New York New York

Just the small matter of spending the weekend in New York!

Vicky and I drove up and stayed in a hotel in New Jersey.

www.themadisonhotel.com

The hotel is about an hours train ride away from the centre of New York.

First off, we visited Bevedere Castle,which is right in the centre of Central Park

Afterwards, we walked, AND walked, we could NOT get a taxi, no amount of flagging any down helped :(

On one of the streets, we noticed this sign!  It must be a regular occurrence around here.


I took my Wife to Tiffany's but she came away with no new jewellery, and we saw the real Tiffany Diamond. 


For dinner, we stopped in an Irish pub called the Pig 'N' Whistle, and I find out later that my cousin Andrea has also had drinks here as well.

For our evenings entertainment we took in what was to be the first of two Broadway shows.  Friday night we saw Paul Rudd and Michael Shannon in GRACE.  A dark comedy.  It was excellent, and better still, we saw Paul Rudd exit the stage door, and Vicky was able to get his autograph!

Saturday we started early and our first trip was to the Empire State Building.

We scored with the weather, it was a beautiful clear day.

Saturday afternoon, we saw our second Broadway show, and it was only The Phantom of the Opera!
The production was amazing, and I loved it.

You can not go to New York without eating NY Pizzz, so Vicky and I took the subway to Little Italy and we stumbled upon the annual  San Gennaro festival.  The streets were packed with food stalls. And it was a lot of fun seeing what was going on.

Around a corner we found a restaurant called Sals.

http://salslittleitaly.com/

And here it is!

Having been in New York last year, I knew how busy it can be, but this trip felt like Eldon Square on Christmas Eve!  The one taxi we managed to get into, that was hairy, I can not understand why I saw no cars collide, or hit anyone!  There is so much more to do, and I can't wait until I go back again.




I will post more pictures in the next update.

Camping in West Virginia

Camping in West Virginia

To celebrate my Sister in Laws Birthday, we went camping in West Virginia.
The family spent a whole week at the campsite, but due to work commitments, Vicky and I could only stay for two days.

http://www.yokum.com/

Apart from the insects, the mud and rain, and the disgusting shower facilities, we all had a great time!

London 2012

I was very happy to see that we had the honour of hosting the Olympics this year.  But unfortunately I wasn't able to see as much of it as I would have liked.  TV channel NBC have the rights over here, and they showed 5 hours worth of highlights every night.  Unfortunately that was about it!  If you wanted to watch it live you had to watch it on their website during the day, when most of us were at work.  During the weekends I watched the majority of the live events online on the bbc's website.

NBC did not show the whole of the of opening or closing ceremonys.  Part way through the opening they cut away to an interview with Micheal Phelps!  Most of their coverage was good, but if an American was not involved in a final, they were not interested.  During one of the mens gymnastics finals, TeamGB won the silver, but the Japanese who won Bronze appealed, and the judges swapped our medals during the event.  I only found this out the next day, I watched this event on NBC, but the commentators did not explain very well what was going on.  Insane.

As a once in a lifetime event, I bought a few things from the official 'London2012' website, here's a couple of things I bought:

Not pictured is a lanyard I now wear at work with the Union flag all over it and 'London2012'.  I love this as I think it has stopped people asking if I am from Australia.


A week tomorrow my Wife and I are going back to New York for the weekend!
Expect a blog about this soon.

A couple of random things I have found in local supermarkets, which I left on the shelf!