Florididdypop Volume 2 - Day 2 New York: Desserts, dolls and yes, it's definitely still cold

[moosha]

Day 2 – Friday 18th April 2014: New York. Desserts, dolls and yes, it's definitely still cold

Previous day is here

Seren and Freya came in to our room at 3.40 am and they certainly weren't going back to sleep. I had woken up a little bit before that but had been dozing until they came in. Once they were bouncing around the room and making lots of noise, it was clear that it was in fact morning, no matter how much Daddy protested.

We sent the girls back into the living room to do their holiday diaries and activity books for a bit, and I did some tweaking of today's plans since it was going to be cold again today but nicer tomorrow. So we moved Central Park to tomorrow, and today's stops would be mostly indoor. This would actually come to mean that we spent most of the day eating and mostly eating sweet things, but hey ho.

I had an amazing shower (the showers at Bryant Park are fantastic, and the shower gel is Molton Brown) and came out of the bathroom feeling fully refreshed. Jet lag, what jet lag? Because we had been up so early we were able to get ready at a relaxed pace and I was free to do as much faffing as I liked. I wish we had appreciated the luxury of this chilled out morning, because once we got to Disney getting ready in the mornings would be a much more rushed and not at all relaxed affair.

While I put the finishing touches to my faffing, the girls (and Mat) watched Sesame Street which yes, at almost 8 and 6 (and 37) they are too old for, but we all love the Sesame Street characters and enjoyed meeting them at Busch Gardens two years ago (insert shameless plug for 2012 trip report here.) We all said we wished Sesame Street was still shown on British TV. We also tucked into the lovely cupcakes Sarah left for us when we arrived. Just like the ones she had left us last year, they were from Crumbs Bakery (which used to have a branch opposite the Bryant Park Hotel but doesn't anymore.) This year's treats were one chocolate cake with white frosting topped with jelly beans and one carrot cake one. Seren loves carrot cake but as she's allergic to hazelnuts, cashew nuts and pistachio nuts she won't eat anything with any nuts on, so we had to scrape the layer of nuts from around the sides and it all got very messy. She ate at least half of the carrot cake and from the noises she was making, I would say she was enjoying it. Freya did the same with the other one and Mat and I scraped up the messy leftovers.

We left the hotel at 7.30 am, and the reception staff greeted us as we walked past. Whenever we're there we seem to leave at about that time and I'm sure the staff must think we're absolutely crazy. There never seem to be any other guests about, I'd imagine only business travellers would be leaving the hotel that early. The nice doorman / security man opened the door for us and told us to have a great day. That's something I possibly haven't mentioned before, the BPH is definitely a luxury hotel and has door staff welcoming you and opening the doors for you, they often also have someone by the lifts who will call the lift for you. That's partly a security thing, especially in the evening, as they have a popular restaurant and trendy cellar bar so I guess they want to make sure only hotel guests are going up in the lifts. What I love about the hotel is that it's friendly, small and welcoming but luxurious yet minimalist at the same time. They have always been extremely welcoming to us as a family with young children, and yet it's quite a 'cool' hotel too. To sum up, I LOVE the place. It's my absolute favourite hotel and we wouldn't consider staying anywhere else in New York. Thinking about the hotel now makes me sad that we won't be going back again next year, guess we'll have to just console ourselves with 16 nights in Orlando .

Anyway, digression over, we went out of the hotel doors and once again were hit by the chilly New York weather. I didn't even make a note of the temperature while we were there. Let's just say it was around 8 degrees, give or take. As I said in yesterday's report, we'd had a good few warm days back home in the lead up to the trip so it definitely felt decidedly un-spring like to us. We wandered (briskly) along to the end of the street to Pax as we had done yesterday afternoon, and headed inside for some respite from the cold. Luckily this morning Pax were back on their game and they had a full array of bagels. Hurrah. I had a multi-seed bagel with lox cream cheese (which is cheese with flakes of smoked salmon through it) and a freshly squeezed orange juice. I love their freshly squeezed orange juice. Mat had the same, and the girls had cereal (frosted flakes if I remember correctly.)







We had chosen a table near the counter by the windows which was very pleasant...until the door opened every couple of minutes as another hungry breakfast-hunter entered. I got moaned at for choosing a table that was 'freezing' but I argued it was a way of breaking us in gently for a day pounding the pavements in the cold.

