Shopping - Chinatown Style

One of the days, Christina took us to Chinatown - on Canal Street. She knows of a 'special place' to get purses that are SO CLOSE to the real thing that the people could get in big trouble if they were found out. She gave us the hook-up and I ended up with this cool red purse and brown wallet!


There was good shopping to be had in Chinatown - we bought some pashmina scarves and i got a necklace and earrings too. Very cool.

Apparently Little Italy is located smack dab in the middle of Chinatown, so we walked through a different part of it to get to our evening restaurant in Little Italy and I spotted this at one of the outdoor seafood markets - a bucket of frogs for sale! ICK!!

Here's a super cute picture of Mayce's Mom - Terrye. We call her T-Nann. She was a blast to spend the trip with!

After shopping in Chinatown, we took the tour bus over to the South Street Seaport for lunch and free time.

There were a bunch of really cool ships to see and some good shopping too.

I saw this at one of the shops - couldn't resist taking a picture!!


It was kind of a boardwalk area, but since it was cold and rainy, we spent most of our time inside.

We had lunch upstairs in the shopping area and outside on their deck we had a spectacular view of the Brooklyn Bridge!

It looks so depressing because of the weather, but it was an amazing bridge to see!

In this close-up, it looks like a wooden roller coaster - or scaffolding or something....weird......

Great views!

One interesting thing we saw was this parking structure....since not that many people have cars in NYC, the ones that do have to get creative about parking/storage of their cars.

We were intrigued by this structure - it is a car elevator of sorts. I guess you drive into the bottom of the contraption and then it somehow brings the car up so that another one can fit under it.....but my question was: What if you're the car at the top and you want to go somewhere???

Be There Or Be SQUARE

As good tourists, we spent a lot of time in Times Square - the flashy, stereotypical "New York" experience! My first impression was that it was bustling and busy, but also SUPER BRIGHT. The lights from all of the different screens is crazy!

One thing that Christina told us was that tthis past New Year's was the first year that they left up the "ball" that drops each year in Times Square. We walked by it a bunch of times before she told us that - I never would've noticed it if she hadn't mentioned it! See below....

There it is! I guess now it will stay up year-round.

I think a person could honestly get a seizure just looking at everything - I'm surprised that there aren't more pedestrian deaths in this area since people are looking around and up at the buildings and NOT looking where they are walking!

One other observation - there is NOWHERE to sit down in Times Square or that whole area. One day, we had free time in Times Square and were done looking around, so we wanted to sit down and rest for a little bit, but we couldn't find a place to do so! We finally found a McDonald's...not even Starbucks had seating!

While in Times Square, we visited the M&M World store. I have never seen so many products dedicated solely to one brand before! It was insane!

They had this huge wall of M&M dispensing machines with M&M's of every color you could possibly imagine.....(see below)

The only catch: they costed $12.00/pound! WHAT?! I know they are cool colors that no one has seen before, but REALLY?!

We ended up in Times Square at least once a day because all of the Broadway shows are in/around Times Square, so we were there by default.

It was so exciting - during the middle of the day or when we got out of the shows at 11 at night - that place was PACKED and full of lights and activity - simply AMAZING!

We had dinner at Planet Hollywood one of the nights (I know, I know - going east to New York, just to eat at Planet HOLLYWOOD - lame!) and here are Mayce and I right before West Side Story:

And here's Mayce's brother David (left), Cody (middle), and Mayce's Mom Terrye (right) at Planet Hollywood. It was such a good group to travel with - great fun!

On Broadway!

OK, we were pretty lucky that this was a tour group of THEATER students, because we got to go to 4 Broadway shows on our trip!

The first one was called "In The Heights" and it starred Corbin Bleu from High School Musical. I didn't know who that was since I don't watch the show, but oh well - he was amazing!

We had TREMENDOUS seats - 2nd row in front of the stage! The music was fantastic and we even stayed awake for all of it (I know that sounds bad, but we saw this the first night we were there and had basically been awake for 2 days with just 2 hours of sleep on David's floor the night before in San Antonio).

This ended up being my 2nd favorite of the 4 - a great show!

On our 2nd day in NYC, we saw TWO Broadway shows in ONE day! WOW! We saw Mary Poppins at 2pm and it was absolutely AWESOME. This was my favorite of all 4 of the shows we saw.

