Day 10 - The last day...

This is end. Beautiful friend...

Woke up a bit later today, after a busy night...
Breakfast then packing... We all did quite a bit of shopping and everybody is busy trying to fit their belongings into suitcases and bags, Nicolas and Aurélie amazed me as to how a little stuff they brought with them compared to Marie and I... I managed to fit everything neatly, protected the few fragile things I got, good news I still got room for some more, so I might be able to fulfill the order I got from my dear sister.
11am time to check out and pay for the hotel ouch, we can only pay by cards, I saved some cash for the hotel and it just got upgraded to "buy more stuff, here" with the help of Marie, oh well... Luggages are staying here for the day and we expect an additional bag from Charlotte, books or so we heard...
After leaving the hotel, MTA, we're buying tickets with coins 5c, 10c and 25c coins, I had a lot of spare coins from previous trips to the US and it seemed I had more than $8 in that form so we're on our way to Soho. (MTA tickets are $2 each...)
Back in Soho for more shopping, I've got to find 2 pairs of jeans for Yann (my brother in law) and Blandine (my big sis) and a pair of funky Converse. A few calls and assistants later at Levi's, I've got the Jean's!!! Quite a mission... As I left the cashier, no one was in sight, thanks... Got out of the store, hopefully Nicolas was waiting for me... We found Marie and Aurélie in the shoe store next door, Marie is trying some sandals, hesitating between 2 pairs... yeah both look great on you dear, ok take both...
Next the Converse, lots of choice but hopefully the girls helped me to find the right pair or so we hope. Marie already stood up as a backup in case they don't fit/please, girls, girls, girls...
Right so I got a present for most of the family now, my bag will be very full, time to stop...
Next we rested ourselves at a little cafe for some drinks and onion rings, brunch is not until 2pm and we need a break from all this action as Aurélie is too tempted to go back to Armani Exchange so we have to stop now before she burns her Visa even more...
Sun is out, no torrential rain, we're meeting with Charlotte for brunch. Charlotte knows all the good places in NYC and we should have taken her with us the whole trip and she proves herself yet again today. We ended up in Double Crown at 316 Bowery in Noho. As you can see from the picture a very original and stylish place. But to celebrate my return to the old country I'm going for the traditional English Breakfast, with a more NYC lychee cocktail... A few more talks and pictures... feels alreay like the end.
After brunch we decided to walk back to the hotel to pick up our luggages via Washington Square Park and 5th Avenue, this park is very famous in NY and you may have seen it in a couple of movies like the recent "I am Legend" it's got an arch like the "Arc de Triomphe" in Paris but today it does have something else on display... About 20 Korean women trapped in a transparent box which is supposed to represent the condition and suffering of women in North Korean, noble 'cause, not sure we understand everything but I guess it had to be done...
5th Avenue was a great walk with more oddities like trees wrapped in plastic bottles in a little square of grass !!!??? A fallout shelter !!! The atmosphere on a Saturday is a little bit more relaxed than during the weekend, but still it's a very busy City all week round.
Back to the hotel, more packing hopefully I had just the space needed in my bag, we also got Charlotte's bag that weighs a ton ;-) The cabbie is already there waiting for us with a massive SUV only americans know how to build. A few last words, goodbyes and waves to Charlotte and we're on our way to JFK.
Smooth ride, no problem, I think we might be in luck today.
Well hold on a minutes, first we couldn't do Aurélie, quick checkin as she still has her maiden name on her passport but not on her ticket but that got resolved quickly. Second the plane had a problem in Charles De Gaulle so they had to change it from a 747 to a 777 meaning less seats arrgghhh!!!
Well, fortunately we arrived very early so no problems for us we're confirmed, although since the flight is overbooked they proposed us €300 plus free hotel night to take the next day plane, but since most of us want/had to go home we passed. A good move anyway since my Eurostar ticket for Sunday is everything but flexible.
So we're confirmed on the flight but they can't give us seats yet!!! So we can't go to security or to our gate until 25 minutes before the flight... It's 6:30pm, almost 2 hours to wait with limited attractions around... Personally I was very doubtful we would have our plane on time but Air France really impressed me on this one. Around 8:15 pm and a few drinks later, we got our seats, but not together doh! Security checks were really quick and we boarded the plane almost on time.
Quick seat re-arrangement and we're seating in pairs but at different places in the plane, oh well could have been worse... Good news though wind is poor so we'll arrive sooner in Paris!!!
The girls are a bit nervous about the flight, especially Marie who doesn't like flying at all, every little noise and rattle makes her jump and since we are seating next to the wings there's quite a few of them... So I had to use all my powers to calm her down before and during the flight, hopefully they were some games on our screens that seemed to the trick, lots of turbulences, average food, but a few glass of champagne and wine later she was relaxed and ready to sleep.
Lights are fading, movie is not so interesting, I'm starting to drift into sleep, lots of good memories in my head, a long day tomorrow, some loud music on my ipod. Day 10 and holidays are over...

