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2018 New-York

{New York} American Museum of Natural History, Tussaud, and a strike

by Elsa 21 July 2018

We had been a bit depressed by the weather of the day before…this Monday will be on par.

As soon as we got up, I logged onto my account to see that our flight had been cancelled due the Air France strike…We came to a solution after spending 5h30 on call with Expedia‘s customer care (a really good customer service that went beyond what was expected). We found a solution but with a change of airport in Paris and a 8h30 layover there…I was so angry and sad to see that the vacation I had carefully planned was down the gutter because of the strike. I felt we had been robbed of 36h of holidays actually.

All in all, we managed to escape from the heavy rain falling on NYC that morning. We even got Flash Flood alerts on our cell phones. We are not accustomed to that in France and we were a bit surprised by the shrill sound!!!

We left the Wyndham at 10.30AM and headed to the American Museum of Natural History.

The American Museum of Natural History

The AMNH is the museum featured in the movies Night at the Museum. We do love these movies and the kids asked to visit this museum. So we stopped on the 86th street, but since it was almost lunch time, we decided to make our way to the nearest Shake Shack, the one we couldn’t get into the day before.

It was only 11.00AM on a Monday and it was rather empty. Everybody had told us that it was amazing, that the burgers were tasty etc… but we were disappointed: small burgers and fries, expensive (tasty indeed, but…what a day 🙄 )

The rain had stopped while we were eating and the waiting line for the AMNH was loooong. It seemed the French tourists had decided to gather there!!! That was funny.

Once again, the Explorer Pass saved us from long waiting lines.

This museum is amazing and we should have planned 2 full days to fully appreciate it.

The dinosaur rooms were crowded (to say the least), but since they have high ceilings they didn’t feel stuffy.

Rexy!!!

“Hey Dum Dum! Give me Gum Gum”!!!

The Teen was a bit disappointed to see that the gem’s rooms were being refurbished (I wasn’t!).

We spent quite a few hours at the museum before leaving. We stopped to buy some donuts (a walk down memory lane, when we had donuts during our first trip as a couple in Florida!!!). We had troubles finding a Dunkin’ Donuts shop and ended up finding one at the entrance of a subway station. We got the big box and eased ourselves onto a bench at the bottom of a office building!!! We tried not to make a mess of ourselves with sugar/jelly/multicolor sprinkles.

Then we went back to the hotel, to start packing. We were thankful to have taken the space-saver bags with us (since Miss G had bought quite a lot of Ufufy’s).

The evening

We still had 3 possibilities with our Explorer Pass. Our plan was to get on a Big Bus and tour uptown, but the weather being what it was and the hour late, we opted out. We took the children to the Mme Tussaud’s museum…and they had a blast!!!

We, as adults, also enjoyed our time there…some selfies will remain private…but we had a good laugh!

This girl knows how to behave!

We had a look into the m&m’s store (very expensive). We just bought lanyards for an upcoming trip.

We had a late dinner on Times Square.

Back to the hotel, we started packing. We were leaving the day after at 10.00PM so we still had a full day of shopping ahead. I needed some Sharpie pens, Miss G wanted to experience a K-Mart (and buy some typically American sweets!), and the boys wanted to visit…something related to a video game!!!

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21 July 2018 0 comment

2018 New-York New York 2018 Travelling

{New York} A terribly cold day in the Big Apple

by Elsa 16 June 2018

If the day before, the weather was summer-like, that Sunday was terribly cold. Rain and wind…perfect weather for a walk!!!

Wearing our hats/scarves, and ouffy jackets, we started our journey towards Bryant Park.

Bryant Park and the New York Public Library

This park must be so nice under a warmer weather. It was only 8 on a cold and dreary Sunday morning so we were all alone. Perfect for pictures.

The lovely Radiator Building.

We were just at the back of the New York Public Library.

The front is nice too and it is just like one of my favorite movies “The Day after Tomorrow“. The library was closed until 11.00AM.

A quick look at my Cartoville guide . Great, we were close to Grand Central Station.

Grand Central and the UNO Headquarters

Grand Central Station came as a surprise. A door and then…the wonderful ceilings! The station is huge, so well-lit, and gorgeous.

We left the station to get back to the cold streets.

The boys wanted to see the UNO headquarters, because it is featured in our of their PC games (I have absolutely no idea which one!!).

The closer to the river we got, the more the wind was blowing. But we laughed and really enjoyed this stroll.

A small church, stuck between taller buildings.