I should also add at this point that as we were sat at the table people watching, there were no end of New Yorkers walking past heading to work, as there always is (obviously less so on weekends.) While it was Good Friday to us British types, as most of you probably know Good Friday is not a public holiday in the US. I had therefore not expected this weekend to really be any busier than any other we have spent in New York, but in the event I was proven wrong as will transpire later on. When I discussed this with Sarah later, she agreed that it was exceptionally busy as it was a holiday weekend. I found this strange because last year we had been in New York on Memorial Day weekend in May when they do have a public holiday on the Monday, and I had expected the city to be busy, but it had seemed quiet to us. So perhaps New Yorkers get away for the Memorial Day holiday but not for Easter, and when you add in the extra tourists, it gets...well, crazy...as you shall find out when we get to American Girl later on.

Jackets were most definitely on and zipped up when we left Pax, but as we had done yesterday, we were only heading down the subway station steps just outside. We were on a mission this morning, and that was to find a specific..er...supermarket. Anyone who read last year's trippie, Big Apple Boot Camp (another shameless plug) will know that we spent a good few hours last year fruitlessly searching for Whole Foods in Tribeca. We like the one at Columbus Circle and the Tribeca one is (apparently) larger so we had planned last year, when it was warm, to get some picnic food from there. Could we blinking well find it though? No we could not. We felt that Tribeca was a somewhat ambiguous area and it wasn't until I started researching this year's trip that I realised we had been a good few blocks out (Tribeca is much closer to the Hudson River, on the western edge of the island than I had thought.) So this year, I had printed out a google map of the area surrounding Whole Foods with a juicy black X where healthy supermarket heaven could be found.

I'm getting ahead of myself here, because we got off the subway at Broadway / Lafayette Street which is actually in SoHo so we wandered south past all the trendy / boutique shops in SoHo such as Topshop (!)



and as we got into Tribeca there seemed to be a transition from the 'shopping destination' feel of SoHo to the still-undergoing-regeneration feel of Tribeca. One fact that a lot of people know about Tribeca is that it's where Robert De Niro lives or lived, so I admit I did spend the entire time we were there scouring the streets for Bob (obviously not allowing that to detract from the mission of finding Whole Foods though.)

We did a quick detour down to the financial district to take a few photos of the beautiful Woolworth Building (or as we call it in our house, the Enchanted Building. Love that film.)





My researching and the map did me proud as finding Whole Foods was a doddle this time (to be fair, we had only been a couple of blocks too far east last year.) We went in, and I immediately once again wished that we lived in New York and this was my local supermarket, it sure beats Tesco. Just look at the fruit and vegetable displays:



We had a little mooch and marvelled at all the lovely fruits and salads and stuff, but obviously with it being pretty much winter outside, we were not going to be partaking of any picnic fare today. So we grabbed a coffee from the little coffee bar and took it upstairs where they have an entire floor of café seating. There isn't a proper café or restaurant, but what I like about Whole Foods is that you can buy a salad from the salad bar, or a takeaway sandwich or something and take it to the café area to enjoy. This is obviously great news if it's cold outside, or if you're a long way from a park or the few benches in the streets nearby are already heaving. As it was still about 9 am at this point, we weren't in the market for one of their yummy salads so Mat and I had huge coffees and the girls had almost as huge hot chocolates.



Freya doesn't like hot chocolate, we all know this, yet she insisted that she did and she would drink it. She does not and she did not :angry:. We sat at bar-style seats overlooking the comings and goings outside and watched the world go by for a little while.



They had a tiny soft play area in the corner of the room and the girls decided to pretend they were actually two and three years old and have a little mess about with the little soft cubes designed for toddlers .

I had planned for us to pop into the big Barnes & Noble next door, but it didn't open until 10 and it was only 9.40 when we were all ready to go so Mat and I quietly knocked the idea on the head making sure our bookworm (Seren) was none the wiser that the shop was even there.

We headed a couple of blocks in the wrong direction, in the cold, before realising our error and retracing our steps.







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We went back towards SoHo and stopped at Rice To Riches which was to be our next destination. It was 10.25 am and it didn't open until 11 am (what, New Yorkers don't fancy rice pudding until practically lunch time? Crazy!) So we pressed on towards our next stop, and would venture back to Rice To Riches afterwards.



We also noticed this pavement art:





To get to our next destination, we had to cross Bowery and as we got to the corner, we saw this very eye-catching building. There were several people admiring the 'art' on the walls and taking photos and we joined them.