Jour 9 - Shopping et viande marinée

Le temps de cette fin de semaine est plutot maussade... mais bon les temperatures sont douces et en ce début de journée, il ne pleut pas.

Ce matin, c'est séparation des sexes : les filles chez l'esthéticienne, les mecs dans les magasins de guitares et de produits hi-tech.

Donc pour les filles, c'est 2 heures de manucure et de pédicure avec un petit massage plutot douloureux. Aurelie est tres fiere de sa french manucure.
Pour les mecs, c'est Guitar Center avec son choix énorme de guitares, basses, batteries, matos de studio... difficile de ne pas trouver son bonheur. Nous avons tout de meme résisté a la tentation ! Il est tout de meme rare de trouver un magasin aussi grand a Paris ou a Londres.
Ensuite, c'est direction la 52eme rue (nous etions dans la 14eme) pour se retrouver dans un Cex - magasin d'occasion de produits hi-tech et jeux video - bon avouons-le il n'y avait pas grand chose et en plus c'était cher. Pas grave, nous reprenons un Yellow Cab pour retourner a l'hotel.

Apres un bon repas composé de Panini, nous sommes reparti vers Time Square pour faire... et oui du shopping !
Bon cette fois, c'est objectif liste de course de Blandine et souvenirs de NY. Difficile de trouver le bon gift shop, il y a pour tous les gouts et surtout pour tous les prix. Heureusement, nous croisons 2 francaises dans une boutique qui nous conseillent un magasin pas cher.

Les petits souvenirs achetés, nous apercevons le magasin M&M's, ayant un peu de temps avant de retrouver Charlotte, nous nous y engouffrons. Le magasin est vraiment tres chouette avec pleins d'objets a l'effigie de M&M's. Alex a craqué pour sa filleule et la petite Zoé et leur a acheté des fringues toutes mignonnes.

La pluie a écourtée notre périple. Marie, la désignée d'office aux taxis, s'est devouée pour nous chopper un taxi. Tant pis pour la liste des courses de Blandine, ce sera demain a Soho.
Une fois a l'hotel, nous profitons pour faire une petite sieste dans l'objectif d'etre en forme pour la soirée.

Sieste finie, habits de soirée vetus, nous partons chez Azul, un resto argentin dans le Lower Est Side. Charlotte nous y attend avec une copine. Nous commandons tous la viande marinée suivant les conseils de Charlotte. Nous n'avons pas été décus, ce fut délicieux ! Meme le dessert a été parfait.
Apres cet excellent repas, nous partons a la recherche d'un bar calme pour discuter tranquillement car le resto était tres bruyant. Nous trouvons un bar Serbe ou nous avons dégusté un Morgon. Et oui, les Serbes New-Yorkais vendent du vin Francais.

Une bouteille plus tard, il est temps d'aller se coucher. Retour en taxi a l'hotel et gros dodo pour la derniere nuit.

Day 9 - Shopping, Rain and Marinated Steak

We're almost at the end of our holiday :( but still got a bit of time to do stuffs. No big museum or aircraft carrier today but mostly shopping for souvenirs and clothes. Today is also Nicolas' 31st Birthday so we're not doing any music/dance show. Happy Birthday Nicolas ^_^

This morning we're leaving the girls at the beauty salon and Nicolas and I are hitting 14th street for some guitar action. I can't imagine going to America without paying a visit to America's finest and largest music superstore, Guitar Center. It's like a guitarist heaven, they got all the latest stuffs and more but today I'm on a mission... not buying another guitar :( yeah well this time I haven't got enough arms to carry one unfortunately...

Results, I resisted I'm still getting a new guitar soon but now is not the time...

Next videogame shopping @ CEX, walked for miles and miles and the store didn't have anything remotely interesting, so, pass.

Back at the hotel we had to check the guitar store next door, well nice chaps but everything is in the display so you don't need to go in, still very impressive collection of vintage guitars.

For lunch we went back to last night's restaurant for more paninis and peronis. The sky is looking more and more like it's going into liquidation and drips a little bit but so far it's holding its own.

