Central Park, Natural History Museum & The Lion King

We were up early today and went out to one of the great breakfast joints for waffles & pancakes.

I stopped in at a shop nearby to get a New York key ring ...

Then we took the subway to the Lower East Side, where we visited the FAO Schwartz toy store.

We saw the wierdest toy there ... it was like the old table-top soccer game, but it was bright pink and the soccer players were all Barbie dolls.  So weird!!  And the price tag was $25,000!!!!

After we were done playing with all the toys in the store, we walked across Central Park, which has so many beautiful spots.

On the other side of the Park, we visited the Museum of Natural History, which is the largest natural history museum in the world.



They had these amazing vingnettes - perfectly reconstructed scenes in rooms behind glass with complete, full-sized, stuffed animals in them.  So lifelike you thought you were actually there!



Another life-sized vingnette.

And, of course, I bought a key ring ...

I loved this little T-Rex!  Both its rear legs moved independently and so did its little front legs.  While we were riding home on the subway, Torie and I made him do all sorts of different poses, which made us laugh.  Not sure what the other commuters thought about it!

Then we went back to the hotel and chilled for a while before going out to dinner at TGI Friday's and out to see The Lion King.  What a fabulous show it was!!

I think my pained expression was because I wanted to get inside and see the show!

And, of course, I had to get the key ring ...

Then we went back to Bubba Gumps for supper.

Off to bed very late and very happy after another lovely day!

Uptown & Madame Tussaud's

This morning we took another open-topped bus tour, this time of uptown New York.  Firstly we travelled up the west side of Central Park and saw a lot of famous buildings ...

Central Park 

Columbus Circle, Time Warner Centre and Trump Tower

Dakota Building - John Lennon was assassinated outside this gate and Yoko Ono still lives in the building

Strawberry Fields, Central Park - a memorial to John Lennon 

The San Remo Building - Ashton Kutcher, Demi Moore, Steve Martin and Bono live here

The El Dorado Building - Michael J Fox and Alec Baldwyn live here

We learned that "Manhattan" comes from the American Indian words "manna-hatta", which means "island of many little hills".  We moved through Morningside Heights and saw more interesting sites ...

Cathedral of St John the Divine - which can seat 9000 worshippers at any one time, was begun 119 years ago and is still being built because each stone is hoisted by hand, not by cranes (don't know why)

Columbia University

Grant's Tomb

George Washington Bridge - the only 14-lane suspension bridge in the world and costs $12 to cross

Then we drove through Harlem and saw ...

Apollo Theatre - where Count Basie, Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson all started their careers

Shabazz Mosque

Duke Ellington Memorial

Then we turned down the other side of Central Park and moved into the Upper East Side.  Here, we saw ...

Conservatory Gardens in Central Park

The Guggenheim Museum

The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art

The Frick Collection

The Plaza Hotel

The Pond in Central Park

Carnegie Hall

It was a great tour and finished off our "all round view" of New York.  Then we went to lunch at Bubba Gumps Shrimp Company - a fantastic restaurant all themed on the Forrest Gump movie.  They had great food and we had lots of fun remembering scenes and quotes from one of our favourite movies!

Wayne and I bought t-shirts and I got a key ring.

On the other side, it says "Stupid is as Stupid does" ... a classic quote from Forrest Gump!

Then we went to Madame Tussaud's and met heaps of famous people ...

I picked up another key ring ...

Each of the four cubes spins around

After that we went back to the hotel to relax for a while, then went out to the Broadway Theatre in the evening to see "Sister Act".  It was a great show and we all really enjoyed ourselves.

We picked up pizzas and pasta on the way home for dinner and I had tomato & basil soup.  We fell into bed after a fantastic day!