New York State of Mind

We woke up early the next day to a huge American breakfast courtesy of our hotel. We had sugary cereals, eggs, waffles and coffee.

After fueling up for the day we headed down to the Long Island City waterfront to get a proper view of Manhattan. Long Island City is mostly an industrial area, so the walk was pretty uninteresting, but it was worth it for the great views we got of the city. We also stopped for a while to watch a baseball game and some Tai Chi, and then continued on to the Metro station towards Times Square.

Before we got on the Metro we stopped at Sweetleaf Cafe and grabbed a coffee and a doughnut hole, because we apparently weren't full enough after our huge breakfast! They were so delicious.

Our first stop of the day was Times Square, we wanted to get there early to try and avoid the worst of the crowds. We didn't actually realise we were there at first, it doesn't look as huge as in the movies, all the buildings blend together. The billboard's were the only things that gave it away, even the ball they drop at New Year's was tiny, and on top of a tall building so we had to search for it!

Can you spot the New Year's ball?

We couldn't believe how much advertising there was everywhere. We're used to Piccadilly Circus, but this was just insane. There were literally hundreds of billboards showing ad's for TV, Movies and Clothes.

A lot of Times Square has been pedestrianised, and early in the morning it's nice to wander down the almost empty sidewalks. There are lots of huge stores, like Disney, Forever 21, Toys R Us and the M&M's store.

We stopped off at the Hershey's store and it was amazing to see all the different kinds of Hershey's products that we've never seen before. They had huge slabs of chocolate and super sized bottles of Hershey's syrup.

I really wanted to buy this S'mores packet, but it was huge and we'd never have been able to get it home. Brad felt the same way about two huge Peanut Butter cups, everything seemed to be in Jumbo size!

They had a fantastic Halloween range. Visiting America the month before Halloween, I was hoping to bring back some cool Halloween ornaments or decorations. I love Halloween, but it's just not celebrated in NZ or the UK.

I couldn't believe the huge packets of chocolates they had, and so many chocolates had specific Halloween flavours, like how we might have Chocolate Santa's and Christmas goodies.

Our next stop was Toys R US, it was huge, about 5 stories tall, with a big Ferris Wheel in the middle. All the sales people were super excited, it's a bit overwhelming coming from London where the sales people are SO mean, to New York where everyone is really really friendly.

So many different types of Ugly Dolls!

They had huge displays throughout the store, including a big Optimus Prime and a T-Rex that wouldn't have looked out of place on the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios.

We had lots of fun playing with all the toys, and trying on masks. I feel I'm more of an Iron Man than a Captain America..

There was also a Wonka Store and an ice cream store downstairs, they were literally trying to make it so you wouldn't have to leave, but we had better places to be. The Disney Store!

Loved the New York merchandise

They had adult sized (or maybe large child?) Princess dresses! I seriously considered buying one, but couldn't really come up with an occasion on which to wear it. Perhaps my wedding...?

There was so much Princess stuff, while I was trying the crown and wand on, a staff member used a wand to magically wave in front of a mirror that turned into a video screen. Magic! My cry of 'Ohh Magic!' also amused her.

Sadly Bradley wasn't able to find anything in his size, but had a few comments from random passers by while posing for this photo. People just talk to you all the time in America, this never happens in London and it's always unnerving, but not unwelcome, we just forget how friendly people can be!

More Disney New York merchandise

After getting our fill of Kid's stores, we walked over to Grand Central Terminal. We really just popped in to have a quick look inside, it's completely huge and all I could think about was the first Gossip Girl episode when Serena arrives back in NYC. It looks exactly like the movies, but as soon as you've seen the inside, that's about it!

We continued along 6th Avenue, or the Avenue of the America's, I love that a lot of streets in New York have more than one name. The Avenue of the America's was one of our favourite streets, so wide and home to Bryant Park and the New York Public Library.

Bryant Park is a lovely park surrounded by tall buildings. It has a carousel and lots of different board games and petanque. What we thought was really cool, is that next to a lot of the seats were plugs where you could charge your phone or laptop for free. Such a good idea! Plus there was free wi-fi, which I really think they should have everywhere.

We continued our walk towards the Upper West side. We stopped for lunch at Pie Face, an Australian Pie store which happened to be right next to the Late Show. The pie's were so yummy, and they're coming to NZ, so I suggest you try them when they arrive. 

We walked past the Late Show and the guy offered us tickets. We didn't take him up on the offer since we're not really fans of David Letterman, and TV show tapings usually last for hours. We were not keen to spend hours watching a TV show we hate!

Some cool art on the Upper West Side

We decided to stop at the Natural History museum, as we'd heard they had a pretty amazing Dinosaur exhibit.

The Museum itself was huge, so we had to pick what exhibits we really wanted to see, as we didn't have hours to spend wandering around.

We picked Dinosaurs, Natural Wonders and Space. These seemed like good places to start. We skipped Birds of the World and Asian History..

Dinosaurs so huge we couldn't get them in one photo

A Triceratops!

Duck Billed Dinosaur!

The space exhibition was pretty awesome, they had a huge replica of the Solar System

We wandered down towards the Hudson River Greenway, a park that runs alongside the water that's mostly for exercise. It was nice to stroll along in the afternoon sun, and we sat down for a while and watched people running past us and walking their dogs.

We pulled out our map and tried to decide what we felt like doing next, and two seconds later someone stopped running and asked if we needed directions. We started feeling like we should pretend we needed directions since we didn't want to offend people!

We decided to head down to the Rockefeller Centre to go up to the Top of the Rock observation deck and watch the sunset. However, it seems that a thousand other people also had this idea, so after seeing the lines, we decided to come back first thing the next morning.

Instead we wandered around Rockefeller Centre and pretended we were on 30 Rock and Home Alone 2.

We decided to head down to Union Square instead for dinner, we wandered around the park while the sun was setting and browsed in the shops surrounding the park.

We ended up having burgers again for the second day in a row. We had burgers and onion rings at Goodburger, which while not as amazing as Shake Shack, still did a fantastic burger, and really good onion rings. I'm really surprised we didn't come back home with about 5 extra kg's each!