The Big Apple

Couple of hours delay on our rail journey to Montreal from Toronto, so I have some more spare time to catch up the blogs. Ice storm 2 days ago while we were in Niagara has left parts of Eastern Canada without power, road closures etc. So the decision to take the train was a good one as I'm sure the planes are all grounded.
The last stop I wrote about was Philly. The next stop was New York and it immediately lived up to its expectations as we got off at Penn Station and headed to the street level to work out which way to go to our apartment. While we were consulting the map, we could hear a lady berating someone from a distance and then her victim came into view. He was an Amtrak employee wheeling her luggage which included a small dog poking its head out of one of the bags - no joke....In a very new York accent we heard "you are not listening to me - I cannot walk that far"; to which the rail employee sought to ignore for as long as possible. The kids were cracking up and the phrase became a bit of a favourite to use over the next week!
Our apartment was only a few blocks away but the hardest thing everywhere we went was to get our compass bearings. The streets and subways are easy if you know your NSEW...
We had arranged to meet the housekeeper Alex who was very Russian and I didn't really understand what he said so just not nodded a lot and thought we would work things out ourselves.
The accommodation was well located and presented, so while Lisa and I went to work out how to do the laundry, Dave and Mim went off grocery shopping and we had a first night indoors.
Next day we went across to "Joisey" (New Jersey) on the NJ Transit system to see the NY Giants play the Seattle Seahawks football game. It's a spectacle (not only the game but the crowd as well and we managed to observe some more classic communications) and it was cold (for us) but we enjoyed it and had some hot chocolates huddled under blankets in the stand.  We have lots of hot chocolate stops on our travels to get out of the cold!!!
Next day was Lisa's birthday and the kids shouted take away dinner and a movie (the Hobbit) after a day of sightseeing on the harbour and downtown Manhattan.
We took in a Broadway show - "Newsies" which was quite good but no better than our own productions.
The rest of the week we split up and did sightseeing, museums, galleries, parks and shopping. For Xmas we decided to all buy a souvenir and joke present for each other and one Secret Santa present for our nominated recipient.
We had some nice sunny days for the second half of the week and I went for an early morning run around central park, covering about 3/4 of the park.
On the last day we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn. The bridge is quite nice but not as impressive as our Harbour Bridge in my opinion. But I did like Brooklyn and if we had our time again would have preferred to stay there and travel into Manhattan on the subway.
We did well with riding the subways and only went the wrong way once in Brooklyn, but a nice man sitting next to us put us on the right train back into Manhattan.
It was enjoyable in NYC but I prefer the other cities we visited particularly Chicago and Philadelphia. Manhattan is just a bigger version of Sydney in my opinion and does not have character like the other places. More like just a place for everyone to come to work and say you live in New York. I get the impression that the locals live mostly in the other burroughs like Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island.  Anyhow it was still good but I wouldn't rush back. The older kids liked it more than Lisa and I.
Pics to follow shortly and I wanted to send a postcard to everyone before we left but the lines in the post office were absolutely crazy so I will try and post them from Montreal when we arrive this afternoon. We might be home before you get them!
Mike