I emerged from the Bodies exhibition (South St Seaport) around 5:45pm. It occurred to me that it would be a civilised hour in Aus (that is, 7:45am tomorrow), and that it would be a good time to ring. (The boys generally wake with the dawn, or at least 6:30am ish.)
Turns out they were all still in bed/just rousing, as they'd gone on a ghost tour the night before, and got to bed quite late. It sounds like they're all having a lot of fun, and getting along together quite well. Apparently even Dad's snoring isn't bothering them too much. They've been jet-boating and while they couldn't go zip-lining, it seems they did something which might be even better, flying under a hang-glider attached to a zip-line. I miss them, but I'm delighted to hear they're having such a fantastic time.
I also rang JD, who wasn't on the road on the way to work as I would have expected, and his phone went to voicemail. When I rang again, a couple of hours later, it turned out he'd decided to have a six day weekend, and was enjoying another day of sloth. He didn't quite make it up to Bridgey for a long weekend of skydiving. Sounds like he's enjoying it too.
Below the Bodies exhibition, there was a Gap store, and with a little time on my hands, I thought I might try on some clothes. They offer jeans in a variety of styles (slim, relaxed, curvy) which promised much. And didn't deliver.
I have generous thighs, and a smallish waist (not as small as it used to be, thanks to a few extra decades and the afore-mentioned kids). But even their curvy jeans were too loose at the waist (at least they didn't gape awfully), and too clingy around the thighs. And FWIW, I'm a size 10R, at least at the Gap. (The 12 was way too big.) Their jeans were no better fitting than ones I already owned, so I passed on them.
However, they did also have dress pants, with a similar range of styles. While I had the same complaints of these (loose, albeit not gaping at the waist, a little more figure hugging than I'd prefer around my thighs), I've found it much harder to source work-suitable pants. So I bought a pair of those. They're affiliated with Old Navy, so I found out where the nearest store was (19th and 6th), and headed in that direction.
This was actually the first time I'd been downtown - most of my exploring to date had been midtown (14th to 59th Streets). The streets are (a) named rather than numbered, and (b) much narrower and more higgledy-piggledy (buggered if I know how I'm supposed to spell that). There are a few tourist-targeted shops, and I managed to find a t-shirt for JD without too much profanity on it (I checked, the one I chose doesn't have F*ck on it, so you will be able to wear it in public, hon.)
Old Navy is quite a bit cheaper than The Gap - their jeans are $30 rather than $60, but suffer the same problems that the Gap ones do. I did end up with another pair of work-suitable pants, and a couple of cheap short-sleeved t-shirts. (The weather has been much more pleasant than I'd anticipated, and I needed more than the two s/s t's that I'd brought.)
I also wandered briefly through TJ Maxx, which is a similar concept to Filene's, but less disorganised, before heading back up to 30 Rock.
I got in the fast queue for tickets to Top of the Rock around 8pm, and had my ticket for entry between 9:05 and 9:20pm about five minutes later. With an hour to kill, I went and found some dinner and took advantage of the free wifi in the building.
I joined the queue for entry with the fifty or more people who also had entry at that time. We inched our way forward, as lifts-full of people were counted off. As a single, I got to queue jump to make up a full lift's-worth. It took another few minutes before we were herded onto our lift.
Which went precisely two floors, from the sub-ground concourse level, to the mezzanine level. There, we had to disembark, walk half the length of the building to pass through security (not quite as paranoid as LAX, thankfully), then around and back. More queuing, and then compulsory viewing of a couple of short films about the history and design of the building. Finally we were then again divvied off into lift-sized groups and began our journey to the 66th floor.
As the doors shut, and the lift began it's ascent, the lights suddenly cut. Crap. No, it's okay. The ceiling of the lift was a translucent screen, on which various related images were projected. Behind that, we could see the lift shaft which had blue lights at the four corners at each floor, which almost converged at the far (high) horizon. Something to keep you engaged for the half-minute journey to the near-top of the building.
By the time I got to the top, it was perhaps 9:45pm. Fortunately, it was a clear, mild night, with a light breeze (I was glad I'd packed my polarmax top that morning). The city was gorgeous, sparkling below us. We had a full-frontal view of the Empire State Building, but the Chrysler was somewhat obscured. I could see various of the bridges including the George Washington, and the Washington (although my pics were too blurry), and Central Park (relatively dark area surrounded by a grid of street lights). I'll collate a gallery of pics showing Manhattan by day from the outside, and by night from the middle later.
After exploring the three floors available for viewing, plus taking advantage of the facilities, I'd had enough. Bloody ironic that the queueing to get there took twice as long as the time I had up there. And it took almost as long to get back down again - heaven knows what the procedure is in case of an emergency evacuation. Given it wasn't particularly crowded anywhere up on the viewing areas, it suggests quite strongly that the capacity restrictions are very much about the ability to evacuate the area, rather than the capacity of the space itself.
It was well after 11pm by the time I got home, and I fell asleep quite promptly, and even slept fairly well (for a change).
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