So Day Two in New York was supposed to start with us waking up early and heading into town to go to church for a little while. Unfortnately, given our exhaustion at the end of Day One and our complete inability to wake up on time, we didn't end up making it into the city until about 1:00.
But, the drive in was much prettier this time. By taking the local bus instead of the express (which only runs early on Sundays) we were treated to some beautiful views of New York City from the New Jersey side of town.
After arriving in Times Square again, we considered taking the six-man bicycle to explore the city . . .But then we decided we didn't want to look any more like tourists than we already did. So instead we hopped on the subway and headed down to Union Square, home of the flagship Barnes and Nobles (five stories of books!)
And this store, called ABC Carpet and Home. ABC is like Pier One Imports on Speed. It's mostly faux Indian and Asian products, and it all costs more than I make in a month. I tried out a $15,000 bed and considered buying a $250 decorative elephant. Seriously, it was the type of store where I expected to turn around and see Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie shopping for their third-world babies. Cool, but overwhelming.Fortunately, if shopping wore you out, they sold this product across the street
Why Kaballah has its own energy drink, I don't know. Somebody better consult Madonna on this.
After a little healthy window shopping, it was time to head uptown again. One thing I miss about big cities are all the people playing music in the subway stations. They're called buskers in London, but I don't know what they're called here. Anyway, these guys were pretty good at latin guitar.We stopped here for lunch
Before exploring the wonderful world of Rockefeller center.
For those in the know, it's home to a world-famous skating rink (much smaller than you'd expect, actually),
the NBC studios (by the way, this is one of my favorite pictures from the trip) and Radio City Music Hall,
And some really cool sculptures.
Across the street is St. Patrick's Cathedral.
We went in for a few minutes. It was Amelia's first time in a real live cathedral!
At 5:15, we headed back to Rockefeller Center because we had tickets to go to the Top of the Rock. It's a big open observation area with some great views of the city at the top (also, it's a few dollars cheaper than the Empire State Building and much less crowded).You had to take the Acid Trip Elevator to get up there.
But once you do, it's pretty amazing.
We had fun.
That evening we had tickets to go see a little play called "Perfect Crime." It was a surreal experience. The theater was very difficult to find. Two doors down was a strip club and adult bookstore.On entering, things weren't much better. The signs and markers for the theater seemed to be about 18 years old.
And in fact they were. The woman who owns the theater and plays the lead the show has been doing the same play for the past 18 years. She's missed only in 4 performances in that time. Needless to say, she knew her part by rote and was not particularly energetic. The rest of the cast was good, but in this tiny little theater with only 40 people in the audience, it was just odd. Hooray for student discount tickets. It may have been weird, but at least it was cheap.After the play we stopped at Yoshinoya for dinner.
OK, we did eat at this one chain restaurant on Times Square (which everyone warned us against), but it's a chain from Japan that neither of us had seen since being in the states. Mmmmm . . . gyudon. Amelia enjoyed it.I did too.
After that it was time to go home. We took our bus back to Tenafly (thank goodness they remind us about bus safety)
and went back to sleep. Another successful day in the city.
Coming Soon: The Staten Island Ferry! Shopping in Greenwich Village! A High School Reunion!
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