New York City Part Three

We signed up for the early tour of Radio City Music Hall but had to wait so we went to Fifth Avenue. We saw the large Atlas Statue at Rockefeller Center as well as St. Patrick's Cathedral. The girls got to do a little shopping at the American Girl store that had four floors of merchandise including a hair salon for dolls.We went on the Radio City Music Hall Backstage tour and it was definitely on of the highlights of the trip. So much history, nostalgia, and glamour. The theatre was designed to look like a sunset with all kinds of gold and orange colors. I was surprised that the girls were so in to the tour. The stage and guest room are the only things that has not been refurbished. The stage is still state of the art with its four dropping parts and turntable.The lobby chandeliers are lowered on cables and it takes 8 hours with six people to clean oneThe girls pretending to put on make-up in the ladies' restroom and loungeA famous Rockette! On "Top of the Rock". A view of Central Park from Rockefeller CenterThe Empire State BuildingOne of my dreams fulfilled! I wish I could have brought my own skates though. The dull plastic skates were so limiting.Grand Central StationThe New York City Public Library. It was covered in scaffolding and is getting a face lift but the lions were still guarding it.An awesome way to spend the afternoon, hanging out in the Children's Section with the original Winnie-the-Pooh and FriendsTodd and Ivan topped their night off with a game at Madison Square Gardens to watch the New York Rangers play Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Todd said the fans are rough. Pittsburgh won. Linda, the girls and I topped the night off at Serendipity 3 with frozen hot chocolates and sundaes. mm mm...... Humongous!Our table is right by the clock

New York City Part Two

While Linda and I were at Wicked, Ivan and Todd checked out a few sights around New York at night. NYC Police on horses, Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall and NBC Studios. They also went to the NHL store where the girls tried on Goalie Masks. Todd and Ivan were looking forward to their hockey game later in the week. We got used to the subway system quite quickly. We checked out some of the sights in the morning and went to Mary Poppins for the Matinee Wednesday afternoon. We had front row seats which were absolutely amazing. The set and actors were spectacular.We went to Macy's department store to check out the original all wooden escalators. There was a lot of storeys in that building as well. Very cool to see where the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade is every year.It was also nice to see a little piece of home in the middle of NYC. Shaun White at Vancouver for the Olympics. Lots of people asked us about them when they found out where we were from.That night, we went to the top of the Empire State Building. It was snowing at the top and was very windy. At street level, it was not even raining. I guess that shows just how tall it really is!

Shining top of the Chrysler Building!

We ended the night with Flat Stanley posing with some NYC police in Times Square.

New York City Part One

Our family went to New York City last week for our family vacation. The best thing we could have done was buying a New York City Pass. It forced us to get going every day, see the city and try things we may have not known about. We left our of SeaTac airport and brought along a new temporary member of the family: Flat Stanley. He is a school project for a little girl in Alberta.

Our first day was in Seattle to the Space Needle and Pike Market. Todd was able to catch the last part of the hockey game in the restaurant bar while the girls and I chatted with people from all over visiting Seattle. Got my hand shook in Congratulations from a farmer from just outside Chicago. Todd was worried about cheering too loudly as we defeated the USA in overtime.

We arrived in New York the next day. Our hotel was in Times Square. It was definitely loud but we kept the room fan on to drown out the noise so it wasn't too bad. We went to Toysrus and the girls and I went on the ferris wheel that they have. It is four storeys high. We also went to the Hershey's and M&Ms Stores.
This was our hotel in Times Square

This Empire State Building was made out of Lego

The next morning, we went to the Central Park Zoo and The Museum of Natural History. We took the subway for the first time to get to the zoo. I was impressed with the mosaics that they have at every station and how it cooresponded to the theme of the stop. The zoo reminded me of Stanley Park's old zoo. Pretty small but nice to see. There was still snow on the ground in the park itself and some of the pond was frozen over. We went by Wollman Rink but decided not to go skating as we didn't want to line Trump's pocket with 60 dollars to family skate for a half an hour. Yikes! We moved on the Museum of Natural History. It was a fantastic and interesting place that you could easily spend two full days at. We picked the exhibits that we thought the girls would like the most and that was enough for them. We then went over to 5th Avenue to FAO Schwartz and the girls got to try out the big piano that was in the old 80's movie "Big" starring Tom Hanks. They also posed next to a stuffed bear worth over 1000 dollars. It was a huge multi storied store and a kids dream. That night, Linda and I went to the musical Wicked. It was very a fantastic show. A really neat twist on the Wizard of Oz theme. Very Entertaining. This was in the subway station near the zoo.

The clock at Central Park Zoo

We went for lunch to the themed restaurant Jekyll and Hyde for lunchDay at the Museum of Natural History - It had to entrances. The space entrance and the original main entrance

Big Giant Meteorite