Last day in NYC

Last day today and we woke up to heavy rain. Flynn wanted to see the Statue of Liberty so we caught the subway down to the south end and caught a glimpse of her through the rain. Apparently that was enough, so we bundled back on the subway and went up to little Italy. There is not much there except for restaurants although Flynn managed to buy yet another t shirt- making 5 in total. The trains are full of buskers with a wide range of style and talent. We have seen a lone drummer, an acapella duo, a Latino guitar player and an accordion group.  The boys have an ambition to go to every Hard Rock in the world so we went up to Yankee Stadium to tick off number 10. The Bronx was pretty seedy although I imagine when there is a game on it is fine. After a spin through Nintendo World and the Lego store, we went to The Museum of Modern Art for the free Friday afternoon entry. The boys quite liked seeing the recognizable works - starry night, waterlillies and Andy Warhol's Marilyn.i managed to fit in a quick Macy's visit on the way back to the hotel. Shopping overall n New York has been disappointing. I thought there would be more small interesting shops like Melbourne. We had dinner in the room- pizza and cheesecake and started packing. 

The Big Apple

We have walked a LOT, to the point that all the boys have complained at various times about having sore feet and sore legs - and that usually doesn't happen. This Big Apple place is definitely a bit bigger than its Australian cousin, The Big Banana. That's another surprising thing about New York too... fruit. There is good quality fruit in stalls on the sidewalks everywhere and people are walking around eating their 25c bananas, etc. That seems un-stereotypical-American for some reason. I haven't seen a single person eating a pretzel. That seemed to be what everyone did in the classic documentaries about New York that I used to watch in the eighties (shows like Diff'rent Strokes). Jason

Is that who I think it is?

Anna said that there must be celebrities just walking around Manhattan, doing their shopping, etc. because lots of 'stars' lives in the city (Katie Holmes was selected example). I said it was unlikely to see anyone, but then the next day Usher walked past me, texting. Anna was a bit miffed that she missed out on the celebrity spotting moment - it was the only time all day we'd split up (I think I may have stopped to take photos and everybody else crossed the road & continued walking). Since then, Anna has been keen to spot a celebrity. Yesterday, Anna decided to go into a shop and have a look at a jacket that was hanging up in the window. It was the first thing Anna has stopped to look at so far. As she was inside with Campbell, Josh said to me, "A whole bus load of people waved to a person just then and he waved back, do you think he's a celebrity?" I got him to point out who it was & there was a guy walking away from us with shoulder-length grey hair and a bouncy walk. I said that it could be Billy Connolly, so Josh, Flynn and I chased this old bloke until he got to his apartment... we caught up with just in time. Yep, it was Billy Connolly.Anna wasn't impressed. Not because she doesn't think much of Billy Connolly (although she did fall asleep during the show when we saw him perform live), she was unimpressed that she still hasn't spotted a celebrity. We've got one day left here, so hopefully Katie Holmes will be hanging out the same places we do today. Oh yeah, there was also a lady in a red and white outfit that at first glance, Josh, Anna and myself all thought it was someone dressed as Santa Claus... but sadly, it wasn't. Jason

Too much food

We started the morning with a trip to the Sony Wonder Technology Lab. Parts of it were pretty fun (lucky I am not a surgeon as I was very bad at open heart surgery with a robotic tool).We then hiked uptown to Dylan's candy bar. It was two stories of different lollies and chocolates along with a soundtrack of every inane song they could think of with a link to candy. There we fulfilled the boys' greatest fantasy, buying the ten scoop ten topping sundae. I never want to see ice cream again but we managed to get through it. We had the pleasure of sitting n a giant cupcake to eat the monstrosity. Having stupefied the boys with food, we did a bookshop crawl to a few huge bookstores. I ducked into a clothing shop for about 2 seconds and missed seeing Billy Connely go into his apartment. I missed Usher as well a few nights ago so the celebrity score for me is Zero. Weighted down with purchases we struggled back to the hotel for a rest. Dinner was in times square at Chevys. Flynn made quite sure that the waitress thought it was his birthday and accordingly received a sombrero. The meals were enormous and two would have fed the five of us. On the way back we were accosted by a times square comedian. The boys abandoned me and I finally had to pay him a dollar to get rid of him. We are now back at the hotel doing washing.

Birthday dinner

We finished off the day with a subway ride to the East Village. We caught up with a friend I have not seen since year 7. It is amazing how people stay the same, even after 27 years. After the catch up we walked about ten blocks to our dinner destination, an Italian restaurant that Flynn chose before we left home. The food was good with Campbell's veal scallopini taking the prize and my artichoke ravioli a close second. We were about to go looking for an icecream shop when Cambo spotted 16 handles - a frozen yoghurt shop where you picked different flavors of yoghurt and different toppings. The combinations the boys ended up with were pretty elaborate - no restraint shown. We rolled off to the subway stop and headed home.  Things I have noticed in New York: 1. People speak very loudly on their mobiles about inappropriate topics (eg abortion, cheating boyfriends and fights) 2. Very few women wear makeup. 3. Lots of people talk to themselves. 4. Everyone likes to honk their car horns.

All walked out

Day three of walking and we are a little sorry and sore. Depending on who you ask, we have sore feet, ankles, knees or hips. No one wants to sit about though so we are pushing through. Today we breakfasted in our room with cereal and milk that we had purchased. Since it was Flynn's birthday we had a little present session and gave him various pouches from our trip so far. His favourite was a glass jellyfish from the Museum of Natural History. We walked down to Chelsea markets where everyone found something to their liking- a cookie shop, a kitchen shop and a bookstore. We then wandered our way east to Flynn's restaurant of choice, Peanut Butter and Co. We all had various peanut butter sandwiches, ranging from Cambo's peanut butter, maple syrup and bacon, to the chicken, chilli peanut butter and pineapple relish one shared by Jason and I. Flynn bought a t-shirt which is one of his standard purchases when we go somewhere. The are was lovely with narrow stree lined streets and cute shos but we pressed on for an aborted trip to Chinatown before going back to the hotel for a recharge.

Museum mania

We started off a little later today, getting out the door at 8am. There was a diner a block uptown that had an $8 all you can eat deal so we loaded up on breakfast food. We braved the subway and found it to be relatively easy, although we got off a few stops too early. Central park was lovely in the fresh morning air and we walked through the park to get the Museum of Natural History. What a dud - nothing interactive, nothing hat looked like it had been updated for 20 years and a very old fashioned look and feel. Picture a diorama with a stuffed tiger in front of a painted background....Josh decided that it was his life's greatest desire to see all the Night at the Museum characters so we trailed around for a few hours. The Easter Island statue was there but Ghengis Khan was nowhere to be found. A little weary, we trudged through the ramble in Central Park to get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. this was excellent but by this time we had walked for 5 hours and were struggling. We did a whistle stop tour of the Greek/roman section, the Egypt rooms and the modern art part (Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol). The museum was fabulous but we were done. We sat out on the front steps to listen to an acapella group and then dragged our feet over two blocks to Lexington Candy Shp- a diner that looks like it has not been updated for 50 years. We revived ourselves with ice cream treats and continued on to catch the subway home. After an hour rest we trooped out for dinner at Carmine's. It was worth venturing out again- huge family style plates of great food. We are feeling quite confident now with the layout and the crowds.