Mat was particularly intrigued by the place, and spent a little longer looking at it. As he hung about in the doorway, a guy came out of the building and proceeded to give Mat quite a bit of information about the house, as he was currently doing some renovations inside. He showed Mat some photos on his phone of the original copper cage elevator and the basketball court. Mat was fascinated and googled the place later on so I will give you a brief potted history of the house.

190 Bowery is a six-storey 72 room mansion, built in 1898. It is the largest privately owned single residence in New York, owned by the photographer Jay Maisel. He bought it in 1966 for $102,000 (its rough valuation in 2009 was $40 million .) When he bought it, The Bowery and the surrounding area was still gritty and deprived. Maisel still lives there with his wife and daughter and a couple of floors of the building are used as studio space (he used to rent out a floor to the artist Roy Lichtenstein.)





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When Mat and I had first been to New York in 2005, the area around The Bowery was just beginning its redevelopment and was, quite frankly, not very nice. Since then it's been completely regenerated and looked very different to how we remembered it. We crossed Bowery and proceeded to our destination: Il Laboratorio del Gelato which is opposite the famous Katz' Deli (from When Harry Met Sally.)



Luckily, they were open and serving ice-cream on a chilly April morning. Unsurprisingly we were the only ones in the shop for the entire time we were there, but as this place had been 'on the list' every time we had been to New York, we were absolutely going there today despite the unseasonal weather and early hour.

Il Laboratorio is like, well a laboratory actually (Mat said it looked a bit like a fish and chip shop) but I think it was definitely more ice cream factory.



They make the ice cream in-house and had lots of delicious looking flavours available (some of them you can read in the photos.)







We opted to share three flavours between the three of us (Mat kept saying all holiday that he doesn't like ice-cream despite him definitely tucking into it on a fair few occasions.) The girls and I each picked one: Seren chose raspberry sorbet, Freya chose white chocolate and I chose fuji apple. They were all served together in one cup, and we sat on the window ledge seating and devoured the lot. The apple one was definitely the yummiest. Luckily it was warm enough in there to pretend it was actually warm enough for ice-cream.









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From the ice-cream shop we retraced our steps back towards Rice To Riches stopping first at another shop 'on the list': Economy Candy. This is a fantastic sweet shop we had never made it to before and it was quite busy in there.





They sell all sorts of sweets, dried fruit and nuts, as well as things like old packets of stickers (anyone need any Home Alone 2 collector's cards or Spice Girls movie stickers? Thought not.) They had a British chocolate section, and the girls treated themselves to a Disney character Pez each. I was here for one thing only: Jelly Belly.



Last year I had spent a small fortune (around $25) for roughly the same amount of Jelly Bellys at Dylan's Candy Bar. This year I got two pretty substantial bags which filled my Dylan's Candy Bar cupcake pot (slightly less full now we've been back a few weeks)



and the two bags together cost me $10.07. $10.07! Biggest bargain of the entire holiday right there .

Heading back to Rice To Riches, we walked along Rivington Street, stopping for a photo outside Teany, the vegan restaurant that used to be co-owned by the musician Moby (Mat's a fan.)







We carried on back to the rice pudding shop, which was very cute and cool, but I don't like rice pudding so the others selected one flavour to share. They opted for chocolate chip and all enjoyed it. All of the rice pudding is served cold, and some of the other flavours they had were rum and raisin, cinnamon and coconut. I really liked the seating, and the girls pretended they were on the tea cups.













Crossing back over The Bowery, we admired the mansion at 190 from the other side of the street



and as we did a guy in a van started talking to Mat through his window, again about the property. Apparently the building is a local landmark and having been approached by strangers twice in a couple of hours wanting to tell us all about it, I can quite believe that. It also fits in with my belief that New Yorkers are a friendly bunch despite popular belief to the contrary, and they are very proud of their city and like talking to tourists and offering help with directions and stuff. At least, that has always been our experience.







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We decided we had time for one more dessert before lunch (!) so walked on to Eileen's Special Cheesecake which is a name that keeps coming up if you research the best cheesecake in New York. There are only a few tables inside but we were lucky enough to grab the only two free two-tops. They have a big selection of individual cheesecakes, so we got one original and one with strawberry topping.









