The day we Broadwayed

What a city.
Now wonder it's featured in ALL the movies.
People write songs about it, write about it and video games oftem see it destroyed.

For those who still don't know what I'm talking about, it's New york, New York.
The adventure began rather bumpily as we pulled in from Boston and went to drop off our car at LaGuardia Airport which, the gps told us, was in southern brooklyn. After driving for half an hour in New York traffic (I finally get that now) we pulled up to a set of apartments which were apparently the car rental drop off at the airport. Literally the last time we needed the gps on the whole trip and it let us down for the first time. Turns out that the island had 2 addresses that were exactly the same. One north and one south. After cursing the gps we drove another half hour we dredged out the car and caught a cab to our hotel which it turns out was literally in the middle of times square (which is a lot bigger than I thought it was). Our rooms were great with a great view of the square and all the giant billboards. Nick Jonas' stupid face was staring in our window though and I had to look at his stupid, smug grin every morning.
Our first stop was the Nintendo world store in Rockerfeller Plaza. The short walk showed me just how ssturated New York is with people. Most streets were covered with people and you'd regularly have to dodge and weave throught the crowd if you were to have any hope of getting anywhere quickly. The nintendo store was full of merchandise and memorabilia, the first store was completely dedicated to Pokemon (since it used to be the Pokemon store I suppose) and the second floor was the typical nintendo stuff plus heaps of interesting nintendo historical items like a gameboy which was blown up in the gulf war and still works. I picked up a few things and we carried on to a few other shops in The plaza. Luckily Times Square is essentially the centre of everything interesting so we could rotate around the hotel for most events.
Our first event was my first ever Broadway show, 'Rock of Ages'. What a show. Our seats were literally st the back of the theatre but the view was perfect, we could see everything and hear all the awexosme 80s music that the show was comprised of. The cast was great, except for a few cast members who were clearly understudies the show was amazing. It was nice to see some theatre after having not been for so long. We retired after that and slept in some super comfy beds.

The next day we woke up and took a long walk all the way downtown to visit a few places. It was a long, long ways but it was worth it. Chris and I got to see the Friends building and took a few photos. We walked to the world trade center site but chose not to visit the memorial as you needed to prebook tickets (trust them to commercialize it) and walked all the way down to battery park to catch the ferry to Liberty island. Unfortunstely the Statue of Libertyh is currently undergoing rennovations so we couldn't actually go up inside it but we got to walk around on the island and take some sweet photos. There were some great views of the surrounding suburbs and cities as well. We discovered a discount ticket booth right near our hotel and picked up some tickets for the Broadway show 'Spiderman: Turn off the Dark' for about 40% off and we got awesome floor seats as well. We weren't expecting much due to all the problems the show had during pre-production (Actors falling of high wires etc.), but the show was actually marvelous. It was the origin story we all know with a few twists. For the most part it followed the movie plot but it added and subtracted a few things like no Harry Osborn, Osborn created the sinister 6 by mutating them with his machine (pretty sure Kraven the Hunter isn't mutated). The fellow playing Norman Osborn was hilarious and provided some of the best moments in the show like his finale song on a piano. Probably the best parts were all the high flying numbers where Spiderman flew over the crowd on wires (web fluid for those with imaginations) and the final battle fighting a flying Green Goblin. That night we also went to a pub called 'The Australian' to watch the GWS vs GCS game to determine who would be the ultimate loser. MJ ended up losing our bet and is now a proud GWS supporter as a result. It was nice to have proper cider on tap for the first time in a long time.

Our next day was a little hectic, we walked to a comic shop and realised that it was saturday so we tried to catch a taxi to the show Chris and I were going to see, Rent, but the traffic was so bad we jumped out after a few blocks and hoofed it the rest of the way. The theatre for Rent was underground and the set was awesome. It split into heaps of different formations with rails and wheels, pretty much creating every scene they needed very easily. It really weirded me out since the actor who played Angel in the Rent movie (a cross dresser) was playing Roger in the play and I kept seeing him in drag evn though he wasn't meant to be. The actor playing Mark and the actress playing Maureen were probably the 2 best in the show. I love the play so I really enjoyed it, I was glad Chris csme with me as well since going alone would have been kinda lame. We walked down to the Times Square markets which were pretty lame as it was just the same stalls every block, so we walked back to the hotel, had dinner and took a walk to the Empire State Building. What a line. Turns out going there on a Saturday night isn't the most time effective choice, never the less we lined up and travelled to the 86th floor observatory where the view was sweet, you could see for miles and miles. We then ascended to the smaller but higher 102nd floor and looked from an even higer vantage point. I'm really glad we went at night, the lights of the city were quite a sight and I think in the daytime the magic just wouldn't have been there at all.

Our last day in New York was primarily dedicated to a visit to Central Park. We walked down around lunch time and went to the central park zoo which was awhole lot smaller then I had anticipated but it was clean, spacious and well laid out. I feel like the animals had a good place to live in thed zoo and that made the small zoo size ok. We then got lost in the weaving paths above the lake and took a while to escape but when we did we got tickets to the American Natural History Museum which gave us access to the planetarium show, an exhibit called 'Creatures of Light' (animals which have the ability to become luminescent), a butterfly enclosure and the rest of the museum. The highlight of the tour was the dinosaur bones which are something I've scarcely seen back home. They even had a triceratops! (my favourite).

Then we caught a bus to Atlantic City.
Happy travels friends.
Love Reece.