel.
• Artichoke: A new East Village pizza joint, which opened last week, is already drawing comparisons to Brooklyn's legendary Di Fara.
• Dunderdon: Swedish label for utilitarian fashions opens a flagship store in Soho.
• Greenwich Grill: New Tribeca restaurant serves Mediterranean cuisine with Japanese influences.
• Greenwich Hotel: Robert DeNiro's long-awaited Tribeca hotel — 88 unique rooms, including 13 suites and a 2,500 square foot penthouse — opened yesterday.
• Joe: Popular West Village coffee shop opens a new branch in Chelsea.

I'm quite tempted by the pizza place but most excited to hear that a new branch of Joe (the best coffee in Manhattan - possibly even in the States, not that that's saying very much) has opened in Chelsea, which isn't exactly my main hangout but as I usually stay in Midtown and shop downtown, Chelsea is a convenient stop-off point for a cup of joe. Better still, the Joe website notes that they are planning to open a branch in Grand Central soon, which will be great - just a few blocks from the area I usually stay.

Aside from that, there are plenty of new shops for me to check out, and I'm hoping to see a little more of Brooklyn this time, as long as our resident tour guide, the brother's California Girl friend (who works in an office above the junction of Houston and Broadway - I am pretty damn jealous of this!), is in town. Before long, I may have to get a new Moleskine - I wouldn't start from scratch but would only transfer those establishments most worthy of repeat visits. Then again, I still have a couple of sections of my City Guide that I haven't labelled yet, so maybe I'll have to have Bars Too or Coffee, Etc. II.

Either way, I'm already very excited and hoping that the nightmare of T5 is sorted by the time I fly. I think I'll be carrying on, if possible - the last thing I want is for Bloody Awful to send my suitcase to Sri Lanka or somewhere; then I'd have to go and buy lots of clothes to replace those that had been lost... Oh, wait...