Day 3 - New York City

Tuesday 29 December 2009. Day 3 in New York City.

Today was a much more adventurous day than day 2, but probably not as much excitement as day 1's novelty and adrenaline-filled exploration of the financial capital of the world. Besides, day 1 lasted effectively 40 hours or so for us (if you factor in that we woke up Saturday 9am SA time, flew to NYC 8am Sunday NYC time (that's 26 hours + 7 hours time difference + we stayed up until 10pm which is another 14 hours... that makes the entire day 47 hours for us).

Here's what our day consisted of:

1. 
   
   Kat woke me up this morning with a very cheery "good morning!" and I had to beg her to let me sleep in a little more. She had already opened up the curtains to display our wonderful Manhattan view.
   
   
   
2. 
   
   Experiencing truly frigid New York City weather.
   
   
   
3. 
   
   Did some walkabout in Central Manhattan.
   
   
   
4. 
   
   Shopped at World of Disney's 75% off EVERYTHING.
   
   
   
5. 
   
   Broke a bauble at World of Disney
   
   
   
6. 
   
   Visited St. Thomas Cathedral.
   
   
   
7. 
   
   Visited MOMA
   
   
   
8. 
   
   Trekked to USS Intrepid Museum
   
   
   
9. Visited Hershey's
   
10. 
    
    Visited M&M's World
    
    
    
11. 
    
    Played with Winnie (the Pooh)
    
    
    
12. 
    
    Visited Nintendo World
    
    
    
13. 
    
    Looked at the Rockefeller Centre Christmas Tree, Ice Rink, and ...
    
    
    
14. 
    
    Went to the Top of the Rock
    
    
    
15. 
    
    Experienced jazz sax. music in the subway
    

But the excitement really started the night before, when I successfully obtained a hotel booking in a 3.5 star Manhattan hotel for $100 less than our existing booking. We are now officially staying in the TUDOR hotel (URL: http://www.tudorhotelny.com/photo_gallery/photo_gallery.asp) thanks to PRICELINE.COM. Briefly, I didn't anticipate the bid to go through, but when I suddenly was told "Congratulations, your price of $250 was accepted by The Tudor Hotel At The United Nations." I broke into a cold panic and had to spend two hours comparing hotels (we were originally booked for The Bedford Hotel). I believe we've made an upgrade, and have saved ourselves some cash, but at the expense of a five minute walk to the nearest subway terminal, as opposed to living opposite the subway terminal in Grand Central Station (as well as within sight of the Empire State Building).

Our day TODAY started really well, with Kat announcing she was fit as a fiddle and ready for our day in NYC (hooray! at least we weren't going to lose another day, and could make up for lost time). My nose was still bleeding on and off, but thankfully I have received some sound advice from one of our readers and have equipped myself with the necessary tools for blocking the blood flow. We kitted ourselves up and went outside ... into the cold. At this point we must address a little factor called "temperature". Today it was 17 degrees ... well, that's not all that cold - we get it that cold in South Africa sometimes, right? WRONG! This is 17F and not 17C! 17F is equivalent to -9C!!! And we walked straight into this BELOW FREEZING temperature as soon as we left our hotel! Man was it cold! In the evening we discovered that when the wind-chill factor is accounted for, the temperature drops to 1F, or more significantly, -17C. Yes. You have read that right. -17C. Let me say that again. MINUS SEVENTEEN DEGREES CELCIUS. Kat and I were officially ice-blocks before we even reached our subway terminal, two minutes away (with the icy wind buffeting us and the cold slowing down our motor senses, everything is done at half pace). My ear-lobes were frozen, my snot was frozen, and even the cold air coming out from my mouth was now literally condensing into my scarf. Yes. We were breathing out WATER DROPLETS!

Anyway, we've made our point. It was cold. Interestingly, it's the coldest day so far, and it will be cold for some more, but today is / was the coldest.

We headed into town and hopped off to check out the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) and along the way we stumbled into Bloomingdales (thanks to my deft discovery of an entrance direct from the subway) and paid a visit to the Visitor's Centre to obtain our "free gift" and discount. The discount was 11% off any purchase, and the "free gift" came at a price. Buy anything to the value of $200 and we get a Bloomingdales bag. Well that's not a "free gift" I pointed out, but was left empty-handed nonetheless. We went to look at gloves for Kat, and I half expected to see Eugene Levy handling the gloves, but no such luck. Instead we found gloves at 50% off, marked down from $58 to $29. That's only R250'ish for a pair of basic woolen gloves. After a bit of hunting (and tom-foolery with various hats) we left empty-handed (again, half-pun intended).

