The plan for the day was to go see Times Square, Central Park, Natural History Museum (across the street from Central Park) to have some lunch, a nap, and get ready for the play at 7. Kinz had asked to get off work early so she could come to us and we could walk to the play on 48th Street.
We checked out the subway station at Columbus Circle and found several places for breakfast. I chose a yogurt fruit parfait and Nick had a croissant with coffee. I thought the name of this doughnut shop was clever.
We headed to Times Square, just a few blocks down the street. I took a video showing all the movement in the colorful signs in the area. It's about 46 seconds long which means it's too long to send from my phone to e-mail.
We met up with The Hulk and Minnie Mouse whose living depends on conning tourists into having their pics made.
Minnie took the pic-- each wanted $ for their services. Everybody's gotta feed their family, some have more unusual jobs than others.
Several times as we walked around the area, I noticed Smart Car Police cars. I quit counting when I got over 10. They park them just wherever and I saw one officer in one pursuing a car. Traffic doesn't go very fast cuz of the horrible congestion and a Smart Car can pull between two larger cars with no problem.
Since I've seen all the "Night at the Museum" movies, I was expecting certain exhibits. Movies and life are usually different and this was no exception. We met a very friendly docent who showed us there to find particular areas of the museum. The majority of the museum is centered around experiences of Theodore Roosevelt. The docent insisted that we take a picture with the President.
Nick was interested in acquatic animals, so we went there first and took quite a few pictures. This is a place we could have spent not only hours but days.
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| Huge octopus |
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| Giant Whale |
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| Sea worm things- discovered in the 1970's |
A unique area of the museum was the Hayden Big Bang theatre which was a short presentation explaining the creation of the universe scientifically. Well done and very interesting, After a couple of hours we decided that lunch was important. We headed toward our hotel sure that we could find a good place for lunch. We ended up at Big Nick's Pizza and Sandwiches. Not wonderful, but filling. We got to our hotel about 2 and we were planning on taking a nap before getting ready for the play tonite.
We put the key in our lock and nothing happened, so we went to the desk to have them rescanned. We went up to the 15th floor to use the new keys and it still didn't work. We went back down to report the problem. The clerk called the security/maintenance office and said someone would be there to fix the lock shortly. We waited by our door talking to the cleaning lady, who was really embarrassed that she hadn't been able to clean our room. We waited and waited until the repairman came. He used a "rebooter" machine on the lock and it didn't work. He sent us back to the lobby to wait for him to either repair or replace the lock. When we got back to the lobby we told the original lady who had worked on our keys, that we were still locked out. She was astonished, called the maintenance man-- he told her that the lock would have to be replaced and would take a little more time. Turns out she was the desk manager and gave us a credit of $75 in the restaurant/bar for our inconvenience. After 2 1/2 hours we got into our room with no time for a nap.
We got ready for the play, waited for Kinz to meet us and walked to the Longacre Theatre on 48th Street. We had checked on the weather prediction and expected 90% chance by the time the play was out. When we were planning this trip we decided we didn't want to see any play we'd already seen. That let out Cats, Chicago, Lion King, Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, School of Rock. We decided to see "A Bronx Tale" and it was an excellent decision. Kinz, was involved with theatre in high school, but had never experienced theatre of this caliber.
From the first note of the first song to the end of the play, we were entranced. WOW! this is probably the best theatre experience I've ever had.
As we exited the theatre, rain was pouring down. We had decided to take Kinz to the Hard Rock Cafe after the play and it was too far to walk in the rain. Gathered in fromt of the Longacre were several "pedicabs" ( bicycle powered 3 seater rickshaw things, with plastic covering to keep the rain off the passengers). Transportation in the city is expensive- unless you use the subway and this was no exception, but it was a unique experience. I'm so glad it was raining, so we could share this event with Kinz.
It was a wonderful and unique birthday that I'll remember forever. Great Day!
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