Seren and I shared the strawberry topped one and Mat and Freya ate the original one (him getting a good deal as cheesecake is another thing Freya doesn't like, whereas Seren is a cheesecake hoover and I was just about able to get a couple of tiny spoonfuls :angry:.) I'd go as far as to say it was the best cheesecake I've tasted, really creamy and delicious. We paid our compliments to the staff as we left and took a few photos outside.







Eileen's is on the edge of Little Italy, so I took a photo of the 'Little Italy' sign but you can't really see it.



So we've had cupcakes, bagels, ice-cream, rice pudding and cheesecake. Must be time for lunch now. We hopped on the Subway at Spring Street (where we had seen a station earlier, we had spent the last couple of hours going back and forth over the same few streets it seemed.) We got off at Grand Central and walked the couple of minutes back to the hotel, taking a photo outside the library.



We stopped to chat to Sarah for a moment in the hotel and then collected Lily and Jessica, the girls' American Girl dolls. We walked up Fifth Avenue to American Girl which is about five blocks up from Bryant Park. We were booked onto the 2.30 pm lunch sitting and it was only about 1 o'clock by this time, so the girls had time to hit their holiday spends in the shop downstairs first.



The shop was crazy busy. It's always been busy when we've been in there but nothing like this. It was difficult to see everything on display because of the number of people, and it was very noisy with excited girls (like ours) running around and picking everything up. There is always also a good number of bemused Dads carrying huge shopping bags and hovering about as though they are lost. Because the girls could hardly contain themselves and wanted to buy literally everything they picked up, we split up so that I could help Freya choose what to spend her money on and Mat would do the same with Seren. I thought I had got the better deal as Seren is Miss Indecisive and when she does make a decision, I usually can't understand why on earth she would want to buy said piece of tat. Freya is generally a 'good' shopper, but all of the lovely dolls' outfits on offer today kind of got the best of her and it took rather longer than I had hoped for her to finalise her purchases.

Luckily the girls had saved all of their birthday money and had been collecting 'Disney dollars' (as seen in Isabel's – Kate's – trip report) from me for good behaviour for the past few months as their totals at the till were $153.51 (Freya) and $179.62 (Seren.) This was for about seven outfits for their dolls. Freya had bought a cute pet for Lily, a black and white kitten called Licorice, and it wasn't until we got home and unpacked that we found Licorice never made it back home with us so who knows where she is now.

It was 1.40 pm once we had finished at the tills so I suggested we go upstairs and have a look at the doll salon. Yes, the doll salon. They have a hairstyle menu there which I have always thought would be a big waste of money, after all I can plait their hair for free, and the dolls suffer terribly from 'plane hair' so it really wouldn't be worth it. They do offer ear piercing for the dolls though, and I thought that might be quite sweet. Unfortunately the swarms of people were not limited to the ground floor, and as we found the doll salon, we also found the long line with a sign at the end saying the wait for the doll salon was currently 2.5 hours . So instead we had a look at the 'historical dolls' in museum-like glass cases, some of which were a bit creepy it has to be said.

With 15 minutes to go before the 2.30 pm lunch sitting, we checked in and joined the (long) line and the girls got Lily and Jessica changed into one of their new outfits for lunch. Before long we were taken in and seated and I noticed straight away that we had been put on a smaller table this year. In 2013 we had a nice big table with space for the dolls to sit in their special chairs. This year, we were on a smaller square table:



and the girls kept knocking their dolls' chairs off because there wasn't enough room which got pretty annoying (for the girls as well as us.) Unfortunately this experience at the American Girl Cafe wasn't as good as our first time which I have to say, I at least partly put down to it not being the first time, with all the excitement that goes with a new experience.





As I said last year, eating at the American Girl Cafe reminds me of Cinderella's Royal Table in that it's a quick, conveyor belt sort of process and you don't really go there for the food. Which is just as well at American Girl today. The starter was, as it had been last year, a sharing platter: cheese, carrots, cucumber, tomatoes, pretzel dough balls and mustard dipping sauce.



I enjoyed the dough balls and dipping sauce. It felt to me that the portion size had been reduced (bar the pretzel balls which we had extra of since we asked for our platter without the chicken wings.) Also last year, there had been grapes included and the girls had really enjoyed scoffing those.

The service was slow and not very friendly. The guy bringing round little cups and saucers for the dolls seemed to miss us out and when he did finally bring them, he didn't even crack a smile as he put them down in front of the dolls, let alone say anything. We did enjoy the little box of conversation starter cards they provide again though, containing questions like 'What kind of shop would you like to own?' and 'what's your favourite childhood memory?' Seren, again, enjoyed reading these out so much she pretty much forgot to eat.

