On Thursday our visitors headed to DC to see the sights. It turns out that they also managed to see Barack Obama in his presidential motorcade, AND got a wave!
On Friday (the 13th) we all piled into Audrey's rental car (a truly enormous SUV - it's like my car on steroids!) and headed off to New York. It maybe wasn't the best journey... Stephen isn't a great passenger and prefers to drive. Audrey was keen to get some behind the wheel time, so she insisted on driving up leaving Stephen in the passenger seat. Because of the general lack of time and planning beforehand we hadn't managed to do a route planner which turned out to be a major mistake! Our SatNav has a horrible habit of sending us off on back roads in order to save a 1/2 mile, rather than keeping us on the Interstate doing 65mph. Therefore when she tried to send us off onto the BW Parkway she was ignored, which put everyone (ie Stephen) in the mind of ignoring Mrs SatNav and doing what he thought was best (without the benefit of a map). Anyway due to that and other factors like missing the turnings when we did decide to pay attention to her, we ended up getting rather lost - twice! We went through the tunnel leading into New York 3 times!! It took us 6 hours to get there when it should have taken 4. Plus I was feeling car sick from about Baltimore...only 1 hour into the journey. We were ALL very glad to get to the hotel!!
We agreed to meet in the lobby in half an hour as we were really keen to get out and make the most of the time we had in the city that never sleeps. Stephen and I were duly down at the appointed time, but no sign of anyone else, so he paced up and down outside whilst I went over and picked up maps from the concierge.
"Can I have a couple of maps please?"
"How many? Two?"
"In fact, better make it three"
"Three isn't two you know, hehe"
"Its a bakers couple"
Which sent him off into peals of laughter. Just living up to my motto... "Make 'em laugh"
Stephen was really quite grumpy by the time everyone arrived downstairs half an hour after we agreed, so he decided he was going to head off and have a look in a camera shop we had been recommended. The rest of us headed down to Times Square as the others were hungry and wanting a coffee and sandwiches whilst they decided what to see. I had a cookie as I knew that if I ate at 5pm I wouldn't want anything later, and didn't want to get too out of sync with Stephen. The others decided that they would head down to the Staten Island ferry to take photos of the Statue of Liberty, then head to Greenwich Village. I decided that I'd wait for Stephen to catch up and then hook up later. It didn't take them long to realise that it was getting dark and they weren't going to be able to take photos...they popped back up out of the subway just as I was on the phone to Stephen. It turns out the the camera shop is closed Friday afternoon and Saturday morning in observance of the Jewish Sabbath, so he didn't manage to do heavy breathing over the selection of lenses!
We headed over to Grand Central Station, pausing briefly to look at the sights en-route. It was then that we became a moving target for Stephen and I began to get a little grumpy. I would phone and tell him where we were headed, he would get to within a couple of blocks of us, then we would head off somewhere else. I had to call a halt on 5th Avenue as I was rapidly running out of charge on my cell phone. We finally hooked up, then Stephen decided that he wanted to take a couple of photos of the Empire State through the trees in Bryant Park...here we go again! We're heading to the Empire State building, then to Macy's and Stephen is frantically trying to catch us up. I waited in a central spot in Macy's for him. By this point we were starving and grumpy as it was 8pm and we'd only had a muffin and a cookie all day, but everyone was shopping so we had to wait for the reconvergence before we could all head off. We went to our favourite NYC pizza place - Johns on 44th Street. A fantastic pizza and pitchers of beer...what could be finer?
After dinner we headed back to the hotel to get more layers of clothing and headed across to the "Top of the Rock" for our favourite view of the night time New York skyline. It was freezing cold, but the view was fantastic! I had to disappoint June when we were paying to get in. They had all gone ahead and were plucking $20 notes from purses (to the gentle flapping of moth wings) when June said "Wait, I think Stephen is paying". Well I'm sorry to disappoint but, although we are generous folks and happy to pick up the dinner tab most times, I do draw the line at paying for the sightseeing too! She looked crushed as a personal attachment had been formed to that particular bill, having had it for many years.
