At Disney World there are four different theme parks. Each have a different theme and unique attractions and shows. Today we visited EPCOT (Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow, or something like that). The park has two parts, the first has quite a few rides and is like a traditional theme park, whilst the second part is like a World Expo. Today we only did the first part, tomorrow we’re going back to do the World Expo part.
My take from EPCOT is that it is supposed to include some representation of what communities in the future will be like. If that’s the case, get ready for bunches of merchandise places, weird costumed characters and “scooter hogs” (more on that in a future post) to be everywhere.
At EPCOT there is a show called “Turtle Talk with Crush”. In this show the kids sit down the front of a small theatre on the floor and the parents / adults sit up the back. The show is pretty clever in that the kids are able to interact in real time with Crush the Turtle from the Nemo movie, who appears on a movie screen. As questions are asked the turtle responds to the specific questions and also makes comments about people in the crowd, like what shirt someone is wearing.
Jackson was sitting down the front with all the other kids and I thought I’d start video’ing Crush, because it’s just pretty nifty that they can do this. And then, Jackson asked a question….
Pretty funny stuff, hard to script this type of stuff I’d reckon!
Disney do a great job of theming up their parks. The attention to detail is marvellous and I guess that’s how they make their money, by putting people in a different place and making them think – even if only for a second – that they have been moved to another time or place.
Now, I wasnt around in the 1950′s, but last night we got a taste of it! We had dinner at a place called the Prime Time Cafe in one of the Disney parks. It’s themed like a 1950′s home! Even better your waiter is in character as a Mom from the 1950′s and she goes around the restaurant telling everyone to get their elbows off the table! Some of her other favourite lines were “No whinging and no complaining” (Jacko didnt like that one) and she even rolled out the “If you don’t eat your greens, no pudding!” (see photo of Kylie, muhahahahaha!)
The desert menu is on ViewMasters and the food is all very “homely”. Kylie had meatloaf and I had steak and vegetables, with the steak cooked medium / well and it came out cooked very well!
Jackson and I both got a “Clean Plate Award” sticker from “Mom” for eating all our dinner, while Kylie left beans behind, so got no sticker.
I havent quite worked out how to embed pictures from flickr into a post here, so click this link for photos.
Our 7 night Caribbean cruise which visited the US Virgin Islands ports of St Thomas and St Marteen and Disney’s own island of Castaway Cay was incredibly relaxing. It was a great change of pace from the previous couple of weeks.
Jackson loved the kids club and would have spent the whole cruise in there if wed let him. I’m sure some kids do spend nearly the whole cruise there, but we wanted to make sure he got to do some cool non-kids-club things with us too. Though there were a few times when we were tempted to just let the kids club crew know that we’d pick Jackson up on the Saturday morning after we’d had our breakfast and before we left the boat.
On board we enjoyed the new Disney movie “Bolt” in 3D twice (obviously not our choice). The first time we saw it Jackson asked the Assistant Cruise Director, who was dressed in his whites and looked like the captain, “How the ship was driving?” The guys (an Aussie) joked back that it was driving well thanks. He then asked Jackson if he’d like a special job, Jackson said yes and he got to be projected onto the cinema screen before the film started and was introduced as a specialist flown in from Australia who would start the movie. Jacko then got to press the button which started the film! He thought he was very special!
I finished off the first and second books in a trilogy I bought to read.
Kylie and I played Bingo and won nothing! Their Bingo boards are electronic, when the numbers are called out the digital board you have crosses off the numbers on each of the cards you have and even has red lights which light up when you have a winner. There’s not much to do except sit back, drink Mojito’s and hope your card tells you you’ve won!
St Marteen was our first port of call, after two days at sea. We’d done some research on the web before we left home and decided not to book one of the Disney shore excursions, but instead get a taxi up to the North East of the island and go over to Pinel Island.
Pinel Island is a great spot only a short distance off the main island. You get there by a 25 minute taxi, then a 5 minute water taxi ride. We got there early & before the first scheduled service and got to ride over with restaurant staff. The boats were like Thursday Island Taxi’s (short wooden boats, rather than tinnies) and after the last fishing trip with Pa I was sure Jackson wasn’t going to appreciate the ride. He was fine, providing commentary along the way and even offering suggestions on how the restaurant stock could have been better packed onto the boat. There are two restaurants on Pinel Island, the main one shut down for the day and they told us the forecast was for bad weather…. Gah! So, we hung out on the beach for a couple of hours and then jumped back onto one of the water taxis and headed back to the island, called the taxi to come and get us and went back to the ship ALL before the island had pretty much anyone else on it.