The menu is well, odd. A soft drink is included in the per head price, but they don't have sodas or still water, only sparkling. I had an apple juice and I would never usually order that in a restaurant but there was just such a lack of choice. The sangria I ordered didn't match up to the one I had enjoyed here last year, today it was really watery. There is no separate childrens' menu, so the limited number of menu items are mostly kid-friendly (cheeseburger, hot dog.) As we don't eat meat we had exactly three entrees available to us: cheese pizza (out because we were going for pizza for dinner), vegetable sandwich (which Mat and I had both quite enjoyed last year. Last year it had been served with a little bowl of tomato soup, this year it just came with a few salad leaves) and the third option was vegetable quiche. Seren and I went for the quiche, Mat and Freya went for the sandwich. I knew Freya wasn't going to eat the sandwich but I was surprised Seren didn't like the quiche. Until I tasted it. It was such a huge slab and the texture was a bit too solid, it was really cold, plus it didn't have much flavour. I ate it though, along with some of Freya's sandwich.

The quiche (minus a bite, sorry)





Dessert is the same plate for everyone containing two items: a cupcake and a chocolate mousse.



Last year there had been three items on the dessert plate (the third was a fruit kebab which went down well.) With the absence of the fruit, none of us really touched our desserts and it was one of those meals where you just want to pay and leave. Disappointing, and I have decided we won't go back there to eat, I think it may be a 'one time only' thing and we pushed it by going back. Although I definitely think they have made cutbacks since last year, but obviously if you were new to the restaurant this year you wouldn't be aware of that.

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All done at American Girl for another year,



we walked the dolls back down Fifth Avenue, in fact I think we crossed to Sixth because of how busy Fifth Avenue was (think Oxford Street a few weeks before Christmas.) The girls wanted to show Sarah Lily and Jessica's new outfits and then we dropped the dolls back up in the suite and then went back to the subway station at the end of the street. We took an M train to Marcy Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which took a while and included a trip over the Williamsburg Bridge which gave us a good view. When we arrived at the subway station, we were definitely not enamoured by our surroundings. There seemed to be a bit of an edge to the area, and we didn't like the look of some of the characters we saw hanging about. Thinking this was not the trendy Williamsburg we had come here for, we decided to quickly move towards the sights 'on the list', hoping we would feel more comfortable there. The only problem was, we were struggling with our bearings and it took us a while to get on the right track (Brooklyn is so vast, and so confusing.)

We made it in one piece to Bedford Avenue which was Williamsburg proper. It was ridiculously trendy and cool, and had some great looking shops and buildings, but I didn't manage to snap one decent picture while we were there.





We wanted to visit Rough Trade (the record store) as we like the one on Brick Lane in London, and well, why not fly three and a half thousand miles to visit a record shop which turned out to be pretty much the same (as expected) with a cooler interior and the same high prices (not expected.)










Freya managed to knock down a display of Beatles CDs and feeling anxious to get out of there as quickly as possible to prevent further bull in a china shop antics, Mat quickly bought a Rough Trade NYC cream cloth bag (to match the black one and the cream one we already have from London. But as mentioned in previous trip reports I can't go on holiday without buying at least one bag.) The guy behind the counter was English and he and my husband both thought they recognised one another (Mat writes for a music magazine in his spare time and has also spent a decent amount of time at Rough Trade East so it's not that far-fetched) but the guy had never worked at the Rough Trade in London so they decided they probably hadn't met before.



All done at Rough Trade we walked down to the end of the road to take a picture of the skyline at the Flatbush Inlet



and then headed towards the nearest subway station at Nassau Avenue (which wasn't very near and we had to walk all the way through a park to get to it.)



We needed to change trains along the line to get to Brooklyn Heights but couldn't find a way to change platforms so we ended up having to exit and re-enter the station, and so being charged for two single journeys. We got off in the end at York Street, and Seren needed the toilet so Mat took her in the nearest cafe (Dumbo Kitchen, which he said looked nice and was very busy) while Freya and I hung around outside in the cold.

