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!
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