New York City.
Day one.
The next day, we set out to explore the local area. We started at the Union Square Christmas market. There were lots of unique and artsy things for sale other than the usual wooden Christmas decorations.
Absolutely everything was for sale here, along with some unusual Christmas decorations and art; including the funny “Peach Upset over Enabling Goldfish’s poor eating habits”
We had a mandatory stop at DSW and the Nordstrom Rack. Then uptown to the Plaza via the subway with a walk back down 5th avenue southward.
We arrived at the south border of Central Park and The Plaza hotel. We walked down 5th avenue.
We entered into the frenzy of Christmas shopping mayhem, we passed by the window Christmas displays at Berdgorf Goodman.
We passed by Trump Tower which now has a press gallery set up across the street and a protest zone with full security cordon in front of the building. Trump was identified as the president elect 5 days before our trip to New York. The NYPD were conducting full bag searches of all persons that wanted to get to the front of Trump Tower. I can’t imagine how much this will cost over a 4 year presidential term. Thankfully as a visitor to the USA, I will only have to pay when the president destroys NAFTA (laughing).
As darkness fell, fifth avenue was a fully decorated light show. We wandered down 5th avenue while we took in several shops: Uniqlo, back to Berdgorf Goodman among others.
Over to the Rockerfeller Center Christmas tree. It was absolutely packed but it had a terrific holiday look as snow started to fall in the city. There were a few people there but who's counting?
We walked over on 50th street past Radio City over to Times Square. The Christmas theme was all around.
We wandered over to Times Square which was getting ready for New Year’s celebrations. The ball was set up to drop to end 2016. This was prior to Ms Mariah Carrey's New Year's Eve performance where the lyrics were "missing".
After Times Square, we headed back home to the W for a recharge. At the Times Square MTA Subway station, there was a Post It Note protest. The walls were covered with thoughts, expressions and ideas. At the time of our visit, with Mr Donald Trump just being identified as a President Elect, most of the notes were signs against his leadership. It was a pretty interesting time reading the public disclaim against this guy and a great country overall for allowing the freedom of expression versus some countries that would dissent and suppress this kind of public expression at all costs.
Since we hadn’t made any booking reservations for dinner, we went over to Eataly for dinner. Its situated just cross the from the iconic Flatiron building just 6 blocks from Union Square up Broadway. It is a large Italian grocery superstore featuring imported olive oils and fancy pastas. I was drooling at all the fresh food supplies available.
It also offers restaurants within the area so after wandering through the varieties, we went with MrsWT73’s favorite of pizza and pasta. It was prompt service consistent with its mid grade price point.
The menu at the pizza and pasta resto inside was absolutely massive.
MrsWT73 had a capricosso pizza.
I went for the house made Angolotti pasta with rib sauce, chopped parsley and Parmesan Regianno paired with Fontafredda Barbera by the glass. Wow- it was near perfect, tasty and robust for a quick meal.
It certainly fit the bill and seemed to be mostly free from tourists on our visit, with most customers being families with kids, younger couples grabbing a bite or moms’ and daughters. A short walk and we were back to the W Union Square, with night time views of the Empire State building.