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It was at this point that I ran out of steam and started to feel a bit grumpy, I think it was the tiredness and the cold getting to me. From nowhere my husband found a big burst of enthusiasm and energy, and he managed to get everything back on track. I am really grateful for him doing that as I think I was about to hit a wall. We covered our tracks from yesterday exactly



and then found our way onto Old Fulton Street. We were having dinner at Juliana's, the pizza restaurant run by Patsy Grimaldi, the founder of the famous Grimaldi's pizza. Patsy sold the business and the name in 1998 but later regretted it. So he set up Juliana's in tribute to his late mother in 2011, next door to the current Grimaldi's and in the building that was Grimaldi's from 1990 to 1998. There is now a rivalry between the two restaurants, both are very popular and Grimaldi's in particular sees long lines outside.

We got in line outside Juliana's at 7 pm and there were about six parties in front of us. The line outside Grimaldi's was longer. Juliana's had an New York magazine article pinned up on the door outside which spelled out the history and rivalry of the two restaurants so I had a bit of a read of that while we waited. Freya needed the toilet while we were in line so Mat took her inside which they were fine with. When there were still a few parties in front of us, a guy brought out a tray full of slices of pizza and said 'Patsy's inside, he said to bring out pizza for everyone to try.' A few people took a slice, we didn't because it had meat on and to be fair, if I had eaten a slice that close to us ordering our own, I knew I wouldn't eat much inside. Some of the people in Grimaldi's line were quite surprised that the guy had brought pizza out, a few of them tried it and I'm pretty sure some switched queues to the Juliana's line.

There was a really good, really efficient guy running things at the front of the line and making sure the next party got seated as soon as possible. It was about twenty minutes before we were seated at a nice table by the wall inside. It was lovely and warm in the restaurant, and it had a good atmosphere.









I ordered a glass of chianti and Mat had a Brooklyn Lager and all was right with the world.





We ordered a large margherita pizza with olives (which the girls could pick off) and we liked that they had two cardboard circles cut to the size of the 'regular' and 'large' pizza to show us when we asked how big they were as it gave us a really clear idea of how much food we had ordered. (It was Mat's idea to go for the large, I definitely think he overestimated how much we could eat.) He told our waiter that Freya doesn't like tomato sauce on pizza and asked if he could perhaps please do a quarter of it without tomato sauce. The waiter said 'I can do half white.' Mat said, 'Great, could you do a quarter white please?' and he said 'I can do half white.' So Daddy got the proverbial short straw and agreed to eat some of the white pizza.

While we were waiting for our food, we noticed Patsy, the owner who is now in his 80s, sitting in the corner. He was overseeing everything that was happening and talking to the staff and some of the customers, some of whom he seemed to know personally. After a while a table in the middle of the restaurant became vacant and Patsy went and sat down at it with two other staff members and a big bowl of spaghetti, which he served to the three of them. They sat there chatting and eating, and lots of customers were watching them and smiling. It was nice to see.

We had quite a wait for our pizza, which was fine as the restaurant was obviously really busy, but we noticed that a few groups who had arrived after us were getting their pizza delivered before us. We couldn't flag down our waiter as he was a bit of a whirlwind, but in the end we put on our best perturbed expressions and kept looking towards the open kitchen and I think we must have caught his attention from across the room as I saw him then go and sort it out and not much longer later, our pizza finally arrived. They serve them on a high stand in the middle of the table which I liked.

The pizza itself was very impressive.



The only other place we have eaten 'proper' New York pizza from is John's of Bleecker Street and we think Juliana's almost but not quite matched up to that. John's pizza is a bit more cheesy and feels a bit more 'dirty and greasy' which I prefer to the 'posh' pizza. It definitely beat Via Napoli though, which we were to have a couple of weeks later. There's something about this type of pizza, the coal oven pizza, that is just a bit too sweet for me. I also have the same problem with Pizza Express, so perhaps I'm just weird. Maybe it's the cheese they use? Whatever it is, it means I can only face a couple of slices of it, whereas I can scoff more than my fair share of a Pizza Hut pizza or one I make at home. The girls gave up after one slice each. Mat gave it his best shot, but we still had a few slices left at the end.

I had no room for dessert, but our waiter ran through the dessert menu and the girls' ears pricked up when he described the Brookie Bridge and how a brownie and a cookie and ice-cream 'got together' and became this delicious dessert. They serve it with ice-cream from the Ice Cream Factory next door, which is somewhere else we wanted to visit, so it would have been rude not to order a couple. Two birds with one stone. Seren ordered her Brookie with raspberry ice-cream and Freya wanted vanilla. Mat was keen to try a cannoli. The waiter told us he would 'bring a spoon for Mommy', which was a good call.