On Saturday we split up into two groups and did our own thing. They went down to Battery Park and took the Staten Island ferry to get a view of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline, then walked up through Chinatown, Little Italy and Greenwich Village. Stephen and I headed off to the Stage deli and had a huge plateful of delicious breakfast before heading up to Central Park. We hadn't been up there for ages and it was lovely! We really enjoyed walking about. We stopped at a stall selling photos near Strawberry Fields and were admiring one of the prints. As Stephen had a camera slung round his neck the stall holder offered to give him a discount for being a photographer. We turned to chat with him when Stephen spotted the Glasgow Rangers scarf wrapped around the guys neck. There followed a conversation whereby he tried to tell us that someone had given him the scarf and he had no idea who the team were (he sounded Russian so it was plausible!) then, when it became clear we would buy no matter what his team affiliations, he began to ask questions which made it perfectly clear he was actually a fan and knew as much about the team as Stephen! How does a Russian living in NYC get to be an ardent Rangers fan??
We began to get text messages from the others asking where we were at around lunchtime. As we were at one end of Manhattan and they were at the other we declined to meet up for lunch and just grabbed a starbucks whilst we decided what to do next. As it had been a couple of visits since we'd been down to Battery Park we decided to do that and went in search of the nearby subway station. We went in search, but we couldn't bleeding find it! We found the "Uptown only" entrances, but couldn't find the one for Downtown - which should have been just across the street. After walking round in circles for 5 minutes we decided that we'd go to the next station down and hoofed it down to 42nd Street. The train was in the station when we got there so we jumped on - failing to mind the advice I'd given to the others about having to be in the first 5 carriages as the platform at South Ferry was very short. Not wanting to do what we did last time (which was get out at each stop and sprint down a couple of carriages to get to the front!), we decided to get out early and go to see Ground Zero. To my great surprise I was okay. We hadn't been to see it before as even passing it from a distance was enough to bring on the blubbing. But rationalising, I think its because they are building so its a positive thing rather than dwelling on the tragic events of 9/11. We walked on down to Battery Park and enjoyed the sunshine. Unfortunately the sun was in totally the wrong place to take photos, but hey...
We met up with June and Douglas for drinks before dinner. They then headed off to Macy's for a little retail therapy and Stephen and I headed to Ruths Chris for a romantic Valentine's meal. We had a lovely relaxed evening. I think the G&T's in Ruths Chris are particularly strong...these were triple venti G&T's!! After that we didn't care how long the steaks took to come out (the staff were apologising, but it was perfect European timing!). We even made it to dessert - a cheesecake built for 4!! It was utterly scrummy though and we did a decent amount of damage to it.
After dinner we met up with June and Dougie for a drink (where we discovered that June had left her credit card in Victoria's Secret and had to pick it up in the morning). Audrey had met up with some friends whom she worked with in NY and was enjoying a few cocktails. I think she was maybe taken by surprise by the totally lethal effects of cocktails in this country! She is not the first visitor we've had who has failed to realise that each one contains about a pint of hard liquor! Nor the first to suffer a little the following morning!!
Stephen and Douglas were up at the butt crack of dawn to get to the Blue Room and watch the Rangers v Celtic game. He got back and had a little snooze before we packed up, checked out, stored the bags with the bellhop and headed down to Times Square. We got as far as the nearest Starbucks when we got a text saying "We're ready to go now", so we headed back up to the hotel. They were a rather sorry looking bunch! No-one seemed too keen to store their bags and head out for a last walk round, so Stephen collected the car and we loaded up and headed off. Due to excellent navigation skills (ie mine) we got home without incident and in excellent time. We did have a funny moment...we stopped to gas up the car and I hopped out to get water for everyone. I dodged the traffic drawing into the gas station and made my way to the shop. Then I made my way back....wait a minute...which of the half dozen giant blue SUV's was ours? I eventually found it and was walking up to it to get in when Stephen began to drive off. WAIT FOR ME!!!! Thankfully he was only moving up to the next pump and thankfully the guy pumping the gas was trying to tell him to let me in the car....but I do wonder when he would have missed me....
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