BACK IN THE ROOM

Fear not, loyal reader, for I am not dead.  I realise it's all gone a bit quiet in the last few days but that's partly to do with the fact that some git has sped up time without telling me.  How is it Wednesday?  I have holiday news to fill you in on as I know you're dying to find out how it all ended.  

The pills kicked in on Saturday night and I had a great sleep which made such a difference to how I felt.  When I woke on Sunday morning I was still a bit sweaty but I felt pretty refreshed and ready for a good day.  We had breakfast at our usual haunt (Cafeteria) where 3 eggs over easy went down a treat and set me up for a good day of wandering.  We got the subway uptown to 86th Street and after a slight detour where I mistook the Hudson River for Central Park's boating lake we were back on track.  Highlight of the day was spending a few hours at the Met Museum where they had 2 amazing exhibitions that I particularly loved.  The first was called Superheroes: Fantasy and Fashion.  This had some original costumes on display (Wonder Woman, Superman, Catwoman etc) and then a selection of outfits by world class designers along a similar theme.  So for Superman there were lots of bold prints.  Catwoman had plenty of leather etc.  Absolutely beautiful.  Sadly there was no photography allowed but I did manage to sneak a shot of Wonder Woman with my iPhone.  

Tiny, tiny costume which is now really faded.  Hard to believe it's over 30 years old.

The second highlight was an exhibition on the roof by Jeff Koons.  Three massive, colourful sculptures.  The photo below obviously isn't one of mine because there were hundreds of people up there, but it shows the scale of the sculptures against the amazing skyline.

So that was all very lovely and cultured.  That was followed by a mooch down Fifth Avenue (Apple, Abercrombie) and then a bit of a sit down to get my energy back.  In the evening I fulfilled a personal lifetime ambition by taking a nighttime shot of Manhattan from the top of the Rockefeller Centre.  There's a whole blog entry coming on this so I won't spoil it, but it was an amazing and exhilarating experience for someone like me who is scared of heights!!  Totally amazing day altogether.

Monday went so fast!  Breakfast at Cafeteria, bit of last minute shopping and photo taking, lunch at Max Brenner's Chocolate Shop and then back to the hotel for packing and general sulking.  Before we knew it the taxi whisked us off to JFK and we were on our way home.  Well, there were a few hours of delays in between but you get the picture.  We landed on Tuesday morning and I even felt quite refreshed after my 2 little pink & white "hayfever" tablets which helped me sleep on the plane (thanks Christy!)

And that was New York!!  Amazing place, hampered only by a bout of tonsilitis and lack of sleep.  As soon as I managed 7 hours of nod I felt better and enjoyed it immensely.  Now I just need to go back and do the first 36 hours again as I feel a bit cheated.

800 photos were taken and 300 of those are currently being uploaded to www.flickr.com/photos/paulmonkeypaul so do feel free to have a rummage around.

And now it's back to normality, whatever that is :)