Back to Times Square for souvenirs shopping and I love NY Ts, as you can expect all the souvenirs are pretty much the same everywhere, made in china or bangladesh, the difference lies in the price which tends to fluctuate from store to store, hopefully some french ladies heard us debating on pricing in one of the stores and gave us some recession beating addresses. I was also given a list of non souvenir items to buy for my sister and her husband, busy day.

On the way we stopped to the Hard Rock café... I don't understand why they still call it the Hard Rock café when they display pictures of the world favorite southern american goat singing sensation: Shakira, ok inside there are Hard Rock related stuff but seriously Shakira??? At least Nicolas found a tshirt... Next stop Levi's, pass... next stop Footlocker, pass...

A few shops later we found stuffs for my Dad, Lalie and Gamin but still no success with my sisters' stuff... I think we'll need to go back to Soho tomorrow if the weather allows it.

Our final stop for the afternoon was the M&Ms store, well it's fabulous there, they got everything from sweets to guitars with M&Ms characters on it. I couldn't resist to buy stuff for Lalie again and her little sister Zoe...

What they didn't have were free umbrellas, tyeah, because by the time we wanted out of there, it was shower time outside with a little thunderstorm, great!!! We decided to take the cab which wasn't without any challenges and drops but our professional arm lifter actually stood up to the job and got us a cab.

Back at the hotel nap time for everyone, champagne for Nicolas' birthday waiting for the weather to improve...

7:45 pm we're leaving the hotel again to go to Lower East side. We're meeting Charlotte and her friend Prune at the Azul, an argentinian restaurant famous for its marinated steaks!!! Oh boy what a meal!!! It's got to be the best meal we've done so far in NYC, the meat was exquisite and writing about makes me hungry!!!

After this delicious meal we're hitting the streets for a cocktail, sadly most places are packed so we ended in a Serbian restaurant to drink some french wine, go figure. After a few glasses, a photo shoot and a few cigarettes later it was time to call it a night. Arm lifting, cabbie actually speaks French (he's from Morocco) tell me all about his life in NY... back to bed... sleeping...zzz

Day 8 - The Met & Mamma Mia!

OK so we had great weather so far but as people say all good things come to an end...

So today it's cold, clouded but no stress today we're going to the Met!!!

In consideration of last night's session, we slept a little longer than usual though no headaches to report, good cocktails they were. 11 O'clock everybody's ready to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art aka The Met.

Upon arrival and after crossing Central Park again... Priority went to lunch, burgers for the boys, salad for the ladies, yes, Nicolas and I are fully living the American Dream!!!

So what can I say about the Met? Their collection is impressive, especially in the Egyptian exhibition, my favorite part. There you can find a replica of a tomb that you can visit, lots of mummies and artefacts, it's hard to describe anything specific as there is so much to see, but to my benefit the collection was quite different from the one at the British Museum in London so well worth a visit. We did have a the Medieval section, no mummies, pass, still the arms and armor collection was worth checking. We finished our 3 hours tour with the African section, lots of idols and statues, check pictures for more details. Overall great museum but as with every museum you ought to spend one or 2 days to fully appreciate it.

6 O'clock meeting with Charlotte at Benoit, then cocktails on top of the Marriott on Time Square, was makes this hotel unique is that is it has the only revolving rooftop restaurant in NYC. The 360 View of the city is unique and only takes an hour. Cocktails were exquisite, mine was named Forbidden Fruit... didn't come with the snake though...

Another highlight of this hotel is express glass tube elevator that brings you from 0 to 48 floor in about 15-20 minutes, effect guaranteed!!!

Finally the day ended with a show on Broadway, Nicolas' favorite Mamma Mia! As with every show I've in the West end or in Paris, it's well oiled machine with very talented and unique people, a bit girly but still very much enjoyable. Nicolas really felt alone during the show, I think we both would have more a ease at a Metallica concert...

Night ended with a quick bite next to the hotel, great food, charming waitress, oh well time for bed already...

Jour 8 - Musée et Comédie

Triste journée... froid et nuages sont au rendez-vous ! Pas grave, nous allons au Musée.

Au vu de la soirée d'hier, la grasse matinée a été obligatoire. Du coup, nous sommes partis vers 11 heures pour le Met : Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Arrivés a midi, la priorité fut de trouver un resto... bah oui on a beau avoir pris le métro, nous avons quand meme traversé Central Park dans sa largeur et sa creuse.

Apres un burger pour les mecs et une salade pour les filles, nous voila dans le Met...

