Day 37 All Over Red Rover

Well what an adventurous night for our last night! After blogging, packing and generally making sure we'd be ready in the morning I took myself off to bed and was just dropping of when I realised MGM was not the only other living thing in the room with me.

Hoping for a mouse and fearing something lager I began a vigil to ensure that it was actually in the wall and not the room. I was so brave, I didn't wake MGM...I just watched. Well I watched until it ran right at me and scooted under the bed, which elicited a squeal and an advance across the bed in the opposite direction from the mouse and straight on top of the poor unsuspecting, soundly sleeping MGM. 

As it was 4am there was no point in alerting hotel staff. MGM went straight back to sleep  safe in the knowledge that it would be more scared of us blah blah. I tried to be safe in that knowledge too, but try and convince your subconscious of anything at 4 in the morning & you can guess what that little mouse did to my dreams. 

It was a lovely old fashioned hotel right up until I saw that mouse and I guess it's still a nice old fashioned hotel but with a mortified front desk staff who could not apologise enough and I think were happy we were checking out right after we told them. What a way to start our last day!

So here's the best and least of our holiday in a nutshell

Sweden: 

best - my relies are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet & Stokholm public library

Least - not as much of the white stuff falling on our heads as we thought we'd have

Norway:

Best - snow mobiling Northern lights and the short short days

Least - road infrastructure for drive-yourself travel

Denmark 

Best - lots of snow that we weren't expecting

Least - not meeting up with my friend (because of my poor organisational skills)

Austria

Best - well you know the answer to this ... Grundlesee 

Least - nup got nothin'

Germany

Best - lovely towns like Lübeck & Trier 

Least - dinners (for me, MGM loves meat meat meat)

NYC

Best - walking in the snow in CP & every other little thing! We loved NYC

Least - mouse misadventures

Thanks for joining me on our travels. Sitting down in the evening & blogging the events of each day a most enjoyable aspect of AllansAbroad. See you all soon. 

Day 36 The Met!

NYC is very kindly helping us acclimatise for our return home. Yesterday was 6° and today, our last full day here, was a veritable heatwave of 12°. We went our separate ways today because I wanted to go to the Met and MGM didn't fancy a full day in an institution that has museum AND art in its title.

 

I started my day with a walk through a different part of Central Park. It was strange not to be one of two. We've been together 24/7 for the last 35 days, but don't feel sorry for me as I had company of another kind all day. In the park these little fellas were constant companions.

It was challenging walking on my own. I'm not known for my savvy map reading skills, in fact I have less sense of direction than a stick floating on a pond. I knew I had to cross the park but I found myself in a stretch of path called the ramble, named because it seems whomever laid out the path was following the squirrels.

This is not fair... look at that fork in the road...one wrong choice and I suspect I'd be in that park for the duration.

 

There was no snow today but I do love bare trees

 

 

and bridges

 

 

 

 

and even though there was no snow I was very careful on slippery surfaces in order to avoid the full-blown ice tourette's of our last walk in CP. I didn't tell you about that did I? I must check MGM's alternate blog to make sure he didn't catch a pic of me doing the splits (haven't done that voluntarily in about a decade) replete with an overly loud "woop" on the way down. With my left leg splayed out somewhat awkwardly behind me there was no way I was getting up without help. A very nice young couple were most concerned and offered help which thankfully was not needed (God bless MGM), but I did not want a solo repeat performance today!

 

so I was quite pleased to be on safer turf at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Where I spent my time with my companions were not squirrels but Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Bouguereau, Rodin, Van Gogh, Cassatt, Sargent etc. plus the American interiors ...had to see those ... I was choosey.  I only had a day to give to this wonderful house of beauty so I went with what I love, I'll just have to come back to do the rest, won't I?

 

I was going to catch the hop on hop off bus back but I choose to walk through a different section of the park because I wanted to see this

 

 

 

From here it was a brisk walk up West 72nd street - not exactly a hardship

 

 

but it was brisk and it was warm today so I was down to a Tshirt by the time I got to 72nd and, judging by the looks I was getting, this is unusual in NYC in January. I needed to get back to the hotel in time to get ready for a Broadway concert which I will only tell you about if you promise not to laugh, remember we're old...okay...

and we like Barry Manilow

 

 

 

so do New Yorkers! It was great to see him in a room full of his compatriots, great atmosphere.