Jackson then went into the kids club and we went into St Thomas for a walk around. We caught the water taxi from the ship’s pier over to the shopping part of town. The scene probably would have been more appreciable had there not been a dredging operation underway on the main beach. Our last visit to this part of the world we visited Nassau and were underwhelmed by our visit, but St Marteen was a lot nicer and we enjoyed our walk up and down the street poking in for a look at a few of the shops.
Initially I was a little disappointed that we had to leave Pinel Island early because of the weather, but after getting into St Marteen for a look around and spending the day lazing on St Thomas, I’m glad of how it worked out.
St Thomas was our second port of call. I had booked one of the Disney Excursions – a round of golf at Mahogony Run, but unfortunately they did not get the minimum numbers for the tour to run, so I booked onto the same tour as Kylie and Jackson. We were headed to Magens Bay for a day of restful relaxation at a beautiful beach. It sure turned out to be just that, with a 20 – 30 minute bus ride over to the Magens Bay and to our deck chairs. The “taxi” we caught over to the beach was a converted Ford F450, the back tray converted into rows of covered seats and open sides. We spent the day lounging under some palm trees with the Caribbean waves dumping only a few metres away. There were signs up “Do not feed the Iguanas”, unfortunately we didn’t see any Iguanas.
After the day on the beach we were all a little worn out – all this relaxing by the seaside is tough going! We returned to the ship, freshened up and spent some time relaxing in the cabin. Our cabin was on the side of the pier, so we got to watch all the cruisers running late running to re-board the ship. There were some funny sights as people come running back, including a mum and dad who sent their young daughter running ahead to tell the re-boarding party not to leave without them, a rather large grandmother (we think) and her granddaughter who had to be picked up by a golf cart about 2/3rds the way down the pier, a group of drunk bikini clad girls who were that happy to get back and see the boat hadn’t left that they ran (in not straight lines) to the boarding crew to hug & kiss them and a family who were sure they were running late and bolted all the way down the pier having an argument about whether they were late or not and apparently the mum won a $20 bet from the dad because they were late.
With the last group on board, the ship blew its horn (which is to the tune of when you wish upon a star), the last of the ropes tieing us to the pier were thrown off and we were on our way.
We then had a day at sea and afterwards stopped in at Castaway Cay, which is Disney’s own island. The weather was hardly Caribbean, rather overcast and more like a NSW beach (tongue in check there) and we hung out on the beach until just after lunch and then went back to the boat for some rest.
On top of the kids club, we had Rafael, Valentin and Terri helping us out. Rafael and Valentin were our servers in the restaurants, they moved around to each of the restaurants with us and helped keep Jackson entertained, even cutting up some of his food into bite-sized chunks for him to eat more easily (the servers do this for most of the younger kids). Terri was our cabin host, he made the beds and tidied up after us and best of all, each night he made different animals from towels and left them on the bed. Sometimes they were even wearing Jackson’s sunglasses.
The cruise was VERY relaxing and just the tonic after NYC and before Disney World.
Hi ya! Please excuse some of the mixed-tense you will find in this post, it was written over a week and a bit, so is a little mixed up!
I’ve got some of Jacko’s video updates to come too and will post them to the blog soon. We’ve got some great can-can action to show you all
This post started on the “verandah” (or whatever they call them on ships) of cabin 7122 of the Disney Magic. We’re now finished our cruise and are at Disney World….. This update was written with three days remaining on our cruise of the East Caribbean, which has been tremendously relaxing and a nice change of pace from the rather frenetic first fortnight of our holiday. Kylie commented at dinner the night before this post started that this would be our first morning to sleep in and wake naturally, without any alarms being set. She’s probably right too. It was about 545 am (a sleep-in for me) when I woke up and started writing this update, Jackson and Kylie woke at about 630am (not a sleep-in).
I need to catch you all up on a fair bit of our holiday, including finishing off with an update on New York, our time at Port and Cape Canaveral and our cruise. I’ll give you an update on the rest of New York in this post and follow up on the cruise and Canaveral later.
New York is really an amazing city. Everyone should visit New York at least once. Kylie has been here five times, I’ve visited four times and this is Jackson’s second visit. Even with a few visits we were still doing things we hadn’t done before and wondered afterwards why it wasn’t something we’d done on our first visit AND we haven’t got to any of the other four boroughs of New York City yet. We had so much fun here.
I don’t think a day–by-day or blow-by-blow description is the way to wrap up the New York part of our holiday, so I’ll give you some highlights.
