24.7.2012 – 24.7.2012  34 °C

Our day started peacefully enough with no traffic on our drive down from Mystic, Connecticut to New York! I was pretty shocked cause I was expecting jam up after jam up! We arrived on the outskirts of Manhattan with no issues!!! I was completely dumbfounded! Our drive thru New York was a BREEZE! We had a bit of a jam up but our sat nav detoured us around it.. we missed our turn off, our sat nav redirected us… Amazingly easy!!! Not what D or I were expecting! I had even done homework the night before in case the sat nav lost its satellite with the big buildings… and we didn’t even lose signal! Amazingly easy!!!

I knew it was too good to be true and it sort of was (more of hiccup though than a full blown issue). We drove to the apt with no issues.. Parked the car in this no-man’s land (a bit dodgy so we were worried a cop would maybe get us for not parking in a designated area).. Found where to pick up the keys, again no issues.. Started to bring stuff in and small issue… I had gone inside to open up the unit and had stupidly left the key upstairs (thinking that the main door downstairs didn’t lock itself—it hadn’t when I first went in), the front door locked itself and all three of us were then locked out…. Hmmm… I started to press the buzzer for other units hoping someone would open up (no one did), D rang up this number for deliveries and luckily it is one of those automated ones that will open the door for you so we were in!!! LUCKY!!! D and I then dumped all of the heavy items upstairs and left M with the lighter stuff to bring up whilst we drove the car to the depot for drop off.

Dropped off the car and then walked the couple of blocks back to our apt. Our apt is in a great spot, we are staying in the East village.. the apt is right next to the subway stop which is only 15-20 mins to Mid Town (Times Square, 5^th Ave shops, Central Park etc) and about the same to Downtown Manhattan (Wall St, Statue of Liberty ferry etc). It is very central and is surrounded by heaps of little delis, restaurants, shops.. A great spot to stay! The apt itself is small but is adequate for what we want for a week.. It is two bedroom, one bathroom with a combined kitchen/ lounge room. It’s smaller than my place but more than fine for somewhere to sleep!

We picked up M and went looking for something to eat for lunch. We found a pizza shop downstairs and grabbed some take away. We had a rest in the afternoon at our apt before we headed out before dinner to see Times Square!

The subway ride was easy (easy to get tickets and easy to navigate) and we were at Times Square before we knew it!! We hopped out of the subway and into Times Square madness! If you’ve been here you’ll know what I’m talking about.. for those of you who haven’t I’ll have a crack at describing Times Square. It isn’t a square! It is actually a triangular piece of land that is pedestrian only. One side of Times Square is Broadway (which incidentally runs the whole length of Manhattan). The Times Square part of Broadway is the Broadway, and so that side of the street is filled with theatres. Every square inch of the sides of the buildings on Times Square, are covered in Billboards (most of which are electronic, LED screens). Some are showing video of the square itself (so you have heaps of people staring up at the board, waving.. just waiting to see themselves on the board). Some are advertising every type of consumer brand (Coke, Panasonic to name a few) and the rest are advertising Broadway shows. The whole look of Times Square is sensory overload… Its loud, its very bright and it is BUSY! People are everywhere, cars are trying to get across the square, lights are flashing… It is just CRAZY!!!

We wandered the length of Times Square, gawking at the sites and sounds and made our way up to the cheap Broadway ticket booth. We were in luck! Evita tickets were on sale for tonight’s performance so we jumped in and grabbed three seats!!! We only had 30 mins til the show started so we jumped into McDs and wolfed down fries and a coke before making a bee line for the theatre (which luckily is on the square). The performance of Evita was actually a bit disappointing… The music was great, the sets were great, the performers were mediocre… Ricky Martin is playing the key role of Che Guevara and some Spanish speaking lady was playing Evita.. Ricky really doesn’t have a strong enough voice for stage… He looked great, but sounded average (at least compared to the guy playing Juan Peron). The leading lady playing Eva Peron also looked good, had a strong powerful voice that had a real tinny sound to it.. so when she sang the big numbers her voice really hit a bad chord with my ears (it would have been good if she hadn’t such a powerful voice J)!! The show was great, I did enjoy it but I certainly wouldn’t recommend the current Broadway version of it… which is a shame because I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like the soundtrack to Evita!

NYC Day 1 over… HEAPS to go!!!! YEAH!

Song of the Day– Various, Don’t cry for me Argentina! (Even performed poorly, you can’t top this song!)