We leave New York in about 12 hours, flying to Orlando to begin the next part of our holiday. New York has been fantastic!! – we’ve been out and seen stacks of sites, cuaght up with friends and done our share of shopping.

We’ve jammed a lot into the last few days. I’ll add some photos to the blog in the next few days hopefully, but I wanted to keep the updates rolling through here in the meantime.

Saturday the 3rd November

If we thought Friday was cold… today was COLDER! We all bought new coats and gloves today, to help keep us warm! (The days after this and right the way through the rest of our time in New York were cold – with most days the daily maximum being in single digit degrees celsius!)

We did a lot of walking today. We walked from our apartment (43rd St) up to FAO Schwarz (59th st), which is a very big toy shop, partially made famous by the movie “big” in which Tom Hanks dances on a piano keyboard. Jackson had a great time walking around looking at all the toys – we left with a toy catologue (which will keep Jackson entertained for hours as he tells us what toys he wants for his birthday or from Santa) and Jue, Col and the boys: Jackson picked out a great plane to get from some of the money you gave him – it looks great and we can’t wait to get it to the park to test out.

We also visited Bloomingdales today and it’s basically ALL women’s stuff… no good. Kylie bought some great (she says) shoes from Bloomingdales. While the girls and Jackson were in Bloomingdales, Ian and I walked around some of the nearby streets and down a big flea market which was very interesting. The stalls were mainly all different times of food, gloves (which came in handy!) / scarves / beanies as well as New York souvenirs and other nick-nacky things.

Later in the day we walked back down towards midtown, to Top of the Rock (www.topoftherocknyc.com), which was great! It’s a viewing platform at the top of the Rockefeller Ctr, offering similar views of the city skyline as the Empire State building. The Empire State buildings viewing platform is at on the 86th floor – whilst the Rockefeller Ctr viewing platform is on the 70th floor. We got a great view from the top of the building, right down to the Statue of Liberty and north towards (and well past) Central Park. Jackson liked using the “binoculars” which let him get a close look at a few things off in the distance.

Sunday the 4th November

Today Kylie, Kim & Jackson and Chris and Ian headed in different directions.

Chris and Ian went off to an NFL (American football) game. I’ve always wanted to see a game live and the New York Jets and the Washington Redskins (the team I like) were playing here in New York.

A friend of mine, Robert – who lives here in New York got tickets for the game and Grady, a friend who lives in Philadelphia drove up to see the game with us. They were great tickets, undercover, they had a great view of the game and were out of the way of the hundreds (it seemed) of paper airplanes which were constructed by members of the upper deck crowd and flown out towards the ground. We got our value for money from the tickets, with the game going into overtime and the redskins winning the game!

I’m glad I got to see a game live. For anyone who has watched a game of NFL, it is a bit stop start – but live the game (except for the TV timeouts) seems to go along much quicker.

Kylie, Jackson and Kimmy ventured off along 5th Avenue back to Bloomingdales (to keep looking at all the girls stuff). And also had another visit to FAO Schwarz, because Kylie promised Jackson another toy to keep him quiet during their time in Bloomingdales and then a stroll down 5th ave to do a little more shopping. Tiffany’s is on 5th Avenue….. I was miles away… and even with me miles away and an open opportunity to buy something from Tiffanys, all Kylie come home with was a nice new pair of cufflinks for me! (isnt she nice!)

Monday the 5th of November

Every day while we were in New York we had breakfast at the Westway Diner, which is right around the corner from our apartment and has great breakfasts. Everything from pancakes and bacon (with maple syrup!!), to oatmeal (porridge) to cereals or bacon and eggs and a whole bunch of stuff in between. By now the guys who worked there knew we’d want coffee and Jackson would want a big cup of milk. Breakfast probably wasnt that healthy, but it was close, it was good food, quick and cheap!

After breakfast Ian had to do some work so Chris, Kylie, Kim and Jackson went to central park. We went looking for squirrels and to play with Jackson’s new planes.

Kim must have been the squirrel magnet, because today we saw dozens of squirrels in central park! We saw only one, or two the other day, but today there were squrrels in the trees, running up trees, eating, hiding – they were everywhere!

We walked through the park and stopped in to look at the ice skating rink, which is in a beautiful spot, surrounded by weeping willows and framed by the skyline – i have a great photo which I will add later on to show this spot. We also stopped at a cafe at the boathouse – a location from the Stuart Little movie, and had coffee and watched the people go by. Then on the way to play with Jackson’s planes we saw a fantastic bronze statue of Alice and some of the characters from Alice in Wonderland and another great bronze of Hans Christian Anderson – with a goose, I am not sure if I got a photo of it, but at one stage jackson was riding the goose, very funny!

We found a great spot to play with the planes….. in an area not being used by anyone else and in the sun to help us thaw out a bit! The new plane we bought was great for the three turns we got to have with it. It’s battery charged and sits on a pistol like launcher, which shoots the plane with quite a bit of strength, a fair way. The first turn, the plane sort of sputtered off the launcher and flew about 5 mtrs. The next turn it flew with a bit more authority and did a bit of a turn in the air and then crashed back to earth after 15 seconds or so. The third flight was launched with optimism, but ended unfortunately with the plane getting lodged high up in a massive oak / elm tree. We tried shaking the tree, no luck. We tried throwing an apple at the plane to dislodge it, no luck. We tried waiting for the wind to blow the plane out of the tree, no luck…. what a shame. Jackson, and I, were both disappointed the plane got stuck – but we ended up agreeing that we should leave the plane in the tree for the squirrels to play with.

On the way back to the apartment we stopped in at the NY Fire Dept store. This is a store in mid-town, which has a fire-safety demo (which we didn’t do), a fire engine in the shop and a store selling NY fire dept merchandise. Jackson loved climbing on and driving the fire engine! We got some good photo’s here.

In the afternoon Ian looked after jackon at the apartment, while I went to union square to a big sports shop and then I went to macy’s to meet up with Kylie and Kim who spent their time there. At this stage, Kylie must have started to become conscious of the amount (lack) of space in our quickly filling luggage, because she told the lady who served her not to worry about the boxes for the two new pairs of shoes she bought.

We ended up going back to the apt seperately, to meet up with Ian and Jakcson for dinner at a nice turkish restaurant on 9th ave

more to come on our time in New York, but right now we need to put Jackson (and ourselves) to bed….

hope everyone is well