United States


18/04/11

Manhattan

172 days away

Cloudy

2 km / 1 miles since last post

60,525 km / 37,608 miles total

Sarah

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Another View, Another Queue

Our Route (to 18/04/2011)

Another View, Another Queue

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We treated ourselves to a lay-in this morning, then took breakfast in the diner once again. Whilst it's a great place to have breakfast, I'm not sure my arteries are thanking me for it. Once we get out of the US I am looking forward to eating a bit healthier again. The temptation to eat badly is so great here, made worse by the fact we are in a hotel and are unable to cook our own meals.

We went back to the room after breakfast to finalise our booking for an apartment in Vancouver. For some reason they wanted the payment wired to them, instead of the much easier credit card option, so Stu had to venture out to a bank to get that sorted. Once he returned we decided to head to the cinema round the corner and watch 'Limitless'. It was a fairly good film, though I couldn't help thinking it was a good idea but could have been done better.

We grabbed a taxi to take us to The Rockefeller Centre after the film, as we already had our tickets for the 'Top of the Rock' - the Rockefeller Observatory at the top of the building. Our allowed entry time, as per our ticket, read between 7:10pm and 7:25pm, and the people in charge obviously take this rather seriously. We tried to get in at 7pm and were told that we were too early and had to go back outside and wait. While we only have ten minutes to wait we just stood near the entrance door waiting for our time, but were then told we couldn't stand there and had to walk away. Utterly ridiculous. This simply meant we took a very slow walk away from, and then back towards, the entrance. Absurd!

Once we were allowed in I had hoped that since we already had purchased our tickets that this would mean bypassing the queues. I was wrong. It seemed that there was still plenty of queueing to do as we waited in line to, first go through security, and then to get into one of the elevators to the top. Thankfully though, these queues were not too bad - probably around twenty minutes in all.

We had purchased our tickets for this time as we had hoped to see a nice sunset. Unfortunately there was a lot of cloud around today, which meant not much of a sunset for us. However, the view from the top of the building was still really impressive. In fact, I think I preferred it to the view from the Empire State. Whilst the Empire State is obviously a taller building, it does mean that you see everything from above. However, because the Rockefeller is more level with some of the other buildings it means you get more of a side-on view - which I prefer. It also, of course, means that you can see the Empire State Building in the view too.

We stayed on the top of the building until it got dark. Whilst it was nice to see the view at night, it made for better photographs while there was still some light. With the darkness you begin to lose perspective as all the buildings and lights merge into one. Because of the 'block' system of the streets and buildings they end up looking a bit flat. In the daylight however, you get a better sense of each building individually which makes for a much better photograph.

After enjoying the view for an hour or so we headed down and took a stroll to find some dinner. We ended up at an Irish pub (although besides the green font used in the sign outside I couldn't work out what was Irish about it). I ordered Shepherds Pie and Stu went for Bangers and Mash - both of which were highly disappointing. We were both a bit puzzled too by the garnish of a crisp stuffed into the top of both plates of food, and a bit of raw carrot. The meals were very bland too. How can you get such simple meals so badly wrong?

We took a stroll back to our hotel after our last night in 'The Big Apple'. Neither of us could be bothered with doing any packing tonight for our flight tomorrow, so we will leave it until the morning.