'Its the city that never sleeps, the big A'*

SATURDAY 29th DECEMBER 2012

Huffle phoned home last night and we spoke to Small and Moo. All is well.

We managed to spend an hour in Macy's yesterday evening, trying to download the photos and post the blog, at the same time as following in the footsteps of ELF. We went right up to the ninth floor in the lift and then came down every escalator. Mostly wooden and becoming more modern the closer to the ground we got. We bought a Christmas decoration in the 70% sale and taught the checkout girls their that their tax is nothing compared to Toronto's. They thought the 8% tax in New York was the highest.

Walking towards Times Square at night is brighter than in the day. The billboards, the flashing videos, the constant advertisements lit up the place like a big moon. (Incidentally it was a full moon last night - oooowwwwww). There seemed to be even more people about. A lot of people dressed as Elmo, SpongeBob, Star Wars Characters, Pooh - all charging money to have their photos taken with them. It seems it is the thing to do.

We seemed to walk and walk and walk last night, my foot hurt lots and we were hungry. We went to Radio City and through Rockerfeller Centre - which were both heaving. We carried on to try and find something to eat and came across a bar that boasted burgers and beer. We went in. I had a lovely veggie burger, handmade, lots of lentils and beans and vegetables. It had a hot salsa and we shared sweet potato fries. Huffle had a Bison Burger. We sat for a while, read our guide book, tried the smallest Hot Fudge Sundae in the world, which in Huffle's words was just 'meh'. We walked back through Times Square - still busy.

Back to the hotel, tired, weary, watched a couple of episodes of friends and fell asleep in our tiny bed with our flat pillows, only to be woken by a hundred church bells in the early hours of the morning (don't actually know what time it was, but it seemed very early). We were surprised to wake up properly this morning at 8:30am. We thought the city would be alive, honking, screaming, shouting, singing already.

We got up, went out in search of breakfast and found a strange little place that gave us toast, butter and jelly (jam) and a tea and coffee (well they may have been done under the trade descriptions act as there was no actual tea or coffee in the water!). With the promise of 'proper' coffee later, we headed off to the subway and caught a train to Central Park. It was colder this morning than yesterday and we were bundled up in hats, gloves, scarves, coats, hoods.

Lincoln Square was our first port of call. We were aware that Wynton Marsalis was playing at the Dizzy Gillespie Jazz Club so we wanted to see if we could get tickets. The man at the ticket desk said he couldn't sell them as you had to contact the club upstairs. He gave us a telephone number and a wry smile as he said Good Luck. We managed to get up to the club but there was no-one there except for a man who was there to beg for tickets for his 17 year old son. Apparently all tickets were sold out except for a few tomorrow night but you had to give a donation of 'two fifty'. Now my silly husband said, "of course, no problem". I dragged Huffle away and whispered "he meant $250 you Wally". Knowing there was no way we would pay that and it would probably be each person. Like they would ask for $2.50 - it wouldn't even be worth their while to ask for that!!! We left and walked into Central Park. It was lovely.

Lots of trees, boulders, grassy parts. We could imagine it would be a lovely place to stroll around and have a picnic on in the Summer. However, we were freezing. We walked to the Alice in Wonderland Statue. Made of bronze, it was beautiful. The park reminded us of Hyde Park. I loved the fact that it wasn't all flat, you couldn't see much of it without walking round the winding tree lined paths. There were lots of horse and carriages and cycle pulled rickshaws.

We walked around a 'ramble' spot and saw lots of squirrels making their homes warmer and lots of lovely little birds. We saw a Cardinal and his lady friend and a bird of prey. Then it started snowing. Huge big flakes of snow, the size of 50 pence pieces. We started to walk towards a lake and saw a boathouse restaurant. We popped in for a warm and a coffee (not the best one - in a paper cup - hate paper cups).

We walked around some more. We saw John Lennon's Memorial Mosaic 'Imagine'. It carried on snowing but didn't really settle. We walked out of the park and looked at some buildings. Lots of people were crowded around at the front of a building, there was a guard at the front not letting people go anywhere near the building, not sure why it was so precious. It had two huge lit beacons on the front and lots of signs telling people not to go in!! We couldn't find it in the guide book, wonder what it was?

