Day 2 – Wednesday 24th October 2018

[VeryexcitedH]

I am not entirely sure what time we woke up this morning after our ludicrously late night but we certainly weren’t in a rush to go anywhere fast this morning!

I think today was the morning we discovered we had vouchers to get coffees as B and I had gone down to pick some up for everyone and I remembered I had been handed some at check in so dashed up to the room to retrieve them and see what they were. We could spend either $20 or $25 per vouchers so we used 1 voucher to get everyone their drink of choice which we had in the room with some fresh morning cookies.

Once ready we left the hotel at 11am and made our way to the Empire State Building. We arrived here at 11:25 and bought tickets from the booths on the way in, cost approximately $36. Tickets in hand we walked round the building and joined the queue for the airport style security before going up in several lifts and joining several queues to get in.

Finally we made it up to the 80th floor and the ‘Dare to Dream Exhibit’ where we spent quite some time reading all the information about the construction of the building and taking it in turns to take pictures out of the various windows overlooking the city.

Once we had seen everything on this floor we joined another queue to take the final lift up to the 86th floor and out to the Main Deck. This was fantastic and I really enjoyed looking out over NYC from here. We all spent time walking around the whole deck (2 sides were extremely blustery, and cold!) and taking photos. As we joined up again the 40 glasses came out again and we took it in turns having our photo taken wearing the glasses.

Once we had finished we made our way back down to the street, finally leaving the ESB at 1:58, so almost 2 1/2 hours after we had arrived.

Leaving the ESB we went on a walking tour of NYC. We passed Bryant Park and then headed into New York Public Library where we used the restrooms and had a wander and some photos. I took a picture in one of the rooms for DH as he is a huge Ghostbusters fan.

After our short rest we left the library and headed to Grand Central Station, arriving at 2:34pm. We had a good wander wound the main section, taking pictures and admiring the beautiful building.

We very quickly realised we were hungry and thirsty having failed to eat a proper meal yet today (see, recurring theme!)

We had a scout of the food area and looked to see if we could find somewhere to sit as it was very busy. We eventually found a table to sit at and had a little rest, taking it in turns to go to Shake Shack and order some food.

Oh my goodness this was absolutely delicious! I ordered cheese fries, diet coke and double smokeshack burger. This cost $16.41. We all thoroughly enjoyed this meal, it was much needed too!

With nicely full tummies we left Grand Central Station, stopping in a really cool shop on the way out as we did. Browsed the shop and small purchases made we then went out to the street and headed to a comic store that E had found not far from where we were.

E and I browsed avidly for comics for our Superhero made children and we spent 20 minutes trying to find something suitable. I spent $12.97 in total on a comic each for DD and DS.

We left Midtown Comics and I insisted on going in Bath and Body Works. I’m going to go against most dibbers here but I wasn’t that impressed and left empty handed. Upon leaving here we decided we needed to make our way back to the hotel so walked back to Times Square. We headed into Starbucks on the way through Times Square, picking up a coffee to keep us going and I picked up the NY Been There mugs (as they had stopped doing the YAH mugs )

From Lexington Avenue the walk to the hotel took 53 minutes, and we arrived back at the hotel at 5:34pm.

Much needed rest of our feet, brews and showers were had before we were ready to head out for our evening activity…theatre time!

We had tickets to see Pretty Woman at the Nederlander theatre so had decided to dress up a little. By dress up I mean nice trousers and heels. Much to our disappointment no-one else was dressed up and the majority of theatre goers were wearing jeans and trainers.

Anyway, we felt special! A had never watched Pretty Woman and we hadn’t found time before our trip to sit down and watch it together as we had planned but I was really looking forward to this evening as I used to watch Pretty Woman loads whilst I was at college and doing my work at home.

We had great seats and settled in for the show. It was fab…well, what I saw of the first half was as I am ashamed to say that I fell asleep before the interval! Anyone that knows me knows that this is not an unusual occurrence for me as I frequently fall asleep late at night when sat down. Oooops!

A and I went to get a coke during the interval (in the hope it would keep me awake!) and we watched the second half. She did enjoy it and I think they did a fantastic job of producing this as it followed the film closely, the actors were fantastic and the sets and costumes were perfect! On our way out we had our photo taken with one of the cast members. I’ve no idea now who he was but maybe he was Mr Stuckey?!

Our next stop was to be a rooftop bar and on our way back from Grand Central Station we had seen one that we thought would do….now just to find it. Eek! The direction Gods must have been on our side as we did indeed manage to find the hotel the bar was in and we headed into to The Knickerbocker Hotel on Times Square to get to St Clouds Rooftop Bar at 10:42. This was a very posh hotel! Once up in the rooftop bar we had a wander around the outside area.

Unfortunately, as it was so cold the staff weren’t serving outside so we all went back inside to order our drinks. With drinks in hand (no idea what we had but it was cocktails all the way!) we found a nice corner to sit in which actually had a great view up Times Square.

It was soooooo cold! We were under a heater and wrapped in fluffy blankets but it was still freezing. We stayed outside for as long as was humanly possible and so that we could say we had had drinks in a New York rooftop bar, before making our way back inside and finding a cool quiet space to sit in. It had a giant mirror and we messed about taking some Charlie’s Angel type pictures before heading to the bar and getting a second drink (cocktail!)

It was 12:17 when we left the bar and headed back to the hotel. We realised that we were hungry and hadn’t eaten since Shake Shack early that afternoon. One of us suggested getting a free cookie but that wasn’t going to cut it for us all so we stopped in at McDonald’s on the block down from our hotel and picked up something to fill the hole. No idea what exactly I had but it cost me $3.90!

We were back at the hotel by 12:25am. Such a long day again but it had been absolutely amazing! Before going to sleep I jumped online and used my Halifax Clarity card to buy 5 tickets for the 9/11 museum tomorrow as we had seen the queues to buy tickets and they were long so we wanted to avoid those!

Distance covered:

[disney owl]

again you fitted loads into your day

[VeryexcitedH]

Originally Posted by disney owl

again you fitted loads into your day

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We did, we were aiming to get as much done as possible!