The City That Never Sleeps

Friday we thought we should venture out of Manhattan and head over to Brooklyn. We jumped on the Subway to get to Brooklyn and jumped off just after the bridge to have a wander around. We headed towards town and found a Texas BBQ on the outskirts to have lunch. It was a meat market where you can order it cooked by the pound. We got a combo, which was 2 meets and 2 sides with cornbread. We got the moist brisket and pulled pork which was amazing. Slow cooked for 24 hours on a Texan BBQ, then wraped in greaseproof paper for service! Then sides of mac n cheese and collard greens which were also super yum.
From there we had a wander through the main street of Brooklyn (noting we were pretty much the only pale faces on the street) and oddly got asked twice for directions with people mistaking us for locals!
Logan needed some smokes so we stopped at a smoke shop. He went in and jumped in line. I initially went into the shop but it was pretty small, and when the girl at the front of the line asked the attendant for a knife I stepped out!
She then went on to pull a nail out of the wall and moved to the corner of the store to do her last line of crack or whatever she was on.
After that we made our way back to the bridge to do the walk over the bridge and back to Manhattan. They have done a really got job of making it pedestrian/cyclist friendly by building an elevated walkway through the centre of the bridge. It was absolutely freezing!!! We both had chattering teeth by the end of it as it was pretty exposed to the wind and only a couple of degrees.
From there we had a wander down through City Hall Park and then went on a hunt for the coffee shop Happy Bones in Lower Manhattan that was founded by New Zealanders and sells flat whites!! It was the best coffee we have had since being here and was absolutely packed!
We jumped back on the subway and headed back to Broadway to try our luck again for the Book of Mormon lottery.....which we lost out on again 😕
After that we decided to see Les
Mis as it was the 'New Production'. We didn't think much of it, they seem to have made changes based more on the movie, and the music just sounded like the cast couldn't sing in time. Tenadier and Madame T were a bit of a disappointment and the cast did the whole show in American accents!
Saturday we had a biking tour of Central Park booked, and a forecast for snow!
We made our way to the bike shop and turned out it was just the 2 of us as no one else turned up! We had a French lady as our tour guide who has been in New York since 2001, and won a Greencard through a lottery. It was a 2 hour tour so we ended up biking the whole of Central Park along with a bit of a private history lesson which was pretty cool. It was 4°c out and started raining in the last half hour or so. Once we had returned the bikes and were looking for somewhere warm to have lunch the show started. It was what they call wet snow where it is mixed with rain, so doesn't stick to any surfaces.
We had entered a few online lotteries for the evening shows, none of which we won. We had been trying for the Hamilton Lottery. It's not a show we as familiar with but the in person lotteries got so out of control they had to move them online. They used to get police in the area to close off the road by the theatre during the lottery each night for people's safety. The first night it was online 60000 people applied and it crashed the internet!
All of the online lotteries are drawn at 4pm, so we still had plenty of time to try for the 6pm lottery for Book of Mormon.
We still didn't win 😕 We had been hoping the cold weather and snow forecast would deter people , but still the same numbers as every other night.
After a bit of disappointment we decided to do an Off-Broadway show and see Avenue Q. That turned out pretty good. We went to World Stages where they have 3 theatre's in the one venue and they are all 2 levels underground (theatre height levels). Once you are on the bottom level there is a bar in the middle and all of the theatres open off that. Avenue Q was pretty cool, very funny but a far from a full theatre which was a shame.
Sunday as our last day in the Big Apple. We booked our shuttle to the airport which was meant to pick us up at 4.45pm. So we pondered what to do with the rest of our day. Not wanting to waste a moment we settled on trying for Book of Mormon one last time and shoot for the matinee lottery. This meant if we won we would be cutting it pretty fine to get back to the hotel for our shuttle pickup.
The lottery was at midday, so after having a nice sleep-in and checking out at 11.30am we headed straight for the theatre, not particularly fast as Logan has a bung knee after the cycling tour yesterday. The numbers were similar to every other day and it was just as cold, but amazingly Logan's name got called as one of be last ones!!! We assumed we wouldnt be able to sit together because we were called so late but we got tickets together in the box... $32 each!
We scoffed some lunch and then enjoyed the matinee performance.....keeping an eye on the time. Once it was done we raced back to the hotel and met the shuttle as we were walking down the hall!
After a five and a half hour flight we landed in LA! We at back with Wyndham so a full apartment overlooking the pool, and the temperatures are certainly a lot nicer here!
We have had a nice blob day today and gearing up for our last full day tomorrow at Disneyland 😁