 

We don't really want to give in and admit that we're at the end of our journey so we had a late dinner at Juniors where the cheesecake is to die for, so we'd heard. It was actually quite understated and had something we couldn't quite put or finger on that made it special.

 

We're leaving this wonderful city at 4pm tomorrow, so, as we check out at 10am I'm not sure if I'll have a chance to post again but I hope to be able to wrap up in one last post tomorrow.

see you soon chickens...kisses

Day 35 ticking tourist boxes

It has been a very long day in which AllansAbroad did, in fact, tick a few significant tourist boxes.

 

We've had some really nice meals here

 

so we thought we'd try them for brekki. I've worked out how to get acceptable coffee here...specificity, which is also necessary for catching cabs. For cabs you must know the address and how to get there and tell the cabby this with certainty. Not like Sydney where you just say the name of the hotel. We tried that once and the cabby didn't know where to go, MGM had to direct him on our first day here. We haven't done a lot of cabs since.

 

With coffee, know what you want and order it exactly, after first checking for the presence of an espresso machine of course. So when I asked for a double shot espresso I got exactly that and it was much better than anything else I've had here so I ordered another as I was feeling a little sluggish (quell surprise). This caused quite a stir behind the counter "she orderd another, that's 2...in one meal!"

 

Reinforced by good coffee coursing through my system we launched off downtown on the subway (we are experts at this now). Can someone tell me why we don't get whomever is in charge of the NYC transit system to cross the drink and get our trains organised? Here they're fast reliable, frequent and efficient. Possibly we're seeing them at their best, but still tourists with a week in Sydney would have a very different public transport experince.

 

We discovered that our plans for today would be altered for us. Thanks to superstorm Sandy Liberty Island and Ellis Island were closed so we did the next best thing by taking a cruise of the Hudson and East rivers.

 

 

 

 
 

 

Ellis Island (tick)

 

 

 

 

Well you recognise this lady (tick)

 
 

 
 

 Brooklyn Bridge (tick)

 

We caught the subway to our next destination and ticked off two at once.

 

Grand Central Station (tick)

 
 

 

 

 

recognise this building?

 

  How about now?

 

Yep, Empire State Building (tick)

 

 

 

 an early dinner (isn't that the prettiest pink lemonade?) before a Broadway show (tick)

 

 

 Gershwin and Matthew Broderick - eXcellent combination!

 

 

 

Now wasn't that a day of serious tourism?!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 34 NYC Arts Day

The same view with snow

It is a magical experience to open the blinds and see snow falling. I think I would never tire of that kind of magic but perhaps I would if I lived somewhere snowy.

As walking in the snow is a favoured way to experience snow we went to Central Park and walked in it, would you like to come with...like we did in Grundlsee? Come on it's lovely outside.

some nature on what must be prime real estate right in the middle of the city,

for free...lovely largesse

Let's walk to the castle built as a Belvedere (viewing platform) but we won't pay to go in (we've seen a lot of castles in Germany)

 Nice view though

Oh no, the lovely fluffy snow has turned into icy rain and we're near the other side of the park anyway so let's go to the Met (Metropolian Museum of Art) it's just on the other side of the bridge.

that cream building

um...nup NYC is not Monday friendly (my kinda town). Museums, Broadway shows don't do Mondays, but the Guggenheim does!

Unfortunately the spirals were closed today as a new exhibition is being installed.

You can see the crates. I got a glimpse of some of the Picasso black & whites as  they were being hung, so that was kind of cool and I got to see the permanent exhibitions which includes the Kandinskys which was what I went to see so I was happy with my time here.

Still raining when you leave the museum? The hop on hop off bus comes to the rescue, we went all the way to uptown and Harlem. Then switched to the down town bus for a bit of shopping ...as you do, at Macy's. We had dinner there too. I think I've got eating here out sorted, don't order an entree (called starter) & a main (which seems to be called entree!?) because it will be way to much food. I tried ordering 2 starters tonight, even then there was almost too much food! Almost. We did share a key lime pie for dessert (we felt compelled).

 We caught the subway like pros back to the hotel, which is just as well, it's been a big day!