138 The Last full day in New York.

Sunday 14th April
It's Happy Birthday to my wee brother today.  He enjoyed a cooked breakfast with my Mum and Sandy and I can say that I am jealous of that!
 
We had a slow start and our plans for today changed with each footstep we took.  Over the last few days we have walked miles and I am the only one out of the two of us who will admit it, but my feet ache.  Anyway, after our breakfast, we trekked down to Madison Park where we jumped on the bus, courtesy of our "passes" and headed for the Brooklyn Bridge.  Ray had heard it was a great walk. We left the comfort of our bus and walked onto the bridge and headed for the middle so we could get some fabulous views looking out over the Hudson river and New York.

The Woolworth building

The weather today was sunny with a temperature of about 60, but it was still pretty chilly.  The bridge, as it turned out, was under renovation and you couldn't really see much, but what we could see was impressive, however it was a tad fraught as we dodged cyclists and joggers who just aimed at us.

The Brooklyn Bridge under renovation. Pedestrians walk over the cars.

Looking South towards Wall St. Named as such by the Dutch who built a wooden wall to keep the native Indians out. It worked, for the Indians, not for us though. The Brits cam along and kicked them out. New York was called "Little Amsterdam" until the Duke of York took it over. Hence the name now.

We gave in gracefully and came down off of the bridge and straight into some street performers.  They had a lot of patter, but failed to deliver, but they did manage to get a fair amount of tips out of the gullible crowd.  We had no change, so escaped and wandered off muttering as is our want.

The street performers were actually scammers. They did a lot of fancy posturing with veiled promises of amazing tricks, then passed the hat around and this is all they did, wiggle under some peoples legs.. 

We took a walk around China Town, where we were offered many things for "ten dollar", not all were watches or handbags.  Again I had been here with my Mum many years before, but it seems to have expanded and was very busy this time.

We do not miss this crap.

We found a little restaurant off of the beaten track, where our food was very authentic, but all the staff were wearing Hawaiian shirts and spoke no english, slightly bizarre, but fun never the less.

A proper Chinese Restaurant, where the locals eat and meet.

The food was good too.

Our plans changed again and after a long hike, we found the bus stop for our tour bus again.

Whilst walking for the bus we saw this. A typical New York, back street, car park. Would you ???

The bus arrived, the doors opened and nothing happened, so I got on the bus, and with that, one of the witches from Macbeth shouted "How dare you do that, don't you know people are trying to get off"  We stood for the next 5 minutes getting a lecture on manners, health and safety and "I know in London that doesn't happen".  I still didn't see anyone trying to get off, anyway we have obviously been together too long as at the same time both Ray and I said, "Can we just get on now, we've got the message."  After her patronizing lecture, we listened to her plea for tips, so in our best grown up way, we jumped off the bus without leaving any except, "don't eat yellow snow".  Lets see her feed her dog and get her tea on that!  HAH!!!
I've digressed again, we were actually on our way to Times Square again, this time to go to the Harry Potter Museum, unfortunately, yes just for a change, it was shut for two weeks, so walking back to the main drag, we came across a great bar called "Jekyll and Hyde.  It was fantastic, all done out with spooky props and various actors doing little sketches of Frankenstein creating his monster. It was really fun.

Imagine going into a restaurant and seeing this as you walk into it !!

And it just got worse or better depending upon your point of view.

Whilst we were sat at the bar the center shrunken head on the back of the bar decided to strike up a conversation with me. (Yes, you did hear that correctly.) He asked my name and where I was from etc. It was bizarre. It got worse when his mates joined in later with a song.

Then out popped the local Zombie moaning about human (ish) rights for Zombies and moaning about him and his mates always being bludgeoned or shot in the head.

Would the place be complete without the usual Frankenstein enactment. I just missed a photo of John Merrick (the Elephant Man) when he turned up. Mad, completely Mad.

Our main aim for today was to wait until it got dark and go up to "The top of the rock", which is the Rockefeller building.  We wanted to see New York with all it's lights and see the Empire building all lit up.  That was our next stop and it was worth the wait.

The 80 floor Rockafeller tower.

...And the view from the top looking over Central Park (left of center)...

....and the Southern view showing the Empire State Building on the left.

The cure for my fear of heights.

Having hit 9pm we were both shattered, so a quick dinner and so bed.

Will you hurry up with my dinner before I fall asleep at the table.

  Tomorrow is going to be a fraught day. Our biker jackets have not arrived and we are due to check out and move on. Unfortunately, they are coming from Denver which is 2 hours behind us so we cannot even call them till 10am.
On top of that, the bike arrived at JFK airport yesterday and we have to clear customs for it and collect it too. Its going to be a busy day.