I decided to take it easy during the day today and have a late start as my friends were taking me for a Broadway show in the evening and I didn’t want to be too tired for it. After waking up at 10am (thank you to whoever rang the doorbell) and having a chilled out morning I head out to Manhattan to see the Rockefeller center which I thought was one building.
I entered what I thought was the center and remember thinking, “right, this looks like a glorified shopping complex”. I got a map from the visitor center just to see if there are any must-see things in this building. That’s when I learned that the Rockefeller center is not one building but 12 buildings! It’s the most recognized commercial property in the world and consists of 109 stores , an ice rink, gardens, theatre, public artwork and an entire floor dedicated to dining. The center has 8million square feet in rentable property which is the equivalent to 31 Gherkin buildings in London. Wow! Now I was impressed. I just walked around for a hour, I didn’t buy anything or eat there but I could not help but be amazed. It truly is a “City within a city”.
From there I walked to the Grand Central Station. Manhattan is such an easy city to navigate with the (mostly) numbered avenues (the perpendicular streets) and the numbered streets which are the horizontal streets that run across the avenues. In London you can’t help but get lost. In NYC you have to be extremely bad at directions to get lost. Anyways, back to the station. I don’t think I have seen anything like it. It’s a beautiful station set on 3 floors, with the lower floor being the food court and the main station being on the floor above. I would have loved to eat there but I was feeling super fat after pancakes and pizza the day before so I decided to behave.
The station also has the Vanderbilt Hall which is a section of the station with a lot of independent stalls selling hats, jewelery, candies, books, clothes, etc.
By this point I was very tired so decided to find a Starbucks to while away the next 2hrs waiting for my friends to finish work.
After quickly changing into something nice we head out to Time Square for the musical, Side Show. The play for a bit over 2hrs and I really enjoyed the individual acts but the overall pace was a bit slow. Every time I felt the story would now move forward a bit, they would start singing again!! I guess this is what Bollywood feels like to non-Indians! Having said that, I was very glad to have experienced it as a trip to NYC would not be complete without it.
After a scrumptious dinner of Lamb Tagine and buttered Kale it was time to head home and hit the sack.
Hungryrover 