The day after

Almost being on a first name basis with the café next door now. Today was French toast, fruit salad, pancakes and hangovers.

Heading back to the same park of last nights revelries we took in the southern end. All is quiet on new years day. also a bit chilly with the sun trying to break through the cold grey clouds. Early enough to avoid the major queues (QWT 15 min) at the museum of Natural History we spent a couple of hours wandering the halls looking at stuffed animals and the planets place in the universe as well as the changes its currently undergoing. Really interesting stuff. Fully expecting (hoping ?) the various creatures to burst out of their realistic 3D enclosures and start consuming the (ever increasing in numbers) prey staring at them - we kept moving. Time was against us so we probably missed a significant slice if the place. Upon exit the queues were significant (EQWT up to 1hr) stretching out into the street. Little did they know that there were also queues (EQWT 45 mins) in the subway entrance just below them as well. Grinning we walked past them all and travelled down under to the square precinct to collect our hop on hop off bus passes. The queue was EQWT 15 minutes. Due to our priority status we were waved through much to the chagrin of those standing there. We certainly don't look important. More like stressed, worn out and ragged. With tickets in hand we headed into the vastly less populated but still chaotic place they call a square which which is anything but. QWT for the double decker bus was 30mins.

However it is almost impossible to be bored in this particular spot. The digital signage is world leading and incredibly distracting. Must cost a fortune to run. Apparently it costs $1m per month Just to be on the H&M sign!!. Feeling a few drops of snow (not powder - so for all we knew it may have been from a high flying 747 - yeech) we still decided to sit in the open air to get the views and the uninterrupted shots. 2 hours later we'd circumnavigated downtown, seen all sorts of famous places, landmarks, learnt about architecture and gotten frozen to the bone.

Shivering uncontrollably we alighted uptown near our historically named hotel ( which, as it transpires, the facilities were also installed in the "Renaissance" period) walked the few blocks in the dark (4:30 pm) to get in and then had a hour to warm up and get ready for the next excursion. Harlem for diner. Yo Bro - this is where the cool black people hang out and create their own unique slice of NY culture. Music, dialect, art, history and most importantly - food (well for us anyway). So we went to Red Rooster. Now just to clear this up. This is NOT the fast food chain we have in Aus.

This is the highly popular restaurant in the centre of Harlem. We hung around in the bar for our reserved table to become clear. Without this reservation we would not have got in at all. Queue jumpers that we are. The food was great and yes - some chicken was had. Feeling very pleased with our choices of restaurants, preplanning and general cleverness in getting around we shot back down 1st Ave in taxi to get the girls packed and grab what sleep we could (barring blogging time of course).