We saw the UNO building from afar due to security measures.

Are you cold, J.???

Once we had finished there, we wondered how to reach Central Park. We were a bit dubious concerning taking the bus with our MetroCard and finally decided to walk back to Grand Central and take a subway from there to Central Park.

There is no subway station on 5th Avenue…so we walked a bit in very posh streets before reaching our final destination: the Metropolitan Museum.

The Metropolitan Museum and the New York Historical Society

It was only 10.15AM and the queue for the Met was already rather long. Thanks to our Explorer Pass, we got our tickets from a lovely stand, right at the central island.

The main hall is not that great, but everything behind was!!! Each wing is breath-taking. It would have taken us days to visit each and evry one of them.

The American Wing was my favorite amongst all of them.

We got lost while trying to exit the museum (a bit like Debbie Ocean in “Ocean’s 8“)!!!

We crossed Central Park rapidly (too cold!).

It was lunch-time and I wanted to have a burger at Shake Schack’s…very bad idea since it was crammed with people!!

We ended up leaving the waiting line and walked down to the New York Historical Society. There we ate some scones and muffins, washed down with hot chocolate and capuccinos!

I was eager to see the Vietnam exhibition. The tickets for the NYHS are included in the Explorer Pass and we were surprised to be asked if we weren’t mistaken in our choice of museum. What??? Actually, a lot of tourists mistake the NYHS for the American Museum of Natural History, on the other side of the street!!!

The exhibition was small, but very detailed. We took no pictures there for the sake of decency. We had the pleasure to meet veterans. A very moving experience.

After visiting the NYHS, we decided to rest a little at the hotel.

A quiet evening

Actually, we stayed a good two hours at the hotel before leaving for dinner. That was by far our worst meal. The Dos Caminos was really below average. We were really disappointed.

Since we had some extras on our Explorer Pass, we took the children to Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

The kids really enjoyed it. So that was worth it (I might not have paid full price for it though, but it was included in the Explorer Pass so…!).

It was raining heavily when we walked back to the hotel. The day after was our last full day in New York…and some bad news were looming already.

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16 June 2018 0 comment

2018 New-York New York 2018 Travelling

{New York City} MoMA and Top of the Rock

by Elsa 24 May 2018

The Teen really wanted to have a look at the paintings at the Museum of Modern Art-MoMA, as I said there. Why did he want to visit the MoMA, I don’t know why, but since the visit was included in our Explorer Passes so we went! I enjoyed how we could pick up some visits with the Explorer Pass. So easy. We will eventually visit some ‘non-cultural’ stuff thanks to it, as you’ll read later!

Museum of Modern Art-MoMA

The MoMA is in a nice and bright building. We didn’t prepare this visit so we didn’t know what we would see so we decided to focus on the 1880-1950 period.

It was just amazing to walk into a room where Van Gogh, Douanier Rousseau, pointilism, and others were present. The ‘Starry Night” is breathtaking. It was easy to navigate and it wasn’t crowded so we took our time to look at the paintings.

Very little pictures apart from those taken by Miss G.

We’re not into paintings or art whatsoever, so we stayed at the MoMA for one hour then left.

Since we were close to the Top of the Rock, we decided to go up and see New York from above.

Top of The Rock

Once again, the Explorer Pass saved us from long lines because the TOTR attracts lots of people, especially when the weather is nice. Do not forget to ask if there’s a special line for passes.

My ears didn’t enjoy the swiftness of the elevator!!! And look at the ceiling of the said elevator…it’s funny!

The wind blew really hard on the terrace and Josh and I felt as if we were rocking back and forth (tiredness?). It was so cold outside that we went back inside and waited there for my husband.

The Empire State Building is just perfect there.

Once back to the ground (!) and thanks to the indications of a nice New Yorker (who mistook us for Swedes…we already had been mistaken for Germans and Brazilians earlier during the stay!!!), we headed to the restaurant The Black Tap. Bad idea, it was crowded so we went to...Bubba Gump’s.

I cannot thank my Landry’s VIP card enough for making us skip the (long) line. I got infuriated look from the other guests, but…What a blessing to not have to wait in line for at least 30min!!!

After dinner, we felt a sudden drop in temperature. It was so cold that we had to buy sweaters at the Bubba Gump’s gift shop to get back to the Tryp Wyndham!!! If the morning had been summery, the evening was rather ‘back to winter’!!!

Everyone took a hot shower and off to bed. Sunday forecast was “rain, cold, and wind”…

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24 May 2018 0 comment

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