The 30th of November (Sunday) was the first bad weather day of the trip. It was cold, very, very cold and raining, raining cold, very cold rain. Kylie, Mum and Jackson headed off to do the Statten Island Ferry for views of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty, the views of the Statue were not good (damn rain). After riding the ferry, they did a few things but the most noteworthy (if you ask Jackson) was getting back to Toy r Us and riding the four floor high ferris wheel inside the store. I went off to check out a large electronics store called J&R, which was very cool and then off to catch up with a friend at an American Football (NFL) game. Great thing to do on a day when it is cold, freezing cold rain. Thank god our seats were under cover! The rain was coming down four different ways and the people on the top tiers (not under cover) must have nearly froze. The game was ok. It was nice to get out to a game and hang out with Robert and his mate for a while, but next time the game better be great if the weather is that bad!
We shopped. We shopped a fair bit and had fun doing it. There is a lot more variety here in the USA over Australia in the types of products available and things are still pretty cheap, despite whatever the AUD / USD is at the moment. We went into some great stores including clothes and electronics stores. I loved visiting the electronics stores and checking out all the different products they had for sale.
The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) was a very interesting way to spend a few hours. They had large Picasso and Joan Miro exhibitions on. The Picasso exhibition was very interesting and enjoyable. Contributing to the understanding and enjoyment of the exhibition, MOMA have a wireless network within the exhibition and you can use your own wireless devices (phones) to basically tune into and listen to information on each piece of art as you stood in front of it. It was very interesting to be able to absorb what state of mind the artist was in (drunk? crazy?) when the piece was being done and learn a whole lot more about the actual piece hanging on the wall in front of you. Some of the works on display take weeks and months to complete, despite them looking like they could be whipped up in a couple of minutes (more on Jackson Pollock later). I went through the Joan Miro exhibition and wasn’t really taken by any of the work. We strolled through the rest of the exhibits and took in works by many famous artists and pieces, including the famously large Water Lillies, which stretched out at least 5 metres wide and was the highlight for Kylie. There were many Jackson Pollock’s on display and Mum mentioned the national “interest” in Australia when Gough Whitlam bought Blue Poles for the National Gallery in Australia. It got me interested in that and when I get back home I am going to keep an eye out for books written on that topic. Surely there’s one. The MOMA do a great job of an exhibition, but I still reckon our very own GOMA is something we should be incredibly proud of.
On one day we caught a cab down to the financial district, to right near the site of the World Trade Centre to start a day of walking. From here we had a look through Century 21, which is a department store worth a look and then walked up to SoHo. In SoHo there are lots of great stores, including Ben Sherman, Ted Baker and Ed Hardy as well as a bunch of stores like the GAP and Old Navy etc which are fun to spend money in. I got my snow boots finally, they were marked down a fair bit on their original price and then when I got to the check-out they were marked down even further! Bargain. SoHo is also where we had lunch at Balthazar.
Rockerfeller Centre is a collection of buildings in mid-town. They were at one stage all owned by a very rich dude and were once home to the Tourism Queensland’s New York office (who do I talk to about re-opening that puppy?!). Rockerfeller is also home to “Top of the Rock”, which is a skyline viewing area similar to the Empire State Building which is about 70 stories up and also includes an outdoors area. The ride up to the viewing platform is an a lift (duh) but the roof of the lift is transparent so you can see through the roof and see the workings of the lift taking you up to the viewing area, this is pretty cool. Once up on the 70th’ish floor you can get a great 360 degree view of Manhattan. I prefer this view than the Empire State Building, there are shorter lines to get up to the viewing platforms and you are closer to Central Park. The outside areas have glass “walls”, but it was so windy that when out there I was clinging tightly to the camera and walking as “low” as I could. We got some great photos from up here.
We went along to the Radio City Christmas Show, with the Rockettes. Apart from being dazzled by the heights of the dancers kicks we also thought the show pretty cool as they combined dancing and singing with a story about believing in Santa and a 3D film which tied in nicely (and not so subtly) advertising messages from the shows sponsors. This was a good night out which also featured a 5 block dash to the gents room at the restaurant we were having dinner at for Jackson who pronounced that he was busting to do a pee just after leaving the theatre and we were sure we wouldn’t make it, but he did! Phew…
Dining wise we had some great meals in New York, probably the highlights over the last few days in New York would have been.