Both flavours of ice-cream were absolutely gorgeous, but the vanilla worked best with the brownie cookie (which on its own was pretty perfect.) But with the ice-cream it was life-changing. Best dessert of the whole trip, and so early in the holiday.

The total was $70 which we didn't think was too bad.



We left about 9 pm and took some (not very good) photos of the Brooklyn Bridge all lit up outside.







We needed to walk up to the subway station at Clark Street and as we'd used that station several times before we kind of knew where we were heading, but it was very dark around that area and we were struggling with our bearings a little. We asked a passing German family, who pointed us in the right direction, and then an English guy who got us the final couple of hundred yards. I should point out that it was absolutely freezing at this point and the girls and I were all shivering. I was shivering to the point that it hurt in my chest (I hate that) so we were walking as quickly as we could, especially since the girls had suddenly gone all scared because it was so dark. We made it to Clark Street station just as an express train to Manhattan was arriving, and everyone else entering the station legged it down (access to the platform is lift only at this station.) Unfortunately our MetroCards needed to be topped up so we had to faff around with that at the ticket machine, therefore missing the express train. Once we had topped up, we headed down in the empty lift to the empty platform and the girls were again complaining that they were scared. This was possibly not helped by there not being another soul on either platform other than one homeless guy down the other end with a shopping trolley piled 7ft high with carrier bags of stuff (how did he get that down there?) We kept trying to reassure the girls that there was nothing to worry about, and we didn't feel scared, but I guess they were very much out of their comfort zone and they're both going through a bit of a 'scaredy' phase at the moment (scared of the dark, scared of unfamiliar noises etc.)





Within a few minutes a train arrived, and as it was busy the girls seemed to relax, enough for Seren to fall asleep on me just before the train pulled in to Times Square where we got off. We walked the couple of blocks home and got back to our room at 9.45 pm. The girls were asleep within ten minutes. I fell asleep not long after trying to catch up on my notes.

next day is here

[smedley]

A great day, you got a lot done! We really have to get to New York at some point, I'm putting your hotel in my useful info folder

[collybird]

What a long day, there'll be plenty of time to relax once you get to Florida right!? Glad you didn't let the weather drag you down. Everything seems so grey.

I bow down to you regarding the amount of food you guys managed to sample today. Man vs. Food would be proud.

That pizza looks incredible! I agree with you about Via Napoli/Pizza Express, I haven't been impressed by either. (Perhaps shamefully!?) the best pizza I've tasted is Famiglia's.

Lots of interesting tidbits picked up today too, thanks for sharing.

[lovedisney89]

What a long exciting day, love all the snacks you got. They all looked yummy!

A shame it was a bit chilly though.

Loved all the photos too

[moosha]

Originally Posted by smedley

A great day, you got a lot done! We really have to get to New York at some point, I'm putting your hotel in my useful info folder

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Thanks Marie. Yes, you must go to NY. The Bryant Park Hotel is amazing and I can't recommend it enough

Originally Posted by collybird

What a long day, there'll be plenty of time to relax once you get to Florida right!? Glad you didn't let the weather drag you down. Everything seems so grey.

I bow down to you regarding the amount of food you guys managed to sample today. Man vs. Food would be proud.

That pizza looks incredible! I agree with you about Via Napoli/Pizza Express, I haven't been impressed by either. (Perhaps shamefully!?) the best pizza I've tasted is Famiglia's.

Lots of interesting tidbits picked up today too, thanks for sharing.

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Thanks Colette. I did find myself wondering by the end of New York how my legs and feet were going to keep up for so long

We definitely overdid it on the sweet stuff, I think that was why I was feeling sick the following afternoon. Bleurgh It all tasted good at the time though

Yes, New York is a beautiful city but it looks so much better with the sun out.

So it's not just me who's not a fan of Via Napoli / Pizza Express pizza. I haven't tried Famiglia's.

I love being able to pass on little tips

Originally Posted by lovedisney89

What a long exciting day, love all the snacks you got. They all looked yummy!

A shame it was a bit chilly though.

Loved all the photos too

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Thank you Sarah. The snacks were very yummy We're glad we got one warm day in New York this year (the following day - I know I'm not spoiling it for you as you've already read it now )