The theater was beautiful, the acting/singing/dancing was just fabulous and the technical/set maneuvers were incredible (and yes, Mary Poppins DID fly up into the air)!

The architecture and decorating in these old theaters was so much fun to look at.....

However, one thing that I noticed in all 4 shows is that they clearly built the seats a LONG time ago, because they are not meant for tall people. My knees were hitting the seat in front of my in every show - I'm only 5'8"! I can't imagine a 6'4" guy in those seats - he would be miserable.

The 3rd show that we saw (later that same day that we saw Mary Poppins) was West Side Story. And as much as I was thrilled to be in a Broadway show in New York, I was not impressed with this show.

I thought it was kind of cheesy and the story was just not really my 'thing.' We were also exhausted from a long 2 days with barely any sleep. This show was kind of a let-down for all of us, but that's OK - can't win 'em all, right?

This was the theater that we saw West Side Story in - very beautiful!

And last but not least was The Addams Family on our last night in New York. This was by far the show that all the kids on the tour were looking forward to. It starred Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth (Lilith from Cheers!) and was still in previews, so it hadn't officially opened yet.

Here is the upstairs lobby of that theater - very pretty. We were in the nosebleed seats for this show, but that's OK - it's still a great time. We all liked the show, but it wasn't as good as we had all made it out to be in our minds. But Bebe Neuwirth played a GREAT Morticia Addams.

The theater was magnificent and the set design was very well done. It was a great last night in New York!

Shoppin' On 5th Ave!

OK, now for the swanky shopping post - 5th Avenue! It was super cold and rainy, but we braved the weather just to window shop at stores we don't have a prayer of affording. Oh well - we had fun anyway...

Here's the famous Saks 5th Avenue - and it's actually the 5th Avenue store!

The kids on the tour really liked this one - FAO Schwartz. It was huge, bright and a kid's dream.

Mayce really liked this part - The Big Piano. Little kids were running up and down the piano playing songs (or really just making lots of noise). Apparently this piano was in the movie "Big" with Tom Hanks. I can hardly remember the movie, so it didn't really have any significance to me, but it WAS cool.

And of course, we HAD to go into Tiffany's...

It had 4 or 5 floors in this store! The jewelry was beautiful, and they also had a floor of china and dishes, vases and everything you could imagine. They even have men in suits in the elevators that ask you what floor you want and then they take you there and announce what is on that floor.

Next stop - Trump Towers!

The bellman guy was in tails!

This is the lobby of Trump Tower and this is where they film The Apprentice.

No sightings of The Donald, though.....

The Trump Bar - I wonder how much a drink in there costs???

And at their gift shop, T-shirts for sale.........

We never intended to get a cab on 5th Avenue, but once we got to the end of the shopping area, the rain and wind really picked up and we only had about 15 minutes to get back to Rockefeller Center to get back on our tour bus, sooooo.......

We hailed a cab! I never realized that I would be so excited to be riding in a NYC cab until we were in there! For some reason, it was super fun and our cab driver was super nice and talkative - not something I expected.

We didn't have far to go, but it was thrilling to be riding in a cab down 5th Avenue! And it wasn't expensive at all - only $5!

Birdseye View

One of the things we did on our trip was to go to the Top of the Rock Observation Deck at Rockefeller Center (we went up to the roof on the 69th floor) to get our birdseye view of NYC.

Normally, I would've expected that we would go to the Empire State Building, but Christina said that the wait can be up to 2 hours and she didn't want to waste a bunch of time doing that when the view is just as great from Rockefeller Center with no wait, basically.

She was right! Here's a birdseye view - with the Empire State Building straight ahead!

In this one, you can see part of Central Park and then the Hudson River (very near where Sully landed that plane!)...

It was pretty cloudy and started to rain just as our time up there was ending - just made it! And it was getting dark, so these pictures are kind of gloomy, but it was AMAZING to be up on top of the city!

In this one, you can see the crazy bright lights of Times Square...

There's that beautiful Empire State Building!

And here's Mayce and I above the city with the Empire State Building in the background. I actually am kind of glad we did the Top of the Rock site so that we could get pics of the Empire State Building - surely you can't do that when you're inside of it!

PS - I didn't realize how much taller than Mayce I really am until I saw this picture. I'm only 5'8" - I promise!