New York Day 2

We're back at our hotel after another busy day in Manhattan, this time at a more reasonable hour.  We'll definitely try to take the train back before 11 tomorrow again, as this saves a lot of time.  This morning, we went on a pizza tour of Lower Manhattan, which was quite interesting.  It started in Little Italy and we learned all about New York Pizza, from how it was introduced to the US, to how the cheese, tomato sauce, dough, and even the ovens are made.  It was pretty cool, not to mention delicious, as we made stops for pizza tasting along the way.  One highlight was trying real, fresh mozzarella, which is very different from the mozzarella you'd buy in the store.  It only takes about half an hour to make, and tastes great.  It's also a lot better for you, as it's basically just milk (no greasy oils), and, we learned, it doesn't burn your mouth on a hot pizza (due to the lack of oils).  If it wouldn't go bad in 2 days, we would have bought a big ball of it. Come to think of it, we should have, and we could have munched on it all day.

After the pizza tour, we made our way uptown to Rockefeller Center, where we went to the 70th floor observation deck, the "Top of the Rock".

After a while up there, we descended and made our way down 5th Ave. (the fashion district) past all the Guccis, Pradas and Versaces, ending up at Central Park.  We started walking through Central Park, but then realized that we had spent some of the money we had reserved for the Wicked lottery.  We had to cut our walk short and head to Times Square to find an ATM and the lottery.  Here's Katie crossing her fingers outside the Gershwin Theater in hopes of scoring cheap front row seats.

Unfortunately, only one of us had ID, so we couldn't both enter the lottery.  They were only pulling 13 names, and there were a lot of people there.  We didn't win.  ...So we headed toward the tkts booth (discount ticket seller for broadway shows) to see if we wanted to go to a show tonight.  We loved Chicago so much, we really wanted to go to another one.  However, the price deterred us too much.  We decided to go to Ellen's Stardust Diner instead.  It's basically a 50's style diner where the waiters and waitresses are all aspiring Broadway performers.  As they serve the tables, they're constantly performing show tunes for everyone.  They're very good multi-taskers.  We had to give our server our order really quickly, as it was almost her part of the song!  As some of you know, this caused great angst for me, as I'm not the fastest orderer in the world.

After the Stardust Diner, we did a bit more exploring: the M&M store (3-storey high tourist trap!  12.99/pound M&M's anyone?), Macy's, Madison Square Garden, Empire State Building, and bought a pretzel. (SOOOOOOO salty!  We rubbed almost all the salt off it by the end.)  After that, we took the train back to the hotel, this time before 11, when most of the trains stop running.  This cut our end-of-day travel time down by about 1.5 hours from last night.

One note about New York is that its pigeon population, while smaller than most European cities, makes itself felt. One of the first things we saw when we got off the train in Manhattan yesterday was a pigeon flapping up in some guy's face. He reacted very calmly. Katie didn't think she would react so calmly. It has been a source of some mild concern for her, as it would be for many!

Tomorrow we're going to have a picnic in Central Park to make up for our lame visit to the park today.  In the afternoon we're going to the Yankees game.  We might stop for a milkshake at the Seinfeld restaurant on the way back from the game if we have time.  In the evening, we might try to catch an early supper, an early train home, and hopefully the Rider game.  Yes, that's right.  It looks like we'll at least be able to listen to it, unless we can find a place that has the TV tuned to the NFL Network at this time of year.  We'll probably try the wicked lottery again too, so if that works out for us, that would change our plans too!

We were going to post some more pictures, but our camera battery just died, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow for that.  We're thinking of everyone back home!

D&K