Hop on Hop off

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It was late again when we woke up so we quickly got ready and went to brunch at the hotel's revolving restaurant (Dad's idea), which was surprisingly great. The food was tasty and the view amazing so it was well worth visiting.

As today is Halloween, there have been pumpkins / creatures / crazy characters and scary looking people (although some of them may be the norm ha ha ha) all over the place. Kids in Buzz Lightyear costumes, adults as vampires, ghosts and Steve Irwin (???) I even saw a guy crossing the street dressed as a Twister matt! The costumes are large and elaborate and we've enjoyed that all day - even the desserts at brunch had sugar skulls and black cats on them.

After brunch we jumped on the ubiquitous Hop On Hop Off bus and toured Times Square to Wall St and then jumped on the Brooklyn tour bus before rejoining the downtown loop and coming back to Times Square. It was great, we got to see many sights from the bus that we wouldn't have seen just on our own with a map, the guides were great and apart from it being 7 degrees (yeah, 7 degrees) on the top of an open double decker bus, we loved it. We saw the Chysler Building, Empire State Building, lots of shopping hotspots, beautiful heritage listed buildings, Ground Zero, The Museum of Sex, Wall St (including the bull), the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge (yes Robbie, I took photos), ate NY Slice in Brooklyn and damn was it way better than expected, witnessed a little car crash and then visited Top of The Rock observation deck for spectacular views of Manhattan and beyond. I almost went ice skating at Rockafellar Centre, but it's way too cold and we are all very exhausted and the cold is too much tonight so it's off to bed soon.

Tomorrow we're booked in for the New York, New York helicopter tour and will jump on the Staten Island Ferry before heading to Central Park and / or Macy's (for a big, warm coat, gloves etc etc etc).

Until then..............take care!

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