Balthazar is a beautiful French Bistro in SoHo. A friend had dined there in the past and recommended it to me, we were looking forward to eating there and we were not let down. We’d made a reservation for 12 and when we were going back to the restaurant I noticed a big black SUV pulling up in front of the restaurant. Given my earlier induction to the Posh-Pap-Scrum and that my paparazzi sixth sense is now nicely developed and I commented to Kylie that someone famous was in that car. Turns out it was Kate Moss who was having lunch at Balthazar, “with us”. Kylie wanted me to let everyone know that she did eat something and definitely drunk her share of red wine (Kate Moss, not Kylie). We had a great lunch and the highlight for Jackson was when he was presented with a box of crayons and told to draw all over the paper tablecloths. He didn’t believe me and I had to get the waiter to come over and be the first to draw on the tablecloth for Jackson to believe it, but after that first drawing he couldn’t be stopped and he made his way around each of the four settings at the table doing his own special drawing for each setting.
We also ate at Daisy May’s. This was one of Kylie’s finds, which came from Oprah Winfrey (!). It is over on 11th Street and it served BBQ’d ribs. We ordered our dinner and went into the dining room, which was a few rows of tables and benches and sat down to one of the most delicious meals we have enjoyed so far. We both had Kansas City style sticky sweet ribs, Jackson had a chocolate ice cream. Kylie and my ribs were served with our selection of two side dishes. We got the Brown Sugared Sweet Potato Mash (which I’d had a version of once before when we had a Thanksgiving Lunch in the Digital Team with Caroline Lalla, a Yankee member of the team) and the Red Eye Sauce Mash Potato and the Corn Bread. My mouth is watering just remembering that dinner… If you are in New York, get yourself here for a meal. Fantastic food, go Oprah!
Mum headed back to Brisbane on the Tuesday, from New York, to Los Angeles, to Sydney, to Brisbane. Blech! She did have a row of three seats all to herself from Los Angeles to Sydney, which is very fortunate! With her she took a medium and a small sized suitcase loaded up with goodies we’d bought in San Francisco and New York. Kylie has bought eight pairs of shoes (compared to 11 the last trip) and I’ve bought a few new business shirts.
Sadly, I’ve now realised that we go back to work next month
Lots to report on today’s happenings, what a great day!
The day after Thanksgiving Day, the stores go on sale here. They call it “Black Friday”. I’m sure there’s a really good reason for it, but I haven’t a clue and can’t be bothered looking it up right now. Some stores open up at 5am for eager beavers to get in and snap up the early bargains. There is another group of people who go, that’s Australians who don’t like crowds! So, me being an Australian who doesn’t like crowds and Kylie being an eager beaver shopper, we were all at Macy’s shortly after 5am…. I have the best wife, she accompanied me and kept Jackson entertained while I had my turn at Macy’s! I found some great stuff and once done shopping, I volunteered to bring it back to the apartment and drop it all off and let Kylie have some peace and quiet from us boys. Kylie spent two hours in the shoe department! Unfortunately it was so busy she only got to try on two pairs of shoes! Lucky she bought both pairs!
Nanny was doing a hop-on-hop-off tour today. I saw her for a couple of minutes after I got back from my outing with Jacko and before Kylie and her headed out. She had a long day touring and I’m thinking tomorrow might be a sleep in day.
While Kylie was in Macy’s and on my return walk from the apartment, Jackson and I went into a big electronics store and a golf shop! The electronics store was very cool, I recommend a visit there if you’re into this type of stuff. BH Electronics Superstore (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/) has two floors, but no working lifts or escalators, so I had to carry the stroller up to the second floor. It was worth it. When you order something, the attendant helping you enters something into their computer system, which advises someone somewhere of an order, that someone then puts the item you order into a container which then gets moved from the storage area to the shopfront along conveyor belts. Nifty! Unfortunately for them, I then decided I didn’t want what I’d got them to send out and I left without buying it, but I’m thinking of going back tomorrow to do the whole thing again, just to see the conveyor belts in action. (Big Al – I picked up their catalogue, which is bigger than the SONY catalogue and full of great stuff.)
After the excitement of that I went to a golf store looking for some new golf shoes. My last pair finally gave up and croaked about a month or so ago after 10 years of solid service. Those shoes saw some great golf courses and they’ll be missed… The sole just came unstuck on one of the shoes and there was no saving them. Anyways, back to the story. I found a great pair of Adidas shoes, but for the amount of golf I get to play I couldn’t justify the cost, so ended up with a sparkling new pair of Calloway shoes. Why do most pairs of golf shoes look like clown shoes? The economy can’t be so bad here, the guy serving me flat-out refused to give me a discount on some golf balls I also wanted to buy to lose later on the trip. Merry Christmas?! Ba humbug….
