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Published: July 22nd 2011
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Had a good time in New York, it is always a pleasure to visit here, lots to do and see.
Went to the Natural History Museum which we have to admit rocked our socks off! All I wanted was to see was the dinosaur section and was not disappointed. The photo with the T-Rex is actually a full sized real fossil and a Stegasaurus which was all original fossils, amazing really impressive stuff.
The African mammals hall was mind blowing as well. Not so much in what they were exhibiting but how they did it. All the mammals displays were in 3D and looked so real. I seriously felt like the Gazelles were going to follow me home if the glass was not there. So glad we went it was impressive.
We then headed down to Times Square. The last time we were in New York it was the end of winter and we thought Times Square was fairly quiet. How wrong we were. This place was packed with tourists, ticket sellers and plenty of random people all enjoying the warm weather. And we even saw some Transformers. Something that we did notice here was that people in
the same family like to dress in the same clothes. This was demonstrated in Times Square when we saw a family dressed in identical New York shirts and jumpers topped off with identical caps.
The next day we were up early to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a very pleasant morning and on our walk we noticed all these padlocks on the railings and seats along the bridge. This made us very curious and when we got back to our room we had to look up what this was all about. Apparantly, this is a custom started in Italy whereby lovers put their names on a padlock and lock it to the bridge and throw the keys into the river to symbolise their everlasting love. This is a actually illegal to do on the Brooklyn Bridge but they do not enforce it but every so often they just come along and cut all the padlocks off the bridge.
After a walk around Brooklyn we headed back to Manhattan and went up the Rockerfeller Centre for some wonderful views.
Built during the depression this Art deco masterpiece was a beautiful building in itself but the views
just topped it off, overlooking central park and empire state building we took a few photos.
That night on a suggestion from Ash we headed to East Village to check out the bar scene, this little area was quite retro and we started at Schillers which was heaving for some wine and a snack. We decided to move on and a big green balloon down a side street attracted Bonny's attention (simple things...you know how the saying goes) and we ended up in a small neighbourhood bar with red velvet curtains and $4 spirits and beers called Nurse Bettie's - which is a Burlesque club.
It's hard to know how much you've had to drink when the bartender free pours vodka and not only that but it's one glass of vodka with a dash of cranberry, and I mean a dash.
Needless to say Bonny ended up rolling drunk but she was lots of fun, meeting everyone in the bar, had the bar man giving her free shots, talked to all the burlesque dancers and got Dan a photo with a girl from Melbourne, ended up in some other nightclub with Bonny's new friends and staggered home
at 4am in the morning where Bonny started to show me some of her own Burlesque moves although I did try to convince her that the foyer of our building might not be the best place - hell it was funny though.
The day was of course very subdued and Miss Bonn had a hangover that could not be beat.....ha ha. So it was Bonny's turn to state the old "I'm never drinking again."
After a quiet day of eating hangover food (that is greasy hamburges and chips) we headed to the Lincoln Centre on Broadway for a fantastic show.
The show "War Horse" is a play set before and during the first World War about a young man and his horse. His horse is sent to France as an officers horse and he follows to find his horse. The use of full size puppets for the horses (with 2 men inside) was quite breathtaking. The play was very emotional and there were a few people with tears in their eyes during the standing ovation.
This was a great way to end our time in the big apple as the next day we headed to La
Guardia airport for a supposed 1 hour 15 minute flight to Chicago. There ended up being delays out and this ended up being a 3 hour wait at the airport.
Overall, we enjoyed our stay in New York - the accommodation was great, the hustle and bustle is uniquely New York and the adventures we had were amazing. Yes, we do love New York.
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