Next we got back on the subway - we have seen many 'interesting people' today - and went to the Financial District and saw the new tower they are building. We ended up in a queue for tickets to the Memorial Site of 9/11 but we would have had to wait around for at least two hours so we didn't bother. We tried to see the new site but it was all fenced off. Instead we had homemade soup and half a sandwich in a lovely little place.

We walked to the Staten Island Ferry and were just in time to run past the closing doors (Indiana Jones style). The ferry was free. It rained and rained and rained. The view of Manhattan could have been great but instead it was misty, wet and unclear. We passed by the Statue of Liberty which again could have been a great view except that it was rainy, misty and unclear. We met a couple from Birmingham, England who took a photo for us and we took one for them.

When we got to Staten Island, 70% of the passengers went straight back on the returning boat. Not us, we walked right along the bus terminal and right back again as we couldn't find anything to see or do, having then missed the returning ferry, we had to buy a packet of Rolo's and wait for 30 minutes watching the rain.

We sat inside the ferry on the way back. It was Captained by Nelson Mandella - it was his voice over the tannoy anyway! It was too cold and too wet to be outside. Although just as it came back to Manhattan, we quickly jumped outside and took a few photos. Back at the Financial District we looked for a decent coffee shop where we could also get a nice pastry. NOTHING OPEN! We walked back to the subway and found Andrews Coffee Shop near to our hotel. Huffle asked them if they could make me a freshly brewed cup of coffee. YES! Eight hours after I woke I finally get a decent coffee. I thought New Yorkers drank coffee! Where do they go? We had a piece of cake between us called 'outrage'. It was good.

Still raining, we dodged into Macy's to see if we could use their wifi to download today's photos but the connection wasn't fast enough. So, no photos today. At this point I also have no way of posting this blog.

Huffle and I came back to the hotel with one wet foot each. We phoned home and spoke to both boys and Moo. The boys are well behaved and eating well. It snowed a lot today there and they played in the garden. Smallest said they made a desert! Small asked if we saw The Statue of Liberty and was very pleased we had because he guessed we would. He also asked if we had eaten an apple. We hadn't! Smallest asked if our picture (we sent some home yesterday) of Huffle in a revolving door was yesterday, YES IT WAS - he was also pleased because he had guessed that too! I forgot to tell the boys that I jumped across a zebra crossing just like ELF, only on the white ones!

This evening we went back to 'Eataly' for some dinner. We queued to book a table and were told we would have to wait for 35 minutes. We were fine with that as we wanted to get a glass of red and walk around perusing the wonderful things for sale whilst smugly drinking our wine, knowing our table for dinner was just minutes away. We strolled around drunkenly, taking photos. We love the fact that people poddle around, glass in one hand, shopping trolley in the other. What a great way to shop. After a quick 35 minutes (not too quick for Huffle to down nearly a large glass of wine) we sat at a bar style table. Huffle had Papardelle Pasta with wild mushrooms and pancetta, he said it was beautiful and I had a Butternut and Amaretti Cookie Ravioli with Butter and Sage. Mine was the best pasta I have EVER eaten. They also had wifi available so I got to post a couple of photos onto Instagram (you can see our dinner on here - stuandsamhall) and sent some photos back home to the Boys and Moo. After we finished eating and drinking, we walked round the shop and stopped at the Espresso Bar where I had quick caffeine fix followed by an ice cream. I had Salted Caramel again and Huffle had a Raspberry Sorbet. gorgeous.

We left eventually, it was snowing again. We were right outside of the Flat Iron so we looked and photographed it and the went into Madison Square Park. It was really cold so we looked for a bar. We thought about going into a bar with live music but it looked a bit too trendy for Huffle. We walked a bit longer and ended up in a Sports bar. One drink later, we left and came back to the hotel. I forgot to say earlier that our room had not been cleaned or even entered! I had a shower and left a message on the mirror just in case any cleaners might come in.

There have been lots of flights cancelled from New York because of the weather. Some places had 12" of snow today. They are expecting some tonight. Hopefully not to much, and hopefully our flight will be fine on Monday. Tomorrow we are planning to get a train over to Hoboken NJ to see Cake Boss!

*a comment to no-one from a random security doorman standing in a doorway last night.

Edited later and photos added (Sunday)

 

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