After this I had to go into Macy’s to find Kylie. We’d agreed to meet at a certain point at a certain time. It was now coming up on 1030am or so and the store was chockers! I had Jackson in the stroller but aborted that plan shortly after getting into the store as I was running into far too many ankles and getting too many hairy-eyeball looks from cranky shoppers trying to get to their discounted items… shouldn’t have slept in, should they!? Kicked Jacko out of the stroller and fought my way to the meeting point. I haven’t ever seen a shop so crowded! It took me 4 minutes (I timed it after I thought I was going to be late and left behind on the battle field by Commandant Kylie) to walk about 40 metres! Once I met Kylie she told me how she’d spent two hours waiting to try on shoes. (booring!) So we decided to come back to Macy’s another day.
Left the Macy’s area and walked up Madison Avenue. Along the way we saw a bunch of tweens camped out to see some guys called the Jonas Brothers. Good for them, I can’t come to trust / like bands with Brothers in their name, Bros ruined it for me…. (remember them?) I went into Best Buy and Circuit City for a look and see and walked out pretty quickly, far too many people….
We ended up at Rockerfeller Centre for lunch at a restaurant which is right by the ice skating rink. Nice spot and a beautiful lunch. Poor Jacko dropped his glass and it smashed his glass and pink lemonade everywhere. That makes the video as the bit he didn’t like about today – the waiter was very nice about it and helped to calm Jackson down by telling him a story about how he once dropped a tray full of glasses.
We then headed up to my favourite shirt shop in Thomas Pink and despite the terrible AUD to USD rate, still bought a couple of shirts. That can be what my first weeks wage back to work goes towards when I get back. We also stopped in at the Sony store where Jackson got out of the stroller and showed the good people in-store how to play Guitar Hero (or not) on the big screen. We also bought Jackson & I the Crash Bandicoot game for the PSP.
Here’s where the real fun begins!
We’re all knackered, we’ve been up for ages and walking around the city in all kinds of crowds and we decide to take a less travelled path back to the apartment. We cut along 52nd (or something like that) from Madison Ave heading to 9th Ave. On the way I see a sign saying that there is some movie being shot on the road we’re walking along and I think that’s pretty nifty and take a photo of the sign and then we keep walking. We get another couple of blocks along and these cars and scooters (mopeds) come screaming along the road. Horns honking, people yelling for us and other people to get out of the way, so we stop and move towards the building. This SUV pulls up in front of the theatre we’re passing and the guys from the cars and scooters all run to the front of the theatre. I’ve thought this is something to do with the movie which is being shot, so we now stop to actually watch events unfold. The guys running past us all have cameras around their necks. We were still stopped where we were and then I am not sure where the idea came from but I moved towards where the SUV is stopped and get my camera out too. Before you know it I’m in the middle (ok, on the fringe) of this crowd and these guys around me are all snapping shots, so I did too. A woman got out of the SUV with a boy, everyone else was still taking photos, so I did too. Guy beside me says something like “you look gorgeous today Victoria”, I’m still trying to get a photo… Woman walks past me and into the theatre, so I turn around to walk back to Kylie and Jackson. Kylie recognised her as Posh Spice! Victoria Beckham. Then, Kylie says there’s David Beckham, and I turn around and sure enough, there he is. I didn’t even get close to getting a photo of him. So…. Without further adieu, I present to you, my portfolio of shots for my application to be a paparazzi photographer:
You can JUST make out Posh’s head in the last shot, to the right of the nearly blinding flash of someone taking a photo of me from the opposite side of the scrum. Really, you can. It’s partly obscured by the head there. Ok, almost fully obscured… Trust me, she’s there!
I can’t tell you how freaky and bizarre the whole situation was. At first scared we were going to be mown down on the footpath by a moped (and seeing the headline on the Brisbane Times flash into my mind), then seeing a swarm of cars and mopeds come to a screaming holt, everyone running past us and then being in my first real life paparazzi scrum. I feel for Britney Spears… it must be hard living in the middle of that ALL the time.
We stuck around for a few minutes and someone mentioned that the Cruise’s had gone in a little bit before the Beckham’s arrived.
(this is a long update… sorry)
From here we went back to the apartment for a little rest before Jackson and I went to the circus. Kylie went for some retail therapy. Kylie is with Mum at Momma Mia right now, so I don’t know what she bought – but I don’t see too many bags laying around, so I don’t think she bought too much. Although, she is skilled at smuggling in new purchases under the cover of darkness, so there could be lots of new purchases I just can’t see yet. Apparently Dayle Grant is quite good at that too.