The Big Easy to The Big Apple

So our last day in New Orleans was pretty cool! We decided our trip wouldn't be complete without an airboat trip on the swamp so we managed to get a last minute place. We got bused out to the Bayou Sennette State Park which is a 40 minute drive out of the city and then get out on the boats. We were lucky enough to have just us and one other couple on our boat so was nice and roomy. We spent just over an hour caning around on the swamp looking for alligators ( it is surprising how fast the airboats go!). We found a fair few, including a mamma and a 9-10ft male. Our guide tried to find some of the 1 year old babies but unfortunately I think they had gone into hiding as we were the last tour of the day.
Our boat operator was chucking marshmallows at the alligators to entice them to move. Apparently it is nick named 'swamp crack', cause once they taste it they can't get enough.
They actually farm them over here and have a 30 day hunting season each year around August. They have managed to bring them back from the endangered status with controlled breeding.
We had a recommendation for the Red Fish Grill in Bourbon Street to try some local seafood, so we headed there for dinner for our last night. We tried some alligator balls which were absolutely beautiful! Logan tried some Red Fish, and I got the Bay Snapper. The whole meal was delicious but unfortunately Logan's had a heap of bones and a cracked plate so we ended up getting about $50 off the bill.

Tuesday we made our way to New York!!! We didn't get to our hotel until around 4pm so most of the day was sucked up with travel but that didnt stop us from making the most of our first day. The hotel is a bit of a hovel but thankfully we are not spending much time there and it is in a GREAT location! We hit the streets to get our bearings and find the Ambassador Theatre so we could find our way to Chicago later that night. It is super easy to find your way around as pretty much every street is numbered with Streets going East to West and Avenues going North to South.
We had a quick look around Times Square during the daylight which is the hub of central Manhattan and the theatre district.
We found an Irish pub to have dinner before the show and decided on a New York Steak each.........wow! It was delicious, as was the Salted Caramel New York Cheesecake. We thought the food in New York would probably be better than other parts of America, but it is in a different league.
Chicago was great, quite a different interpretation and rather slapstick. They played up and added a lot of comedy, and Roxie was brilliant! We were a bit unsure of Velma, she has a great voice but the dance was questionable and a very different interpretation of the character. All in all really enjoyable though!
We had to head back to Times Square to check out the lights in the dark. Apparently it is the law that any building in that area must have at least 25% of the facade covered in lights, whether it be advertising or just bright signs. The biggest LED screen wraps around a  building and is the size of 2 football feilds!
The weather is so unseasonably cold we had to buy hats at gloves from the roadside stalls to keep warm. It is normally 10-15°c at this time of year, but this week it is ranging between -4 and 7°c!