We soldiered on down the road (more appropriately, down the street, across the avenues) hunting for the MOMA. We stopped off for a few sights here and there, with the significant ones being DISNEY, where we scored some great bargains on trivial DISNEY-related items (marked down 75%... and then discovering the entire store was marked down 75% anyway, so we got 75% off a 75% discounted item, which was crazy cheap). We didn't buy stuff for the sake of the sale; we found stuff people would appreciate, so a few of our nieces are going to be rather excited when we come home :) ... we also paid a visit to the Lindt store, where we were given freebie Lindt truffles (NOTE: always visit the chocolate shops in NYC, you get freebies... time it every few hours and you can score a lot; also if you break a glass bauble, just walk away and you won't be in trouble).

We popped into the St. Thomas cathedral too. This was an absolutely humbling experience. I do not think pictures can do it justice. The detail and decals are fantastic, and the sheer size of the hall puts all of our Westville churches to shame. In fact, I suspect if we take the Westville fraternal churches and put them all together, you still wouldn't exceed the sheer size and volume of this cathedral!

After leaving the cathedral, we finally made it to the MOMA. Kat skipped under the rope separating the crowds buying tickets from the entrance. Since we had our NY City Pass cards, we didn't need tickets, and there was a "FAST-TRACK" bonus on  our cards too, so I also snuck under the rope (we didn't believe this to be a problem). The problem we didn't think was there suddenly reared its ugly head in the shape of a backpack getting entangled in the rope on said author's back, and the lady managing the queues telling said tourist off. I was given a snide talking-to by the woman, and eventually allowed to pass anyway.

This was the most interesting part of the MOMA; the sign outside.

I should have paid attention to the neighbour's address :(

Inside, the place was chaos. Let's put this into perspective: we had to queue for ten minutes to get our tickets printed, even though we had already purchased our FAST TRACK cards. We thankfully didn't have to queue outside in the cold, but still had to spend ten minutes getting them from inside. Next I had to check-in my backpack since no bags were allowed in the museum. This took fifteen minutes in hot stifling conditions. Then we spent five minutes waiting for an audio tour device. Thereafter we had free reign of the MOMA exhibits. Tim Burton's was sold out, so instead we had an opportunity to view modern art at our heart's content (the only caveat being that we had arranged to meet James at the USS Intrepid Museum at 3:30pm).

The MOMA promises you'll have a whale of a time; pity this whale ran out of time (I blame the MOMA).

I learnt a lot on that day at the MOMA. Primarily, I realised while walking around the museum that I felt this strange desire to get into contact with the talented artists and really connect with them. You know, fist to jaw-bone sort of connect. I can thank MOMA for confirming one very important life-changing fact for me - I do not enjoy Modern Art. Period. After seeing a strange eight-wheeled bicycle poised in a small square of floor space, and some stupid broken shoes on display, coupled with some idiot who'd taken every single phone number out of the New York pubilc telephone directory and compiled them into a list on Chinese rice paper, I knew with absolute certainty that these sort of artists make me angry. There was some picture made out of toothpaste spit, and another sculpture called "penis hat". Then of course there were all of these chairs placed all over the place which were actually displays of "art" and not for sitting on (I wondered what would have happened had I sat down on one of them). Modern art is so infuriatingly unobvious that at one point I honestly thought a girl in a wheelchair was part of a display, until I realised she was just sitting and waiting for someone to meet her. The final straw for me was this really daft painting of some stupid clown dressed in the most horrible attire with tampons up his nose. Then I noticed the painting could move. Then I realised it was a mirror, and the dumb clown was me. I decided to go to the checkroom to reclaim my bag. Another fifteen minute wait in the hot and very long queue eventually rendered me my backpack and an ability to leave. I can confidently say if you're planning to visit the MOMA on a trip to New York City, you're wasting your time, and I will probably have to disown you. There's far better things to do than go to this museum. Like plucking my nose hairs from the roots with a pair of heated pliers.