Jackson and I went to the circus tonight. It’s the Big Apple Circus, which is an old fashioned circus put together to raise money to fund activities to lift the spirits of sick kids. It was a one-ring circus and a great afternoon out. If you are in New York when this is on – go see it! Jackson giggled uncontrollably at the clowns in some parts, it was great to see and will be one of my most memorable parts of this trip. He also liked the horses and dog acts. The horse act had one Clydesdale in the ring with a Miniature Pony, with the Pony chasing the Clydesdale around the ring and eventually running in and out of the Clydesdales legs. Quite funny (funnier than I have explained it anyway) Jackson did get freaked out at the trapeze acts, but after I told him that they had safety harnesses on and practised a LOT, he was a bit less edgy.
We arrived home just as Nanny and Kylie were walking out, so I don’t have anything else to report from them yet. Their adventures might need to be in tomorrow’s update.
Here’s Jackson’s view of the day:
That’s about it for the excitement of the day, over and out (snap, snap)
Thursday was Thanksgiving in the US of A, so we had a couple of special activities planned. The first special activity was a sleep in! After not getting much sleep the night Wednesday night we slept in until about 7am.
The Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade was on Thursday. The plan was to get a cab up past where the parade started and then find a spot along Central Park West to watch the parade. Unfortunately we couldn’t find a spot along Central Park West but we did find a spot in the park close to the street from where we could see the balloons from up pretty close and also hear the marching bands. There were some people in the park who had bought their own ladders, which helped them get up nice and high to see the parade. We could see just fine without a ladder…. The balloons moved a lot smoother than I expected and it was interesting to see people hanging out of windows of the second, third and fourth floors of buildings to see the balloons and for those people to be BELOW the tops of the balloons. The more memorable balloons were Buzz Lightyear, Horton and Kermit the Frog. We’ve since heard that Rick Astley performed a song or two and the Energizer rabbit didn’t follow the true course of the parade, turning left when it should have turned right as part of some PR for Energizer… clever.
The parade finished somewhere between 1030 and 11 and we then went for a walk in Central Park. It was very cold in the park, probably because it is a little more exposed than in amongst the buildings. We saw a LOT of squirrels this visit, which Jackson thoroughly enjoyed.
We had lunch booked at the Boat House for 12. The Boat House is a restaurant on the lake in Central Park. We booked a table for their Traditional Thanksgiving dinner and they had us sign a contract, (A CONTRACT!) for the reservation. I could get use to the turkey lunch, it was beautiful, we all had the Traditional Turkey Dinner, except for Jackson who had about 6 pieces of Penne pasta, told us he was full and then ate a whole chocolate brownie…
We spent the afternoon stuffed full from lunch and hung around the apartment. Kylie did some clothes washing (one of her favourite leisure past times), Nanny had a snooze and I sorted some photos. Later in the afternoon we went for a walk to see what was happening, walking to Bryant Park and through Times Square.
Here’s Jackson’s video update. It’s stretched a touch over the 60 seconds, but still worth the watch (in this directors humble opinion anyway)
Day 4 was (as Jackson now loves to say) boooring. We flew from San Francisco over to New York. No vomiting this time! American Airlines were kind enough to sit me on the opposite side of the aisle to Kylie and Jackson (I jest) so I had to be content in reading my book, while Jackson caught up on missed sleep (it was a very early start) and Kylie passed the time by keeping Jackson entertained while he was awake. My mum flew in to spend the week with us and we all met up at the apartment in Manhattan. The same apartment we stayed in last time we visited, it’s in a great spot just off Hell’s Kitchen – near lots of nice restaurants – and a couple of blocks from Times Square.
Day 5 Walking, walking, eating, eating…. We’ve got a bit over a week in New York and today we started off with a few sights, some delicious food and the promise to visit a place called Toys R Us….
We headed straight along 43rd Street and across town to Grand Central Station for a quick squiz. From Grand Central we turned right when we should have turned left and did a complete lap of Grand Central trying to find a nice breakfast spot I had been to once before. This cafe is right under the bridge which features in “I am Legend” and they do a good breakfast!
After breakfast we headed up towards 60th St, which was where we were having lunch. Jackson wondered if this was where Toys R Us was? No, we informed him…. disappointment… We strolled for a couple of hours and stopped in at Bloomingdales to have a look and see. Nobody bought anything – we’re waiting for the sales to start Friday (more on that later). We DID visit FAO Schwarz, which is a big toy store that once featured in the Tom Hanks movie “BIG”, when he plays the jump-on piano. Jackson had a fun time in here and got to look at some fantastic toys. He was not happy to leave (as you would expect) and was also at pains to point out that that was NOT Toys R Us and when would we be going there?
