Today was another travel day; this time a four-hour trek to NYC. We got up a little early to make our 11:00am check-out time and hit the road.
We ran through McDonald's for breakfast (love the all-day breakfast, though the menu at this one was pretty limited) and I was surprised to see something new on the menu: lobster rolls! I can't imagine a McD lobster roll being any good, but I was still tempted to try one. But not enough to eat one while driving. I did find a blog post about it, that described it as a lot of filler (not surprisingly). The author also questioned wisdom of selling them in states that know what the real thing tastes like. My thoughts exactly.
The drive to NYC went amazingly well, with hardly any traffic jams. That is right up until the moment we missed our turn into Manhattan. We had to go through Queens and cross the Queensboro Bridge to get into the city. That added about 30 minutes to the trip, but since we had plenty of time, it was no problem.
The only other hiccup was trying to park. The parking garage was right next to our hotel, but when we pulled up, there was a big dump truck blocking the entrance. I thought it was going into the separate entrance for trucks, but then it pulled forward. I pulled in behind trying to get to my entrance, and these two guys in uniform (parking attendants?) went crazy and started fussing at me. Apparently, the truck needed to back up, and now I was blocking it. I told them what I was trying to do, and since I clearly couldn't back up (due to cars behind me), they just said to drive on the sidewalk to get to my entrance (only a few more feet).
When we checked in at the hotel, we had the good fortune of being upgraded to a room with two Queen beds. Madison was thrilled because, for the first time on the whole trip, she would not have to sleep on a roll-away. And the carpet in our room had been freshly shampooed!
By the time we got settled in, it was after 4:00pm. And since we hadn't eaten since breakfast, we decided to see if we could up our dinner reservations from 7:00 to 6:00. They said they weren't busy and to just come any time.
We hit the streets and walked down to Times Square. Checked out the Disney Store (a must) for a few minutes, then hopped on the subway to Union Station.
Dinner was at one of our old favorites, John's of 12th Street, which I've covered in two previous posts. As always, the service and food were excellent. They were right about not being busy. We've never seen it so empty. We were glad, though, to see a good flow of people come in while we were there. After this and our upgrade at the hotel, we wondered if things were a little slow in NYC this week.
As luck would continue to have it, Sing Street is playing at the Village East Cinema across the street! Marsha has been wanting to take Madison ever since we saw it in Kentucky (see previous post). And since we ate dinner an hour early, we finished just in time to go!
The next surprise came when we went inside. At first it looked like any regular multi-plex, but Theater 1 was separate from the other screens. As soon as we rounded the corner, we noticed that it was rather ornate.
The actual theater was huge and definitely from the era of grand movie palaces, balcony and all. It was pretty incredible and made the movie that much more enjoyable. It was all Marsha could do to keep from singing along through the whole movie.
Afterwards, we were ready for some exercise, so we opted to walk back. It's about 40 blocks (the short ones), or 2.5 miles. Along the way we passed Forbidden Planet, an awesome comic book store (and stopped in, of course). And we had some amazing views of the Empire State Building, which was all lit up for Independence Day.
After we got back to the hotel, Madison went out for a bit with a friend. Marsha and I walked down to Times Square, then popped into a deli for bottled drinks and a black and white cookie. Might have been a short day in the city, but it was a great reminder of what we love so much about it.
And tomorrow is going to be even better!
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