New York City 3-5 July
It took five hours with bus from Worcester to New York City (NYC), changing bus once in Springfield. As we arrived in New York City (NYC), the weather forecast on google claimed it was sunny and nice. Clearly, they were wrong. It was pouring down rain!
This is the room we stayed at, it's in an apartment on Manhattan close to the Empire State Building. It was almost like an hostel (a simplier version of hotel), except for that the room was one of the bedrooms in an apartment, hence we shared kitchen and bathroom with other guests.The owner of the apartment is Korean, who only rents out rooms to other Koreans. So, when I on my way to the bathroom met the other guests for a first time they seemed quite dumbfounded, especially the older dad. Didn't expect a blond girl here! I tried to say hi to them in Korean, but that seemed only to make them be more confused. We didn't spend much time in the apartment though, our schedule was packed from morning to night every day! We tried to save some money by walking a lot and not take the subway so much. My feets hurted every night as we went to bed!
The first attraction we went to was the American Museum of Natural History, which was pretty cool. The best thing about the museum, which also applied to the next museum we went to later, was that the Museum fee is only a recommended fee. It's run on donations, so you can pay whatever you want! We donated 5 dollars for the two of us together. And as you can see on the pictures below, it was so worth it (and probably a lot more). By the way, the movie "Night at the museum" had much inspirations from this place. For those of you who have seen it, you might recognise some stuff.
The picture above is showing indians, and below is a tree trunk from a very, very, veeery LARGE tree called giant sequoias.
And in the painting below is the world tallest trees called Coast Redwood. Both of the trees can be found in northwest of the US (mostly California). Can you spot the tiny human at the ground? Imagine standing beside a tree big like this!
Mum, next time you get bitten by a mosquito and it get swollen, whereof the doctor at the care center ask you what kind of mosquito it was, this is how they look like up close!
The aquarium part of the museum, showing the ocean animals. Wales are sooo big!
Saturn planet!
Dinosaures!! T-rex!
I'm not afraid of a mere t-rex....... not a dead one at least ;)
But gosh, we are really tiny compared to them.
Skeleton of a mammoth
They had displays of all different kinds of animals. Don't worry, they were stuffed, not alive.
"Hey dum-dum! Give me some gum-gum" - is what this South Pacific Ocean figure is saying the the Night at the museum movie.
After the musem we went to a Korean-Chinese restaurant so I could try fresh Jiajiangmian for the first time. (Jiajiangmian is a Korean-Chinese dish - noodles in bean sauce. It taste so much better that it sounds like, trust me.) Earlier back in China I had only tried the instant noodle kind that I liked it a lot. So it was a must when I heard I could eat the real dish in New York!
After the dinner we walked through Times Square.
Willy Wonka section
More t-rex!
Barbie!
The whole Cullen vampire family in barbie dolls
Barbie and Ken is just soo out dated, nowadays it's vampire dolls kids play with :P
More lego figures
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Together with classic Chinese sweet and sour pork and Korean kimchi.
"Nygård" is not a Swedish store even though it sounds like it. It's actually a Canadian store owned by a finnish immigrant with a Swedish last name. I thought it was Swedish at first and had to look it up, which isn't strange because Swedish stuff seems to be pretty popular nowadays. You can find Swedish flags or something labeled with Swedish quality in quite many places. I even found Swedish meatballs in the grocery store (not sold by IKEA). And did you know our store "Polarn o Pyret" is at Manhattan? Maybe our country isn't as small anymore as we tend to believe. Not to mention the success H&M, having a large store at TImes Square.
Not sure if they were doing commercial for a toy store or trying to get money by dressing up and have kids taking pictures with them.
Bringing your kids to NYC is not a good idea by the way, they have a big and fancy Toys"r"us store here with just too much fun!! You probably get ruined and your kids will go wild! Why? First of all, at the entrance, there is a ferrie well!
Willy Wonka section
Lego section with Emipre State building
More t-rex!
Superman at the front and Star Wars people at the back
Barbie!
The whole Cullen vampire family in barbie dolls
Barbie and Ken is just soo out dated, nowadays it's vampire dolls kids play with :P
More lego figures
We visited the Disney store too. I'm a big Disney fan after all.
Cool design in the store
We also went to chocolate stores, first Hersey's,
...and then M&M
Soo many different colours!!
They were even selling M&M necklaces, bracelaces, earings, t-shirts, hats, pyjamas, sport clothes and so on.
M&M as the Statue of Liberty. So what kid wouldn't be overly excited seeing all the toys and candies?
Out on the street again, some pictures of sky skrapers.
That truck that just passed by had a bunch of humans statues on the top.... I think. I'm not sure if they were real humans or just dolls.
We walked to Rockfeller center which is several of company buildings. Below them is a square with flags from all the countries of the world.
In one of the buildings here you can go up to an observatorium deck to get a great view of New York, and so we did. The red-white-blue building in the picture below is the Empire State Building.
'I downloaded an application to windows 8 that is some kind of simple photo editing program. It's not so good at making pictures more clear, but it got some fun colour settings. I played around with this pictures a little bit. How do you like it?
This is how it looks like on the observatorium deck.
It was really hard to get a good pciture here when it was so dark. (I brightened the picture a bit).
Disco at the observatorium deck??
Interesting stone monument infront of Rockfeller Center
On our way home we passed by Time Square were artist were working hard! This spray painting thing was really cool!!
And his black companion
We passed by this super fancy car, which created so much commotion on the streets, they could hardely drive anywhere.
And his black companion
They finally managed to get through the group of car entusiastic people and left with a loud WROOM, shortly followed by a limousine. I wonder what kind of rich people were driving those cars. What do you think, celebrities or sons of successfull business men?
We also encountered the famous Naked Cowboy, but who in fact was an imposter. The real one is supposed to be really muscular. This one wasn't as charming....
Another interesting thing we saw this evening was commercial for Dalian in the middle of Times Square. Dalian is the city in China I studied at for one year. The commercial felt a bit out of place, but seems like China is trying hard to increase the tourism.
I remember this place!
Oh look, you can even kiss a dolphin in Dalian. I never got the chance to do so though.
That was all for the first day. I will post more pictures of the second day tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, and pictures from the third and last day later on.
Hope you like the pictures!
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