Wednesday morning we were booked on a city tour. Our tour guide was absolutely brilliant and we saw so much in the 5 hour tour! We pretty much covered all of the essentials of NYC and got a good overview of the places we might want to do in more detail. We visited Rockerfeller Centre, Wall Street, City Hall, Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, One World Trade Building, 911 Memorial, site of John Lennons assassination and his memorial in Central Park (Strawberry Feilds) and numerous filming locations from countless movies, and celebrity apartment buildings.
There was filming happening in one of the park's we went past in the bus. We aren't sure what it was but there were a lot of trailers parked around all of the side streets.
We drove through most of the different districts in Manhattan including the financial district, diamond district, Soho, theatre district, Chinatown and discovered we are staying in the fashion district, which explains why we are surrounded by fabric stores! It is so specialised that you can get entire stores that sell only zippers and motives!
We decided to try our luck at the Book of Mormon lottery but unfortunately lucked out! There we a tonne of people there so we had a slim chance of winning, but there are a few other nights we can go back and try our luck again. It is one of the few that still does their lottery in person, most of them do them online now.
After losing out on that one we went to the cheap ticket office in Times Square and got tickets for Kinky Boots. Fantastic show! Kind of a UK equivalent to Priscilla
...just a good feel good show!
After the show we headed to Ellen's Stardust Diner for dessert ( we had tried for dinner but there was a massive cue waiting to get in). At 11pm the cue was much shorter and we got in fairly quickly. Our tour guide from earlier in the day had recommended it - the waiters and waitresses sing as they serve......mainly show tunes, but all sorts of other songs too. They are all trying to break in to Broadway and a lot of people that have worked there have gone on to perform on Broadway, so they all have pretty decent voices. It was pretty cheesy but worth the visit!
Whenever you wander through Times Square you can't help but notice the massive Police presence with loads of NYPD cars surrounding it and all the police standing around with their semi-automatics! After doing a few tours we have now realised that there is a huge police presence everywhere in the city that large numbers of people gather. There were a heap around the 911 memorial and in a lot of areas they also help direct traffic to try and keep it moving. Everything you see on tv with gridlocked traffic is total reality. It is in a constant state of gridlock no matter what time of day it is. It is quicker to walk or catch the subway than to catch a cab. A lot of it is the to the massive roadworks they are doing everwhere as a result of Hurricane Sandy. The flooding and city's general inability to cope with the weather during the incident has prompted them to rip up all of the roads and replace the drainage infrastructure under the roads which is all original from back in the 30's.

Today we did a stage door tour of Radio City, and we are so glad we did. It is an asolutely beautiful theatre, built in the 30's all in full art deco style, very opulent. It is a high tech theatre by today's standards so it must have been mind blowing back in the 30's! We got to go under the stage and look at all of the hydraulics that operate the revolve and platforms that move up and down. When it was built was during Hitler's rise so the area was guarded by the military to ensure no one got near it and gave away the technology as it was America's seceret weapon in the war! It was also the first theatre to introduce elevators to get people to their seats. They did a beautiful job of restoring the theatre in 99 and have even kept the original foot pedal hand driers...that still work! We had one of the current Rockettes come and talk to us about being a Rockette and got to see some of their costumes.
From Radio City we went straight to our Broadway walking tour which was hosted by a New York actor. It was a really interesting tour with a bit of history of the area, theatre's, actors and some info on actors lives on Broadway and info on the current shows. Interestingly the location of the theatres is not what makes it Broadway or Off-Broadway, but the numbers of seats in the auditorium! Over 500 seats is a Broadway Theatre, 99 - 500 seats is Off- Broadway and less than 99 seats is Off-Off-Broadway.
Radio City is not a Broadway Theatre even though it seats 6000, as most of the performers that perform there are not under the Actors Equity Guild they are under the musicians union so it is considered a Music Hall not a Broadway Theatre. Off-Broadway actors get paid $300-$900 per week and Broadway actors get a minimum of $1800 per week under the union. That is all before tax and agent fees etc. The likes of Julia Roberts gets paid $35000 per week.
We also went past the Copacabana that Barry Manilow sang about, along with a number of other notable sites.
This evening we got tickets to Something Rotten on the recommendation of our tour guide. Well it was laugh out loud funny, very cleverly taking the piss out of musicals and Shakespeare! Shakespeare is a character in the show and it is set in Renaissance times ....so as you can imagine it is an interesting view of musical theatre!

Fun in the South!

