Tours and Thai

Today we started our 3 consecutive days of hop-on, hop-off bus tours of New York. These are on double decker buses that are open in the summer, but have clear plexiglass “lids” on them right now.

We picked up our tickets from the office and ran into my favorite celebrity in the whole wide world:

John didn’t like the close conversation we were having tho:

We start with the Downtown Tour. We decide to get off at Canal Street to grab a bite to eat and a coffee. Immediately there are a few women asking us if we want to buy purses. I say sure, I’ll have a look. Next thing I’m headed down a sidestreet and to a van that is full of purses. Real or fake? I don’t know. Either way, I liked a couple of them so bought three for $20 a piece. I’m not one who gets caught up in name brands, if I like something I like it no matter what the brand is, and I liked these three. Didn’t matter that I noticed later they were Coach.

We grabbed a bite in a little cafe and I grabbed a starbucks and we decided to get back on the bus. Take some photos on the way:

Next stop was the world Trade Center site. We first go into the church that is there, St. Peters. This church was a haven for those working at the site after the tragedy, a place they could get water, food, rest, sleep, and a shoulder to cry on. As soon as we entered the church and walked around seeing the displays, we all had teary eyes.

We went out the back of the church, and it is indescrible the feeling one gets when first viewing the huge space between the giant skyscrapers that is the gaping hole where the towers once stood. We all felt sadness, humbleness, and we were very somber for a long time. We just sat and looked….and I cried.

After a period of talking about it with the kids and what they remembered, we walked down the street and noticed the Century 21 store that my friend Penny had told me about. It is a discount store like Winners, but much much better! We shopped a little but it was sooo packed, we decided to come back in the early morning one day when it would be less crowded. It was Christmas Eve after all and so all the shoppers were out.

We got back on the bus and passed through Wall Street and all the other great areas back to the beginning. I can’t recomment these tours enough, they are called CitySights NY Tours. The guides are terrific that narrate the trip and they give you lots of tips on eating, shopping, etc.

We got back to the beginning and then got onto the Uptown/Harlem tour. It was raining pretty hard now so it was hard to take photos, but I actually like how this one turned out of the historic Apollo:

We got out at the Gugenheim figuring we could get an hour or so in there. But it was closing early, so it wasn’t worth it. We never ended up getting back to it, so next time! I took a couple of photos inside.

The kids wondered about this display:

I told them I thought it was saying that everyone has to lie sometime in order to save their life. They’re like “what??!” I said well look, if Pinnochio tells a lie, his nose will grow and lift his head out of the water. Ha! (I have no idea what this display was about, really!)

As we waited for the bus again, I took some more photos of the park, etc.

We got back and did some walking around Times Square. What a place this was! So busy all the time, so bright, so much going on. We all loved it.

We went to change into some warmer clothes as we’d be going on the night Xmas lights tour tonight. Then we walked down into Hell’s Kitchen to look for a place to eat dinner. Hell’s Kitchen is an area off of Times Square where there are restaurants lining both sides of the street. Good restaurants of all kinds, but ones that are very reasonably priced compared to the trendy places. It is a few blocks south of our hotel, On 9th between 42nd and 50th.

We found a Thai place to try, called Yum Yum Bangkok or something. It was a cute little place and they gave us a seat right by the window. Forgive the pics taken in bad lighting with a crappy camera! I didn’t always pack around my big camera and had to suffer with the point-and-shoot occasionally, which is not so good in low-light.

We had the best Pad Thai we’ve ever had here, along with some great ginger beef and sweet and sour pork. Then it was time to head to the night bus tour. On the way we snapped a few more pics:

Hmmmmm…..think they are registered massage therapists?

Should I go in and ask about Xeon?

Times Square at night is fabulous!!!

I love this photo, it gives a sense of the constant movement that is Times square:

tour took us all along looking at the lights, and had a couple of stops where we got off, such as at Lord and Taylors to see the windows and at Grand Central Station.

The windows at Lord and Taylor’s are unbelievable:

Grand central was amazing!!! Inside I couldn’t resist turning to the kids and saying, “Man, it’s like Grand Central STation in here!”….all I got were eyerolls.

Hammy on the tour:

Some pics from the bus:

this is a giant snowflake suspended above the road:

The obligatory messed up shutter speed night pics:

After awhile the kids got restless:

The only thing we didn’t like about this tour was the guide. We hated when we made stops and she would tell us that we all had to stay together as a group, then she would walk along with her arm straight up in the air the whole time and we were to follow her. I hated it, felt like it made us stand out as tourists and I just don’t like that for some reason. This is probably why we have never done an organized tour in all the times we have travelled. Even Jorden commented on it saying he hated feeling like a tourist following the guide. His mother’s son!

We got back around 8:30pm, and walked around Times square some more and looked in some shops. Then it was time for bed.

I felt bad for the kids at this point that they weren’t waking up to a bunch of toys under the tree, we had done all that before we left. It seemed a bit anti-climactic for them, I think. But they didn’t say anything about it and when I tried to tell them I felt bad they didn’t have stockings or anything, they just reassured me that they were fine with it and not to worry about it.

We all watched A Christmas Carol on tv before going to bed around midnight. It was hard for us to get used to the three hour time change, and we ended up being night owls.