Comment décrire le Met ?
C'est grand... et il y a énormément de choses a voir et pour ceux qui veulent une liste exhaustive des collections, il y a Wikipedia.

Ce qui est le plus impressionant au Met c'est la reconstitution de pieces ou de lieux. Par exemple, dans la partie Egypte, ils ont reconstitué le tombeau de Perneb ou encore dans la partie africaine un plafond d'une maison de céremonie.

Etant donné la grandeur du musée, nous n'avons pas tout fait. Nous nous sommes contentés de l'Art Egyptien, les Armes et armures, l'Art Médiéval et l'Art Africain.

Apres 3 heures de visite, nous étions vannés. Mais cela n'a pas empeché Marie et Alex de refaire du shopping !

A 18 heures, nous sommes allés chez Benoit rejoindre Charlotte a la sortie du boulot. Elle nous a emmené dans le bar du Marriott qui se situe au 48 eme étage de l'hotel.

Pour s'y rendre, il faut prendre un ascenseur tres rapide vitré ! C'est tres impressionant.

La particularité de ce bar est qu'il est panoramique et qu'il tourne pour nous permettre d'admirer la vue sur 360˚. Faire le tour prend une heure, et c'est juste le temps que nous avons pour déguster un cocktail avant de nous rendre dans Broadway pour aller voir Mamma Mia.

Nous y voila... le show sur Broadway...

N'appréciant pas particulierement ce genre de spectacle, je ne ferais pas de commentaires... Je dirais juste que c'est un spectacle bien rodé et que l'on en a pour son argent.

Apres le spectacle, nous avons grignoté un encas dans un bar puis nous sommes rentrés a l'hotel nous coucher !

Les Photos / Pictures

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It's possible to see bigger pictures. You simply need to click on the picture on the left.

Day 7- Catch up session, Intrepid, 42nd street & Queens

Today was a little improvised, the objective for this morning was to go Times Square to fetch some  Comedy tickets. We spent quite a lot of time to go from theatre to theatre to find reasonably priced tickets and we did... 

Initially Nicolas was keen for all the shows except Mamma Mia! Guess what? Only Mamma Mia was keen with us... Nicolas had a quite a hard time to show his enthusiasm depiste Marie and I's attempts to entice him with our own renderings of ABBA classig songs...

The day continued with the visit of the Intrepid a decommissioned aircraft carrier that served during WWII and Vietnam to name a few wars... You can see this ship in I am Legend where Will Smith plays golf on the wing of an A12 jet plane We discovered life onboard a carrier and how cramped it is, not really 5 stars to say the least... The visit ended with a tour of a British Airways Concorde, very nice cockpit not sure the pilots has 2 arms only ^_^

For lunch, finally, after 7 days we managed to find a pizzeria with terrace but as the weather is cooling down, we were a bit cold but the pizzas were fantastic. 

I don't think there are many explanations on how the streets of New York are working. Some people may find it surprising that "I" is giving a lesson on directions, so I will just translate Nicolas' explanation but nonetheless it is quite simple and I made some progress in that area, recently:

From north to south the city is crossed by avenues numbered from 1 to 12 and from east to west, the city is crossed by streets numbered from 1 to 190. There are therefore relatively easy to identify. The museum of the Intrepid is near the 42nd Street on 12th Avenue and we decided to take a look at the United Nations that are located near the 42nd Street on 1st Avenue. So we 

completely crossed NY by its width.

 

Crossing the 42nd NY is a quite choice, but it allowed us to visit Grand Central Terminal, NY finest railway station, immense and magnificent. We also had a quick browse at the Chrysler Building, its hall is grandiose but unfortunately we were unable to go up. On the way we 

stumbled on the Ford Foundation and its indoor zen garden and wish fountain.

At the end of of 42nd street were the United Nations, again Airport Style security, backbag checking... Unfortunaltely this fine establishment was closing quite early as a result we couldn't take the tour... We still took advantage of the exhibits in the hall, not the happiest ones:

- Damages of anti-personal mine on people;

- Testimonies of Rwandan refugees;

- Drums from Africa.

Then back to the hotel, shower and then we went to Queens to visit Nicolas' cousin Charlotte. Charlotte lives in Queens, Marie was not reassured to say the least due to bad previous experiences with Brooklyn. But we were soon surprised to discover how nice and safe Queens is. On arrival we had a guided tour flat, very nice and then tasted the magnum of rose wine Nicolas won during the session at Benoit. 

A magnun later we went to a Greek restaurant next door for some chicken skewers without the skewers...

Back on the subway, Marie and I very happy thanks to the wonders of several Pina Colladas...