New York City

Last weekend was a 4 day long weekend as Monday was Presidents Day and Stuart had worked back at school till 8pm for 2 nights and was able to trade that off for the following Tuesday off.  So with Jakeb here, we decided it would be a good chance to go to NYC and leave Joshuah here and the 2 of them could go snowboarding.
We had a get together with Stuart's staff on the Friday night which was lovely, then Jakeb took us to the airport to catch a flight at midnight, landing at JFK airport at 6.30 am, Saturday.  We caught the subway (where a lovely older couple gave us their name and address to stay with them in Salt Lake City...they were fascinated by our story!) into the city to our hotel - Holiday Inn on 57th St and 9th Ave.  I'm glad I had Stuart and Google Maps to help navigate as I would probably still be on the train!!
We dropped our bag off at the hotel and went and had breakfast, where we sat next to a couple of girls from Sydney who recognised Stuart's "Mountain Design" jacket, so assumed we were Aussies! When we broke into our "strewths" and "bewdy mates", they found they were correct!
The first tourist stop for us was the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) as recommended by Jakeb!  Thanks for nothing Jakeb!!!  We are not interested in art, we don't understand it and it we found it to be pretentious and BORING!! So why did we go there?? My place to visit was the M&M store which maybe Jakeb meant, instead of MoMA...perhaps he got his M's mixed up?  It was a 3 storey shop dedicated to M&M's.  It was bright, full of gimmicky paraphernalia and far more exciting than MoMA AND we got to buy some very, very colourful M&M's!!

Times Square was next on the list of things to see and it is such a "buzzing' place.  Everyone there was smiling, laughing and taking loads of photos.  I found it fantastic and loved watching all the people, billboards, traffic and noises!  I was looking forward to seeing it at night!

We then headed down to Central Park.  A week earlier Jakeb had been there during the blizzard and it was covered in snow.  When we were there, the snow had melted, but it was still beautiful and it is such a sight to see with all the tall buildings hugging it.  It is one of those iconic places that I thought I would never get to see and it didn't disappoint.

We came across 6 young people singing in this building and it was so beautiful.  There were no musical instruments, just their voices.  It reminded me of being in Cambridge years ago,  and coming across a choir who were practicing.  Their voices were magnificent and I could have stayed and listened to them for hours.

We went back to the hotel as it was about 4pm by this time and I had a nap while Stuart went and queued for tickets to a show on Broadway in Times Square.  Unfortunately he came back with tickets to see Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf a play that has been on Broadway for 50 years.  Can I again be an ignoramus and say WE HATED IT!!  We were tired from being up for 36 hrs anyway, but it was a play with 4 characters who spent the entire play arguing with each other!  At the end of the 2nd act and after Stuart had nodded off  "too many times to count" (and quietly snored) we left.  We were the only ones to leave and after "Googling" what happened in the end, we should have left earlier as it didn't get any better!
Our hotel was about a 15 minute walk from Times Square and only a 5 minute walk to Central Park and Columbus Circle subway, so a pretty good location.
Stuart had read that you could get cheap tickets for Broadway in Brooklyn with much smaller crowds than Times Square, so the next morning we caught the subway to Brooklyn, found the place where the tickets were sold, only to discover they weren't open on a Sunday!!  It didn't matter.  I was happy to be in Brooklyn on a Sunday morning with Neil Diamond's Brooklyn Roads going through my head over and over!
We then caught a bus to the waterfront so we could see the Brooklyn Bridge.  As mentioned earlier, my sense of direction and ability to read maps is rubbish. After looking at all the bridges in front of us and commenting on the number of skyscrapers on the opposite side of the river and the Statue of Liberty to our left, Stuart announced to me that that we were in fact looking at Manhattan!  I had no idea! And I was actually standing under the Brooklyn Bridge!  Just as well Stu was with me as it would have gone unnoticed.  (When we were in the UK, I was supposed to be navigating us to Ben Nevis - the highest mountain in the British Isles - and I didn't see it as we drove past it!!!)  It was bitterly cold and windy but a spectacular sight!

We caught the water taxi across the Hudson River to Manhattan and ended up in the Financial District.  Being a Sunday afternoon it was very, very quiet and we were able to wander through it easily.  Again, seeing all these places we had heard of was fantastic.

