Visitors welcome

“You never know how many friends you have until you own a beach house”, read the sign, hanging in my cousin’s beach house, twenty years ago. This sign crossed my mind when we had a house with a spare room in Phibsboro. Yes, I just compared a 2.5 bed terraced house in Dublin to a holiday home at the Jersey Shore but bear with me. Phibsboro is in perfect proximity to everything anyone visiting from outside the Pale could ever need: the airport, Croke Park, the Mater.

I now know that you really don't know how many friends you have until you have a spare (pull-out) bed in New York City. Our apartment has been like a train station since the moment we arrived (and I'm delighted). I love having visitors. I love showing the city to people who have never been. I love following the lead of visitors, depending on their interests. One visitor wanted above all else to do a reformer Pilates class in Manhattan. Others wanted to do nothing but sports events. Another was dying to see Target. The tax for staying, initially, had been one night’s babysitting but now that we have a babysitter, it is two bottles of Calpol, a box of Lemsip and a Moro. All welcome.

This was a busy week as we had visitors again but these were the best visitors of all - they'd already seen everything in the city and all they wanted to do was go for brunch. Best of all, they’d researched (and reserved) the best brunch spots themselves. We started off Monday morning with a 10:15am reservation in Sadelle’s in Soho (so called because it is South of Houston Street. Am I insulting your intelligence by telling you this? Noho is North of Houston. Nomad is North of Madison Square. Dumbo is Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Tribeca - the Triangle Below Canal. Nolita - North of Little Italy. In Dublin, we briefly had Sobo. Does anyone remember that? A really specific area on the southside of the inner city, south of the Beckett and O’Casey bridges. It was dreamt up by a developer/marketing team but we had too much self respect to let it take off. You can’t make up your own nickname. Feck off.)

But back to Soho. There is no doubt once you arrive in Sadelle’s that you are in New York. The space is big with bare brick walls on all sides. There is a line out the door and despite it being a Monday morning and despite us having a reservation, we are still forced into a brief wait. Sadelle’s was vibrant and buzzy and even though in many ways it looks like, walks like and quacks like any other hip brunch place in NYC, it still managed to be different. In the centre of the room, inside a glass casing, you can see the bagels being made as quickly as you can eat them. The staff are old school professional, wearing white shirts and dickie bows and no sooner had it popped into my head that I'd like another coffee, the waitress appeared at my elbow to pour it.

Sadelle’s Tower

We had pigs in blankets for the table while we waited on the Sadelle’s Tower. The Sadelle’s Tower consists of smoked salmon, whitefish salad, salmon salad and sturgeon, served on three tiered plates (like afternoon tea) and comes with an unlimited supply of hot bagels, served on a tall spool (like a bagel Hoopla). All of the above was served with the precise timing, flair and fanfare usually reserved for the top table of a midlands wedding on the Platinum Package.

By Tuesday, our guests turned into even better guests because they did their own thing then on Wednesday we went for another breakfast. This time unplanned and to our local diner, Old John’s. There are less frills in Old John’s but I love it no less. After breakfast, we wandered on, on a coffee crawl, which led us to the MO Lounge at the Mandarin Oriental.

Mandarin Oriental

If you are willing to temporarily suspend reality as to what is a fair price to pay for a cup of coffee, it is a fabulous way to while away a few hours, with views over Columbus Circle and Central Park.

By Thursday our guests had gone and my husband and I received a text from my brother asking if either of us wanted to go to see the Knicks, Saturday afternoon with him and two friends. I was fastest finger first and had the honour.

This was a local derby (Knicks v Nets) and the Knicks were as fabulously entertaining as always. The whole experience was only enhanced by the charming Englishwoman I was sitting next to who’d never seen a game of basketball before and in a Cockney accent, would say things like “Aw, bless 'im” (when the 6 foot 9 professional athletes missed a shot) or to me “It’s like netball, innit?”. I told her that my only knowledge of netball was an occasional scene in Neighbours she said “Neighbours!” and followed it with a deliciously dirty cackle.

As extra as ever, the offplay entertainment this time included a “Simba cam”. The Circle of Life blasted across the Garden and whenever you appeared on camera with your baby, you held them up in the manner of Rafiki holding up Simba.

We rounded off the week on Sunday with one thing very Irish and another, very New York.

Very Irish: we walked to East Harlem to meet someone in a bar at 11am to buy tickets (in cash) for a GAA match.

Very New York: we were invited to birthday drinks in a bar on a Sunday afternoon. What’s New York about that I hear you ask? The birthday girl was a dog. An actual dog, as in, an Aussiedoodle. We never actually made it because right as we were leaving, the kids asked where we were going and when we told them, the 3 year old had a tantrum and flat out refused to go, yelling “You can’t have a birthday cake for a DOG!”. 3 years old and maybe the only person in this city with a bit of sense.