There was a lot of fuss around this picture. All I know is, the artist killed himself; another legacy from a victim enshrined in MOMA's walls.

Believe it or not, this is considered art. Two pieces of paper on a coloured background; I call it pieces of sheet.

Just down the road from the MOMA is a sign warning about the true nature of the curators...

We proceeded to the subway, made an attempt to cut across town to the USS Intrepid, hit our metro limit (in terms of getting as close as we could to the USS Intrepid) and took the brave (and foolish) decision to walk the four blocks to the harbour. I picked up some handy sandwich, chips, lemonade combo for $8 and replenished some of my lost energy before embarking on our stroll towards the West Pole.

By the time we arrived at the museum, it was closed (last tickets sold an hour before the closure of the exhibits) so we had to just turn around and go back. On the way I needed the toilet, so I mustered up the excuse to use the restroom in Burger King, which required us to buy a $1 quarter-pounder cheese burger to qualify as a customer. The burger was my first from BK, and it was actually really nice (and great value). Failing to use their 24-hour internet facilities, we proceeded on our path towards Rockefeller Centre.

We were a little sidetracked on the way, stopping off in Times Square to check out Hershey's and M&M's World - the great thing abotu Hershey's was the free chocolate (HINT: the Hershey's staff don't even pay attention to who's coming in, so just walk in and out and you can muster up enough for a decent gift for someone you care about back home... or you just eat them like I did - I was tired, okay??). M&M's World was pretty arbitrary, except for the dozens of columns of various M&M candy!!

Realising time was running out, we pressed on to Nintendo World, which was my playground. Unfortunately it was a massive anticlimax, so we proceeded onward to Rockefeller Centre. This was the highlight of the day since we got to see the famous Christmas Tree, the Rockefeller Ice Rink, and scored a ride to the Top of the Rock, which has a 67th floor observatory overlooking Manhattan.

I got to play with Pooh in Manhattan!

This entire experience on Top of the Rock was breathtaking and awe-inspiring. It's been my dream for years to do this, and to finally be up there watching New York City in all its glory was really a treat. We managed to scale a further two flights of stairs to reach the absolute top-most point of the Top of the Rock, where we could see a pretty much un-obstructed view of EVERYTHING around us. We were now on the 70th floor and the vista's were breathtaking. It's also worth noting that the 70th floor could be referred to as "nose-bleed" heights, and sadly, that's what happened to me. The elevator ride from ground floor to the 70th took us about fifteen seconds, and I don't think my body adjusted fast enough, so I just had to contend with a bleeding nose the entire time we were up there, but we must have spent close on thirty minutes up there braving the frigid elements in order to soak up a breathtaking and stunning panoramic view of Manhattan.

After that was all over, we headed home through the subway, and on the way picked up a Dunkin' Donuts decaf. coffee and two donuts (it's a combo special) for $5. I only wanted to buy a $1 tea, but Kat insisted on donuts and coffee, so we ended up spending more, and typically, Kat didn't like her donuts, so I had to eat them all.

We have now arrived home and are crashing early since we have to get up early and pack and check-out of our Holiday Inn hotel before making the commute across town into Manhattan and checking into our hotel before attempting the Circle Line tour and the USS Intrepid. One observation at this point is that I dno't think the NEW YORK City Pass cards are worth it, but we shall reserve comment until our 3 days are up!

Hope all is well back home - over here it's been really awesome and exhausting. Oh, and cold. Did I mention cold? It's freaking FREEZING here! Kat spotted a few drinks spilled on the sidewalk that had frozen into ice!!

Cheers all, and God bless - thanks for commenting - it keeps us alive and knowing that our blogs aren't worthless drivel :)

A Christmas tree in the middle of "nowhere" special!

A hefty-sized building towering over the baby Christmas tree!

I *think* this is Trump Tower, what do you think?

I am pretty sure this IS Trump Tower!

A photo of our two intrepid adventurers (... intended)

Times Square at night lights up like... Times Square at night!

On Top of the Rock = nosebleed section :(

Bah! I'm a fool! I could have claimed back money for the faulty shower handle and the missing comb and razor! Dammit! Freebies gone a-begging :(

View from the Top of the Rock

That's a BIG Christmas tree! It's like 10m tall!

That's a whole four walls of M&Ms in tubes. It wraps around and takes up two levels!!