Sunday 10 March 2013

New York Part 2

Saturday 9th March

Today was another 4am wake up, my hope is that my body will now just stay unadjusted and I'll be fine when we get back to the UK on Tuesday

When I could rouse Jacqueline, around 8am, which she keeps reminding me was 'too early', we went for breakfast at Grand Central Starion, a place called Juniors

I had French toast and bacon, and the bacon was lovely. The French toast was...well...put it this way, it was no Hovis Best of Both.

Today was the day we'd decided to head to The Rockefeller Center, partly to do a tour of NBC studios. That tour was sold out for today so is booked for tomorrow. However, whilst there we did the tour of the Center itself, which I have to say was very interesting.....across the 21 (I think) buildings there was $1 million dollars of artwork, commissioned by Mrs Rockefeller....it doesn't seem excessive now, but remember this was the 1930's...she was also the only person allowed to go over budget during the build, $885,000 over budget in fact







After the tour we took the elevator up 67 floors to the viewing platforms, and the only word to describe the view is breathtaking, it truly was astounding, as you can see from the pictures....though they don't do it justice






We left the Rockefeller and headed for 57th Steet for the Nike shop, I'm trying to pick up some weightlifting shoes, though this is proving tricky since even the Nike store doesn't stock them....the search continues

By this point we were very close to Central Park, and you can't sensibly go to New York and not visit Central Park. We went for a horse drawn carriage ride around the park and then walked down to watch the skaters on the ice rink. It's no Eastleigh Rec, but it is pretty impressive all the same









Ok route back to the hotel, we saw the holy grail for Apple fans, the glorious glass box in the middle of the street, it seemed rude not to visit...and buy a couple of things as well :-)



After a quick change back at the hotel we were off to meet friends for dinner, by sheer coincidence they had booked to visit New York at the same time so it seemed silly to not meet up, they also joined us for the basketball this evening

We were in good company at Madison Square Garden, with both John McEnroe and Phillip Seymour Hoffman present, and it was certainly an impressive spectacle. We've decided we're not really cut out for American sports...our visit to the baseball in Toronto a few years back was not a great success, but it was still a very enjoyable evening and we can now tick it off the list of things we wanted to do...well, more my list than Jac's in fairness



Back to the hotel properly just after 10pm, just under 14 hours after leaving this morning, we've certainly done our share of walking for today...and tomorrow....and next week

The plan is an early ish bus tour tomorrow so we shall see what the day brings

Bye bye for now

No comments: