Dave and Elise arrived for Thanksgiving in November.
The weather was pretty mild - unusually so for that time of the year. It wasn't even coat weather on the Bryant Park skate rink.
It had been a while since we last put skates on!
Nothing beats some fried pickles on a stick afterwards!
We walked past Seaport and on to Chinatown. After trying a bubble tea we went for some hand-pulled noodles.
Managed to save a little bit of space for some Jewish knishes, though:
After all that food it was nice to just sit with a cup of tea in the Lower East Side.
CJ and Dave had an early tee time at the golf simulator near Times Square. Fore!!
After golf we went to Chelsea Market via the High Line:
A few drinks later on in the Growler - a decent pub just around the corner from our apartment on Stone Street.
We had managed to keep it a surprise that we were going to Madison Square Garden to see Billy Joel in concert - CJ and Elise's combined birthday present. We told them we were going to a special bar so they didn't realise what we were doing until we were through the queues, past security, up several floors and almost to our seats in the arena. Result!
The warm-up act was Jamie Cullum! He was very very good. We had an amazing view of the stage from our seats!
Sting made a surprise appearance!
The second guest appearance was John Mellencamp who is apparently extremely famous in the US, though we'd never heard of him. The arena went nuts.
No trip to NYC is complete without some authentic Jewish food. This is at Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side.
The night before the Macy's Thanksgiving parade, we attended the official balloon inflation. Alongside the Natural History Museum they inflate all of the balloons to be used in the parade the next day. Thousands of people now attend since it's an event in it's own right.
An early start on Thanksgiving Thursday ensured we bagged a prime spot on Central Park Avenue, opposite to Central Park.
Macy's department store also has a series of decorative window displays, not to mention an amazing Christmas season section.
The main event of the day was our Thanksgiving dinner. As it was our first 'proper' Thanksgiving we decided to go all-out and make as many of the traditional American dishes as possible.
Not sure what this bit is for!
The cats were content watching us make dinner.
We even got the fire going!
Green bean casserole (green beans in mushroom soup topped with crispy onions):
Candied yams:
Sweet potato casserole (sweetened and spiced mashed sweet potatoes topped with marshmallow and a pecan crumble):
An almost-complete plate (definitely missing some things!). The yellow stuff on the left is creamed corn...another American side dish.
An authentic Thanksgiving dinner is not complete without either sweet potato or pumpkin pie. We went for pumpkin pie:
Tilly approved of the choice.
The Rockefeller Center. Unfortunately we were a bit early to see the unveiled tree...
...but Elise managed to bag a piece of history and obtained a small piece of the Rockefeller tree anyway!
Coffee stop at Jacks in Seaport:
Staten Island ferry:
This is the Ghostbusters fire station, in lower Manhattan.
Outside of the Plaza and the famous FAO Schwarz toy store:
No trip to New York is complete without visiting Central Park.
And fancy coming across Crazy Bird Lady from the Home Alone film!!
A truly wonderful visit.
ReplyDelete