Our first full day in New York started with a much-needed sleep in, so we didn’t actually get out of our room until roughly 11:00 a.m. To save some time we had brunch in the hotel restaurant, Collage. Lovely little place, very bright and airy. Maggie’s croissants were croissants and the Nuttella she put on top was Nuttella; it was nothing extraordinary but it was good. Jessica’s Everything Scrambled was also good but nothing special. My marmalade-and-creamcheese-filled french toast was excellent (in my opinion); filling was just flavourful and not overpowering to the rest of the plate. I actually could not finish the meal, actually. The service was on the ball, attentive, and friendly.
Then we ventured around the corner to the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market where we spent the better part of the next three hours. The girls found some cute dresses and some gifts for their friends. Me? I found a cool wood-bound, hand-written book on why we need airplane mechanics from 1942. It included photos of various airplanes of the time and based on the following single line chapter on what is bad about being an airplane mechanic I’m pretty sure it was written by a young man: “…there’s nothing really bad about it.” Unfortunately the seller wanted $40 for it, so I did not purchase it. I also came across what appeared to be a stuffed rat. I hope I do not need to elaborate on why I did not purchase this particuar treasure. I did purchase a lovely drawing by a local artist of the Brooklyn Bridge.
From there we decided to go to Grand Central Terminal where we ate a lovely lunch at Junior’s and wandered the building appreciating the architecture, doing a little shopping, and performing a two-person flash mob in the main terminal. Yes, it’s true, the girls performed their own personal flash mob to Cool from West Side Story.
Finally we went to the National Comedy Theatre’s improv night which was very entertaining. The girls managed to stump the comedians once during one game called Arnoldisms where they had to take suggestions from the crowd with which to create an Arnold Schwartzenegger one-liner (Jessica gave them ‘back bacon’) and nearly stumped them with a suggestion during a game where the panelists had to give advice on a subject (Maggie asked them “What does 42 mean?” It was funny, but you had to be there.
After stopping for thin crust pizza at a place called Mario’s Trattoria (no,not Mario Battali) we went back to our hotel and played poker with Oreo cookies. The entertaining part of this particular activity was less the poker and more the musical accompaniment that interrupted the poker. The girls couldn’t stop singing along to Michael Jackson’s “The Man in the Mirror”.
So far the plan for tomorrow, besides seeing Wicked!, is to wander around Times Square. Let’s see how early I can wake the girls tomorrow…
What I saw
Guigon Travels 