Category: Trip

City Christmas

December 19, 2021

After canceling Australia, we booked a (very!) last minute trip to NYC to ‘save Christmas’. In other words, get my mind off a disappointing event and buy some Xmas gifts at the same time.

We stayed in our usual hotel. The room wasn’t quite as fancy (or expensive) as last time but was still cozy and had a wonderful view, especially at night:

That’s the Bryant Park ice rink, which they set up for a few months every year. The whole park gets a makeover in fact, with lots of temporary shops and restaurants. Here’s a better view of the rink:

Mostly we shopped, and as usual we absolutely filled our days. But we also found time for eating, like delicious mochi donuts (made using rice flour):

Or this mozzarella potato corn dog:

We visited Madame Tussaud’s for the first time ever, which was crazy busy since it was raining and everyone else chose to go as well, but it was fun seeing the incredibly lifelike mannequins:

And to our surprise you could pose with almost all of them:

Of course we went to see the famous Rockefeller Center tree as well, which was dazzling at night:

And – to our surprise – Saks 5th Avenue had a 3.5 minute fully animated light/music show using 700,000 lights over the entire facade of the building:

Oh and the city was mobbed with people. In fact this was maybe the busiest we had ever seen NYC, and certainly the most people I’ve seen since the pandemic began. Of course the unfortunate side of this is that NYC is currently seeing pandemic-record covid numbers (due to the variant which affected my trip…) but it was great to see near-ubiquitous mask usage (even out on the sidewalk) and testing/vaccination tents on every block:

We had a whirlwind trip but a fun one. We packed a lot into 2.5 days and returned with an astonishing amount of goodies. This last photo shows most of what we bought (certain Xmas gifts are omitted). Can you guess which of these will soon inspire a blog post of its own?

The Biggest Apple

October 11, 2021

We went to NYC for a KLS birthday trip. We stayed in the same hotel we always do and our room this time was amazing!

It even had a balcony, with a view of the city and Bryant Park:

Since dining-in hasn’t really returned (thanks Covid!) we made use of this balcony many times enjoying a meal with a view:

The city has also added many more tables and chairs everywhere for outdoor dining, which we took advantage of more than once:

So what did we do? Mostly shopping! We bought so much stuff, especially from the Japanese shops. Food, cosmetics, books, toys and souvenirs. I also sent too many postcards!

We walked everywhere visiting all our favorite stores and it was good to see they are mostly in good shape, obviously having navigated the pandemic well enough. There’s a lot of shops that haven’t though, with far more than usual shopfronts for rent. There’s more construction than usual as well, and this is in a city that is always busy with construction:

We also walked The High Line, a converted elevated rail line which is now a public garden. This took us to a brand new NYC attraction, Little Island, an artificial island/garden built on the Hudson waterfront:

Of course we went to Times Square as well:

And took a brief walk to Central Park to admire the newly opened tallest apartment building in the world, which was disappeared into the clouds the morning we saw it:

We filled our 3.5 days and had a lot of fun:

Covid is here to stay and I believe will be affecting our lives for years to come, especially in a country like the USA where a large contingent fails to take it seriously. It was reassuring to take a trip (including rail travel) amidst all the covid restrictions (masks, social distancing, vaccination cards etc) and still have as much fun as similar city trips we have taken in the past.

Laconia

August 4, 2021

Yesterday we drove to Laconia, New Hampshire. We chose this place due to the mega-arcade Funspot, one of my favourite locations (and one I’ve shown on this blog several times before).

Yesterday we only ate there, as well as played a few games and ticket machines. The plan was to return today and spend much more time enjoying the games.

But first, this morning, we went on the mail cruise once again! The weather was wonderful and we sat out on the deck and enjoyed the breeze and the views as the boat made the mail deliveries. I may have even sent a few postcards from one of America’s only floating post offices…

Then we went back to Funspot to spend the afternoon playing games and ticket machines. It’s been a few years since we last visited and it was nice to see the place had updated with quite a few new games (the focus is still on the classic era, up to the mid 80s). I played dozens including many I’ve never seen or even heard of before, and it was a real treat seeing (and playing!) original cabinets of some very rare arcade games. The art on some of the machines was fantastic, such as this example of the bezel art on Lady Bug:

I could just go on and on about Funspot, and truly wished it was closer to where we lived so I could visit whenever I wished.

I love seeing and playing all the games, and just being surrounded by the lights and sounds. The nostalgia is sky-high at Funspot, and I wish you could all visit.

Oh and the ticket machines? We invested about $30 in them and won just over 2000 tickets. This was enough to get an LED light strip with an MSRP of about $25, which isn’t bad at all given most the machines themselves are fun to play! I’d say it was a big success 🙂

Tomorrow we head home, which means this is the last post from this trip. We’ve had a great time and these posts have only partially described what we saw and done. There’s more on postcards, of which I sent over 100! Most of you will receive several, some will receive too many. Please look forward to them 🙂

Robot Claw