We had lunch at this place called Serendipity 3 (http://www.serendipity3.com/main.htm and their menu http://www.serendipity3.com/food.htm. Famous for its desserts, we had lunch in reverse order with dessert first then mains. Keep an eye out for the photos, this place is decked out with lots of interesting objects. Frozen Hot Chocolate was first (seriously). This was served like a chocolate sundae, very rich! Jackson and I had a foot long Hot Dog each – neither of us could finish it – Kylie had that ol’ American faithful in Meat Loaf and Mum had a delicious looking sandwich. (Kimmy, this is where we tried to get into last time, but couldnt, you should go here one day!)
Jackson was sure we would be going to Toys R Us now! Nope, not yet…. Disappointment…
From lunch, we jumped in a cab and rode across town to the American Museum Of Natural History. Our cab cut through Central Park and I reckon I saw a few Law & Order crime scenes along the way. (Is Toys R Us in here?) The Museum is fantastic, I think one of the more enjoyable and interesting things I have seen in the city. The displays are done so well, with so much effort obviously put into the design of each display, but also a lot of thought into the placement of each part of the exhibition. The highlight for me was the animal displays and watching Jackson enthusiastically run from one display to the next. I took lots of photos and will be loading up some photos from the trip tonight.
We spent a good four hours in the museum and afterwards went outside to see the inflation of some of the balloons which will be in the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade. They start “blowing them up” the night before. Jackson was horrified at the thought of us going to watch the “blowing up” of balloons… we tried to explain what inflating meant, but it didnt click for him until he saw it with his own eyes. The crowd was full-on, which is nothing compared to the crowd at the Parade, but we did get to see up close a couple of the balloons.
We’d left the apartment about 730am this morning and it was now coming up to 5pm or so, so we got in a cab and headed back to the apartment. Jackson feel asleep in the cab and when he woke up to find we were back at the apartment he was most distraught, as this clearly was NOT Toys R Us….
Upstairs for a quick freshen up and then back out for another stroll to…… Toys R Us! Interesting decisions kids make. We told Jackson he could pick out one toy, which wasn’t too large that it wouldnt fit in our luggage. He walked past Ben 10, Diego, Star Wars (silly boy), Iron Man (boooring) and a whole bunch of stuff. He was obviously thinking very hard on what to pick out. Of all the toys in the store, I was surprised he picked out a small two pack of Transformers. He was very happy with it, very happy!
No video recorded from yesterday yet, I will do that later today. No doubt Jackson will believe the best bit of today will be Toys R Us and the worst bit how long it took to get there!
’tis now 3am, have been asleep, but woke up and have had some trouble sleeping tonight. Best try to get some shut eye.
While travelling around I’m keeping my eye on the various marketing messages for ones of interest. The ones which have caught my eye so far are:
A large billboard in San Francsico by the Israeli Tourism Board encouraging visitation by pronouncing “A Different Israel from the news”. Interesting….
This would be my favourite so far:
I did also see a billboard on the way to the airport in San Francisco by United Airlines which was about door-to-door lugagge service. I need to look into that!
Day three was a great day. It was a long day, but a great day. We’d booked onto a tour to the Yosemite National Park with a company called Extranomical, who were recommended on tripadvisor. The day was to start about 620 am and we’d be on the tour for about 14 hours, which included 3 and a half hours travel in each direction plus a half hour stop in each direction at a large grocery store for lunch and dinner breaks. So, with the PSP and the iPod’s all charged up we were down waiting outside the lobby at 620… it was cold!
I can recommend the tour highly, it was a long day and we didn’t get to spend a lot of time at each stop but it was a great day out. The scenery was spectacular and hopefully the photos do them justice.
The drive out was for the most part uneventful, but once near the park the road turned very windy and interesting. The turns and twists reminded me of the drive up to Lamington National Park and at one point you could see where more than one panel of a guard rail had had to be replaced because a car had gone through it. It was interesting for the road to then curve back on itself and be able to see the hillside below that part of the guardrail and be able to see the path the car which had gone over had cleared through the trees and shrubs for about 200 metres down the hill. Yuck….
We stopped at a few spots in the National Park and each of them was beautiful in their own way.
The first stop was at a lookout (or vista as they are called here) which looked right down the barrel of the valley. From here you could take in the valley floor, which was covered in what seemed like small, but I’m sure they weren’t, pine trees and you could also see nice and high up to the tops of the granite cliff faces and one long waterfall.