Stu outside the NY Stock Exchange

It was about 3pm by this stage and getting colder and colder as we walked to the World Trade Centre Memorial.  The Memorial was very well done and is still drawing huge crowds.  It is 2 huge pits in the ground where the original WTC buildings stood.  There is a constant waterfall flowing into each pit (which had partly frozen) and the names of those who died engraved in the walls. There are the names of those who died at the WTC's as well as those who died on the planes and at the Pentagon.  I was particularly moved to see the names of women and "their unborn child'.

What really hit me was how narrow the roads are and how difficult it must have been for the Emergency Services to attend the scene.  It is quite incomprehensible.  There is a small, old church,St Paul's, across the road from the site that was virtually untouched.  They are now building a new World Trade Centre...which will be the highest building in the US.

We caught the Subway back into the city and unintentionally came across Grand Central Station...a magnificent building, that had first really come to my attention when we were in Canada.  We went to a beautiful place in Canada in Jasper NP called Maligne Lake.  We went on a boat tour and stopped at a place called Spirit Island.  In the 1930's, an amateur photographer took a photo of Spirit Island and it won 1st prize in a KODAK photography competition.  The prize was to get the photo enlarged to billboard size and to be hung in Grand Central Station in NY, where millions of people got to see it over the years.  I really liked that story, so was glad to see the building (the photo was no longer there). Again, my observational skills were lacking as I took a photo from a restaurant in GCS, which I later found out was owned by Michael Jordan....I didn't notice it while I was there, dammit!!

We then walked to Times Square to the Ticketing Booth to purchase cheap tickets to another show on Broadway.  Because it was so cold there was noone in the queue, so we got two tickets to see Mamma Mia.  We had seen it in Melbourne, but didn't mind going again and had a great night.  The theatres on Broadway are so much smaller than in Australia, but it gives it a much more personal perspective and you are so close to the stage regardless of where you are sitting.
When the show finished we headed back into Times Square where it was SO COLD!  - 12C and a wind blowing, but again such a vibrant place, that you can't help but be happy!

Stuart even managed to get himself on a Billboard in Times Square!!!

The next day we left the hotel early to get to the Empire State Building.  The earlier you get there, the smaller the queue.  We bought some tickets from one of the sellers outside the building and went up to the 87th floor.  It was a beautiful day with clear blue skies, so the views were incredible.  The crowds were still quite large, but you were able to get a good spot to look out over New York.

Unfortunately when we bought our tickets from the lady on the street, we were tricked into purchasing the wrong ticket.  We had wanted to go up to the 102nd floor and had paid for a ticket to do that.  When we went to go up higher, we were told we didn't have a ticket.  So after a slightly heated conversation with one of the attendants, we were sent down to speak to the Manager.  We explained what had happened to him and he suggested that you probably shouldn't get tickets from those people on the street, but rather from the staff of the Empire State Building.  To cut a long story short, he was with us for 45 mins,  was so nice to us, we got our money back and he then gave us 2 express tickets for free to go up to the 102nd floor.  So our faith in human kindness was restored.
We then went back into Time Square and queued for 1 hr to get cheap tickets to see Rock of Ages...an 80's musical.  The time passed quickly in the cold air as we chatted to 2 women from New Jersey who again were interested in our story!!!
Stuart wanted to go and ice skate at Central Park so we walked back down there and hired some skates and off he went, without one mishap!!!

After the ice skating we headed back up towards Times Square, taking little detours and again stumbled across another fairly iconic building that Elizabeth had mentioned to me the day before....the Rockefeller Centre.  There is an ice skating rink in front of the building and it was great to see it.

Rock of Ages was fantastic.  Again a really small theatre...we were 2nd seat from the back, but 15 seats from the front.  The music was great as were the cast...a really funny musical and I would highly recommend it.  Some sights walking back to our hotel on our last night in NYC.

Our final few hours in NYC before we flew back to Denver were spent at the American Museum of Natural History.   Again, something I should have known wasn't for me....however Stuart really enjoyed it and we spent a couple of hours there...Stu looking at stuff, me chatting to a woman from Brisbane, who has 5 children who are all holidaying in NY with them (the youngest was 20 yrs old).  She was at the museum with her husband and was as bored as me, and was waiting for him as well.  So we had a good chat about WA, the Kimberley, Pilbara etc and I found that far more interesting than dinosaur bones!!

 We caught the subway back to JFK airport, which took a little longer than we anticipated and arrived back in Denver at 7pm Tuesday night, where Jakeb picked us up.  It was such an amazing weekend....who would have thought we could fly to New York for a weekend!!!!

Snow....taken from the plane......