My 50th birthday!!!
Started very nicely indeed with some cards and gifts that Steve had packed, there will be some more when we get home. Will have to add photos to these blogs when we get home too, some on camera, some on phone which I was able to post to FB but the lack of wifi other than in the hotel lobby makes it difficult to do now.
We decided to take up an open top bus tour package that we can use over two days. So, after breakfast at Al's Delicatessen - fruit salad followed by eggs, bacon (or ham for Steve), hash browns and toast which was all superb - we walked up to 42nd street to pick up the bus for the first leg of the tour. Al's Deli was evidently popular with the locals which is always a good sign.
We thought we would be able to get off for the World Trade Centre Memorial, then pick up the bus again for a few stops to do a boat trip around Liberty Island and get back in good time to shower, change, have dinner and get to the Imperial theatre for Les Mis in the evening but it didn't quite work out like that.
The bus starts with a loop going up 8th avenue and back down 7th taking in Times Square, turns along 33rd street past Madison Square Gardens (which is round!), then back again along 34th past Macy's to stop 2 for the Empire State Building. It then took us down 5th Avenue past the famous Flatiron Building, continues on 5th into the Greenwich area where it turns onto the lower part of Broadway to go through Soho (now for the uninitiated Soho means SOuth of HOuston street and there is also NOHO), and on to the Financial district. We got off at stop 7 for the WTC Memorial.
9/11 is one of those days when you really do remember where you were and what you were doing when the dreadful news came through about the planes crashing in to the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia. There is still quite a lot of construction/redevelopment work going on around the WTC area but the Memorial Museum has recently opened and the Memorial itself is tasteful, respectful and a great tribute to all those who lost their lives that day. Despite some noise from the construction works coming through the sound of the waterfalls set in the footprints of the two towers it was peaceful and, aside from one idiot trying to move people away because he wanted his photo taken which Steve was asked to take, everyone around was just calmly reading the names and walking around the two pools. The queue for the museum was very lengthy, and being rather hot and a bit footsore, we found a pub to get a drink and use the "restroom".
I'd actually almost forgotten about the football being on and England's last match vs Costa Rica but it was on (on one of about 10 screens - the others were showing Italy vs Uruguay) and we got chatting to a couple of others - one guy now living in New York but originally from Yorkshire - who were also watching so we stayed until the end of the match before going to get the bus further round Battery Park to where we could pick up the boat. Now England only drew the match but a much improved performance gives something to hope for. Again a lengthy queue for the boat trip that would take an hour to go around Liberty Island. After some debate we decided that since we needed to get back to our hotel to freshen up and have dinner before going to the theatre we had better just have a wander round the seaport area and get the next bus back and use day 2 of our tickets to come back for the boat trip. The first bus was very full so we had to wait for another. The bus route on the return journey takes you past Chinatown, through East Village and then up First Avenue past the United Nations. It all took rather a long time because of the traffic. Eventually we arrived at the Rockefeller Center stop and got off there to walk the 14 blocks back to the hotel finally arriving at around 5.30 with a pitstop along the way to eat. We had an hour to freshen up, and get to the theatre.
As mentioned in a previous entry, Steve had been cooking up another surprise for my birthday. Unfortunately the hotel messed up big time and hadn't done what he had asked. There was supposed to be a bottle of wine, some cakes, birthday balloons and a banner saying Happy Birthday but they hadn't brought things up at the time requested. They were delivered while I just had a towel around me!!!! :-0 It was really too late as we just needed to get out again and it rather spoiled Steve's carefully thought out surprise. I was more upset for him than for myself.
Anyway, we managed to get a taxi to the theatre and picked up our tickets for Les Miserables. We found our seats with a reasonable view of the stage courtesy of a rather officious attendant who kept telling people to hold their tickets up. If truth be told, we didn't enjoy it as much as I thought we would. We should perhaps have researched the story before going as we found it quite hard to follow, particularly in the first half where there are leaps in time as the story unfolds. The story is totally told in song and trying to understand the story was difficult because we couldn't hear the words clearly. There were some individually excellent performances of the well-known numbers, notably I Dreamed a Dream and Bring Him Home. American theatre audiences are much louder than British ones with much whooping and cheering after these songs and a standing ovation for the cast at the end of the show.
And so to bed after walking back to our hotel - it was still pretty warm outside and extremely busy with lots of people many of whom had also probably just left a Broadway show. All in all, although things hadn't quite gone to plan, it was a grand 50th birthday.
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