The second stop was a short ride away at the base of one of the waterfalls named Bridal Falls. It was a short hike (I’ll use that word to impress the guys in my team) from the car park to the waterfall base. You could actually walk in from the end of the well trodden path to be nearly underneath the waterfall, but with a little one in tow and the feeling of a disaster movie in the making, we elected to view from a safer distance. I love a good water fountain, but this took it to another level. I’m going to guess the waterfall was at least 400 metres, but will check this later and bet it’s further. We got some great photos here on the “hike” and at the waterfall.
From here we went to the Yosemite Lodge, which is a hotel in the middle of the park. The hotel reminded me a little of O’Reilly’s in its look and feel and it was quite busy coming into the Thanksgiving holidays. We had a lovely picnic lunch by a babbling brook, the only detraction was the low whining sound of a little boy who didn’t want to eat his sandwich (for the record Kylie didn’t make it – we bought it from a local store). From our lunch spot we could see a couple of huge waterfalls, the granite face cliffs the park is famous for, a babbling brook and some other lovely sights. A very, very nice lunch spot indeed and well worth the three and a half hours of bus travel to get there.
After lunch it was back onto the bus and onto the final stop. Kylie really wanted to see the large tall trees which are famous here. We got to see a couple of them and these things are massive! I’m sure they are taller than 30 Makerston Street. The hike (and the word is deservedly used this time) was 1.5 km’s in each direction, downhill to get there and unfortunately uphill to get back at 6000 feet. The area is dense forest; the smell of pine was nice and refreshing for the walk. At the bottom of the walk is a few live Sequoias, which were amazing, as well as an old (now dead unfortunately) tree that some bright spark had cut a tunnel large enough to drive cars through into the trunk and an old dead trunk of a tree which you were able to climb on and INTO! I tried convincing Jackson Winnie the Pooh hid his honey inside, but that didn’t convince him to go in looking. A lovely Park Ranger came along and coerced Jackson into walking into the hollowed out trunk a little, I got a photo and he told the ranger “this is cool, no kid from my kindy has done this before!”. Then we had to tackle the walk back UP to the bus, it was a heck of a walk and I thought we were the last ones of the group so we were walking very hard. Jackson did VERY well, though he did say a few times along the way he wanted to have a long rest and that his legs and even his arms were tired from walking and even suggested at one stage that one of us go and get the bus and bring it to meet him. It was a heck of a way to finish of a visit to a beautiful part of the world.
From here it was back on the bus and a three and a half hour drive back to the hotel to pack up our stuff to be ready to leave.
We had a great day on our tour to San Francisco’s wine country, which included stops in the Napa and Sonoma Valley’s.
Saturday night we went out for dinner at a little Italian joint around the corner from the hotel. Jackson fell asleep at the table and I think if we’d have stayed much longer Kylie and I might have fallen asleep at the table too! We were all asleep by about 730pm and Jackson WAS NOT the last to drop off. We all had a great night sleep with the alarm waking us up at 6:30am, so even I had a sleep in which was nice.
After a VERY restful night of sleep we were off to “Wine Country” today! Our day was spent with Rick from Blue Heron Tours. Rick does a great day out and if you are in San Francisco, be sure to get in touch with him to organise your day out and about. Apologies to Rick, Jackson just could not remember his name.
9:00am kick off and at the first winery by 10:00am….. This would’ve been a fun day to spend with Kezza and Jane!
Over the day Rick took us to wineries which produce good sparkles and pinot. We went to 5 wineries, including Mumm and Tattinger’s for bubbles and Nicholson’s Ranch for Pinot and a stop at a very nice winery called Trefethan. We went to one other, but the name of it escapes me for the moment – their Global CEO is an Aussie and they have a winery in Vic somewhere.
The weather was great, the wine was very nice and I could very easily have settled in for a Sunday session at either the Mumm or Trefethan winery, which were my pick of the tasting room’s / locations.
Lunch was at a lovely Italian restaurant, we’ve got a great photo of Jackson showing his “best” table manners…. Our mains were fantastic! Kylie had what she claims was the best Ravioli she’s had and the Porcini & Sausage Fettuccine was pretty bloody good too. The highlight was Kylie’s Maple Syrup Creme Brulee… wow!
We got back into town early evening and headed off to ChinaTown for dinner. Jackson decided he didn’t want Chinese for dinner, so chucked a tanty in the restaurant and didnt eat anything. Quite funny…. (he didn’t think so)
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