Black Friday in New York

Continuing the adventures in New York City! On Black Friday, we didn't do much by the way of shopping until late. First up was one of two things that had been on my Must-Do list: Visit the Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium. This was indulging the Little Kid Space Nerd in me, I fully admit! And imagine what flitted through my heart when we walked in and saw the Hayden Sphere looming above:


Such a fascinating place -- all the displays about things that I've been interested in for almost literally as long as I can remember.










Fascinatingly, those planet models are to scale: If the Hayden Sphere is the size of the sun, then that's how big the planets are. There's another series of walking displays around the lower perimeter, showing the size of increasingly tiny things: If the Hayden Sphere is the size of a single raindrop, then this is how big a common cold virus is -- that sort of thing. This whole place was amazing.

The upper portion of the sphere itself is the Planetarium, where we saw a show about dark energy, narrated by Neil DeGrasse Tyson himself. I could sit through a dozen planetarium shows in one day, to be quite honest. It was our great luck that the Planetarium had just reopened after several months downtime for refitting: the dome was rebuilt to make the seams between the sections almost invisible, and the seats and projection systems were upgraded. To my surprise, there was no Big Bug-Eyed Projector sitting in the middle of the planetarium, which is a traditional fixture of such places (this kind of thing, if you're wondering what I'm talking about). Projection seems to be handled from a series of projectors along the boundaries of the planetarium. The show was amazing and very well-done. There's another theater in the lower half of the Sphere, but we didn't attend that one. Instead we moved on to the rest of the museum.

Much of the museum is dedicated to the kinds of taxidermy-based diorama displays that I'm sure we all remember from our youths. This museum's dioramas are some of the best I've ever seen, but in all honesty, a little of that kind of thing tends to go a long way with me. There were still some cool things to see, though.








We spent some time in the Hall of Gems and Minerals, because rocks are cool, dammit.








That last is pretty fascinating: it's a piece of a much larger meteorite, about the size of a small car -- and it weighs 34 tons. That blew my mind. The signage illustrates the engineering problems they faced just displaying the thing in the Museum: it sits on support posts that extend down through the basement floor all the way to bedrock.

After the museum, it was time for another touristy stop: Rockefeller Center.

And that place is every bit as gorgeous as it looks on teevee and in the pictures.
















Watching people skate at Rockefeller Center is one of the most unexpectedly wonderful things that we saw on this trip. It was just...sheer, beautiful happiness, from the family that was skating together...


...to the young woman in the wonderful scarf who couldn't let go of the rail.


After Rockefeller Center, it was off to find dinner. We wound up at a burger joint called 5 Napkin, where we had a terrific meal in a dining room made up to look like an old meat market:


And then, where else to go on a Friday Night in New York City than...TIMES SQUARE!!!










The coolest thing was that everywhere we went that day, nobody was pushy, nobody was in a bad mood. It was as if the thousands of people in our company were all just...happy. Even in Times Square, there was no shoving, no rancor...everybody was relaxed and having a good time. Everybody was. I've no idea if it's always that way or if was just a function of the season (and the presence of cops everywhere), but this entire trip was almost entirely free of anxiety.

So ended our third night in New York City. Two nights remained....

Thanksgiving in New York, continued

After the Parade dispersed, we went in search of something very pressing: a bathroom. Hey, we'd been standing there for five hours! We found a Starbucks. To my great disappointment, they spelled my name correctly on my cup.


Just across the street from Starbucks? This rather notable building.




Sadly, no Deborah Kerr running across the street, staring up at the building because it's the closest thing to Heaven; no Tom Hanks running up there to find his son and Meg Ryan, either. And no giant gorilla. Just the Empire State Building, as beautiful a thing as I've ever seen.




Later on that night, we went to dinner. I had already made reservations the week before at a place called Senza Gluten, an Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village. (The Wife is celiac, so we always have to seek out gluten-free options for her. I've never minded this, because in truth, it's led us to some really amazing food finds that we wouldn't necessarily have discovered otherwise.) The place was tiny and rustic, and the food was wonderful. Yes, it was Thanksgiving, and yes, there was traditional turkey dinner on the menu. I had the chicken parm.




Upon leaving the restaurant, I had to walk into the middle of the street, because this is the view outside Senza Gluten's front door, facing south:


One World Trade Center is actually a very impressive building, especially at night.

This night was amazingly beautiful. It had been in the low 60s during the day, and by now it was in the 50s, a perfect night for a stroll through Greenwich Village, on our way back to the 9th Street PATH Station...and then I spotted something lit up, bright and white, off in the distance. It turned out -- and I honestly hadn't even realized this until I saw it -- that we were approaching Washington Square Park with that amazing, beautiful, famous arch.


We lingered here a bit, taking in the November air that felt like May, gazing upon the arch and reflecting upon the impromptu memorials left for the victims of the attacks in Paris.








After that we finally made our way back to the hotel, full and tired and happy and thankful.

The next day? That's another post to come!

Thanksgiving in New York

The Wife has maintained, pretty much since the very first Thanksgiving I spent with her, that one day she wanted to go to New York City and see the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in person.

Then, a little less than a year ago, she suggested that we make that dream a reality and commit to going, this year.

So we committed...and we went. The other night we got back, and let me say this: New York City is an astonishing, amazing place. I loved it so much that I really hate the fact that I'm not still there, right now. But hey: it's not going anywhere, right? So we'll be back. Meantime, I've got pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. I'll break these up over a few posts, but I'm also putting them below the fold. Onward!