New York, NY

Boxing Day Friday Dec 26th We made a decision to get as most out of our last day as possible. Thus, we set the alarm, rose early and were out the door by 9am to head downtown to Times Square to pick up a tour. We thought we would just stay on one of the ‘hop on hop off’ type buses that did the loop of NY so that Ali could at least see and place the major sights and attractions. We took the 2 hour uptown loop first and almost froze on the half covered open-top bus. It took half an hour to thaw out before we connected with the downtown bus. This one was fully covered, not air conditioned, but slightly more temperate than the previous bus. The tour enabled Ali to gather some perspective of Manhattan without having to tread too far as she has still not fully recovered. The round trip of uptown and downtown finished by about 3pm giving us enough time to have a quick pizza lunch before heading to Top of the Rock, The Rockefeller observatory deck, for our 4pm timeslot. Whilst not as high as The Empire State building, booking and queuing is a much more efficient and thus time effective way to see the views of Manhattan. I had timed our visit to coincide with sunset so, we saw Manhattan in all her majesty and from ever perspective through daylight, dusk and into dark. The sun sets quite quickly here at this time of year. The cold eventually got to us, again so we headed off by about 5pm. Well, as if Mark had not done enough shopping, he wanted to head back to Macy’s before we went downtown to Greenwich Village for dinner. So, a taxi ride, one hour in Macy’s and four shirts later we headed down to Bleecker St. We found this fantastic, quirky, small jazz/wine bar called ‘Vivaldi’s’ in Jones St that served light meals, beer on tap, Manhattans and, it had a fireplace. Perfect! The place could seat only about 30 and was full shortly after our arrival. It seemed that most of the patrons apart form us were friends or relatives of the band or locals. We listened to light jazz with good food and soaked up the whole experience, the wonder of NY. This was a perfect way to spend our last day and night and Ali was glad to get see a little of what NY has to offer. We were all looking forward to the relative warmth that Hawaii was promising on weather forecasts. I was also looking forward to getting my curls back. The negative temperatures and zero humidity here left me wondering how Sarah Jessica Parker ever hosted a head full of curls in ‘Sex and the City’!