Day 7 - New York: we've walked and walked and walked

Well our first mission today was to drop our washing off at the Laundromat - the hotel laundry service was charging $5 for one "panty" as they call it! Troy researched a good Laundromat and found one that charged $1 per pound, $14 in total. Much better than paying $100 at the hotel (let's just hope our clothes don't shrink now).

So our sightseeing started at the Rockefeller Centre (where the NBC studios are) - it's an impressive building and the ice skating rink is still in operation. I couldn't quite convince Troy to go skating though! Here are a couple of pics...

 

 

There was a Lego store at the Rockefeller Centre - we've never seen so much Lego in the one place! Here is a very small section of the Lego wall which had pockets, each filled with different coloured and shaped pieces of Lego...

 

 

 

There were also a number of impressive pieces which were all made out of Lego... see below:



We then walked through the mid town area, and came across the Radio City theatre where the famous Rockettes performs...

 

Next we stopped in at the post office (the biggest post office I've ever seen!) We'd heard that all New Yorkers are always in a hurry but I witnessed it first hand today. I was walking to the line in the post office and a lady to the left of me was walking very swiftly and looking at me out the corner of her eye! I let her go first. I then went up to the counter to pay for some stamps. For some reason, I cannot get my head around the coins over here. Every time I get out a dollar worth of quarters, I hand over five coins (i.e. thinking they are 20c) and the 10c are smaller than the 5c (don't even ask me which one is a nickel and which one is a dime!)

Anyway, we continued our walk and crossed over Park Avenue - we could almost smell the money! Town cars (i.e. private transfer cars for business men and women, celebrities etc) everywhere. I looked out for celebrities but no luck. We continued to Grand Central Station and caught the train to Brooklyn. We walked through the streets to the Brooklyn Bridge and walked back across the bridge to Manhattan. It wasn't a great day weather wise, but the bridge was still very busy. I'd hate to know how busy it gets when the weather is sunny and warm! We were surprised how narrow the walkway was, particularly when it is a shared walking and bike track (cyclists get very cranky when tourists are walking in their way) here are a couple of pics from our Brooklyn Bridge walk...

 

 

Arriving back in Manhattan we ended up exploring some of the streets - through China town and Little Italy. We walked through Soho and Tribeca which we loved, so many cute shops, designer stores and it seemed like there was a specialty paper shop on almost every corner! En route to dinner, we were walking along and I saw my first puppy dog onesie (complete with hoody)... have a look at these two - it is cold over here so probably quite practical!

 



After a quick dinner (I have a head cold and have lost my taste, so we didn't go anywhere special tonight) we headed back up to our area and did a spot of shoe shopping on the way home - we've made a nice little dent in the credit card! But very happy with our new shoes.

We've been on the go the whole time, but today it seemed like we kept walking, and walking, and walking! It's been a great day though, we're really starting to get a feel for the different areas and we are loving the subway. The 7 day unlimited subway pass has been fantastic. We've also just downloaded the city guides for NYC, Washington and Boston from Trip Advisor to my Samsung phone (we wish we had found them earlier). They're fantastic and you don't need wifi to use them which is great. Highly recommend to anyone travelling overseas. Not sure if the iphone guides work the same, but definitely worth investigating.

It's our last full day in New York tomorrow before heading to Washington Wednesday morning, so another good night's sleep will hopefully help my head cold and we'll be ready for another full day.