I started the day with a huge breakfast: cereal and yoghurt and orange juice and tea and a freshly baked, rich, moist, utterly exquisite death-by-chocolate muffin (with butter icing, caramel sauce and fresh strawberries).
I successfully negotiated the subway and got myself to Grand Central Station. I had to wander a bit down marble-lined halls of shops to find the Great Hall, but I got there. I didn't need to worry about being the only let's-play-spot-the-tourist. Half the people there (okay, not quite half, but plenty) had cameras out, from iPhones to full-on telephoto lens-bearing SLRs. It's not hard to see why.
Randomly picking an exit, I spotted the Chrysler building, but also a couple of other Art Deco-ish buildings across the road. (Someone with a better knowledge of architectural styles should correct me.)
Of course, the Chrysler building is classic Deco. From its gorgeous spire, to its imposing entrance, from to its Y-shaped lobby, to the brushed aluminium sconces.
I then set off towards the Empire State Building, which pipped the Chrysler's record as the world's tallest building less than year after the latter was completed. I remembered from last time that the ESB offered great views of the Chrysler Building. (By the time I got there, the queue to get in the building was down the block and around the corner. It could wait for another day.)
There were lots of other pretty buildings to distract me.
And that's just the Art Deco ones.
There were also the Beaux Arts ones, like the Flatiron building (so called because the shape recalls the shape of an iron.
By then, it was 11ish, and I figured time to start heading back towards 42nd Street, so as to get to the Circle Line ticket office by 12:00, to get on the 12:30 sailing.
But more on that soon.
Sounds like you're having fun love. I didn't go jumping today (too lazy) so I'll head up in the morning.
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