Well New Orleans has been a blast! It got off to a rough start with our flight being 3 hours late! So instead of arriving at 1am we arrived at about 3.40am. Our plane was caught in bad weather in Boston with a freak low weather system working its way across the north and an unseasonal snowfall.


Consequently we got off to a late start on Sunday as we were catching up on some sleep, but jumped straight onto the Charles Ave Street Car, which runs right past our front door! It was absolutely chocker with standing room only, but was quote good as we ended up crammed right up the from with the driver. Amazing they still have all of the original controls on the cars, nothing modern at all!


We jumped off when we hit Canal Street and headed straight on to Bourbon. Within a few blocks we have found the Jazz Greats Park, which has a bar and Cafe in the middle. They had a jazz band playing right through the lunch hour, so we enjoyed some live jazz while we had lunch. We didn't realise that we were at one of the most well known cafes (Cafe Beignet) for making beignets.....which is apparently a must have dessert in New Orleans! So of course we had to try them. They are absolutely beautiful....and a lot of people enjoy them all over the city. You can't hide where you have eaten it as the tables and ground surrounding all of the places they are sold are covered in white powder!
There were so many buskers including tappers, full bands and artists lining the streets - there was a real carnival atmosphere through the whole area.


We had a bit of a wander through the French Quarter, and found our way to the Mississippi River where the Natchez is docked to suss it our for our river cruise that night. Its pretty brown, you certainly wouldn't want to fall in!


From there we jumped into one of the street cars that runs to the edge of the French Quarter and jumped off at the French Market. Its quite a good market....and we did a spot of shopping before exploring the food section with all of the Gator sticks and Swamp Dogs!
We found a wee bar beside the markets that was decked out with skeletons and other creepy stuff so we decided to head in for a beer to kill some time before our cruise. It was a very random bar, and all of the locals started piling in after work and ordering Bloody Mary's. They make them a little different here, with New Orleans Spiced Beans and Olives. The bar tender gave us some spiced beans to try as we didn't know what they were - they tasted a little like spicy gherkins.....extremely tasty!


We spent the evening aboard the Steamboat Natchez, where we cruised up the river and listened to a live Jazz Band - Dukes of Dixieland. They were fantastic! Dinner was a buffet of Cajun food, so we even got to try deep fried catfish - wasn't too bad. We saw the side that was hit during the hurricane - the devastation wasn't apparent in this area, but the actual area is 6 feet below sea level, so you can see in some of our pics how much they have built up the flood banks on the side of the river.
We got to enjoy the sunset on the boat, and got back to the dock around 9pm.


We hadn't had the time earlier in the day to check out Frenchmen Street (where all the jazz clubs are) so we headed there for a drink or two. We found a few outdoor markets covered in fairy lights in little garden areas and club after club of live music. We absolutely loved it, and even bought a CD from one of the bands that were playing!
We stopped in to another music club on the way back to Bourbon Street that was playing Country Music and enjoyed the last few sings of the set, then made our way back to the craziness of Bourbon Street to see what it was like at night. The one bar we decided to go in and have a drink turned out to be a gay bar! We didn't realise till we sat down and ordered that I was the only 'real' female in the bar, and they were playing all Dolly Parton videos with their arms around each other singing along ;) After the black guy sitting next to Logan got a little too friendly we moved on...LOL.


Today we had another good sleeping after a late night again last night, and headed out to the Bayou for an adventure on the swamp. We went out on an airboat to do some gator spotting - it is amazing how fast the boats go! Was quite nice as there were only 4 of us on our boat, and we saw quite a few American Alligators - one of them a 9-10 foot male! Unfortunately we didn't get to see any babies on our trip, but it was still great fun!


We are heading out for an early dinner tonight as we fly out to New York tomorrow. We are hoping that the bad weather in that area wont delay our flight as we have tickets for Chicago booked for tomorrow night! The forecast says it will be 4 degrees tomorrow in NYC and -4 during the night with a chance of snow on Saturday!