The last days in NYC

After having had some action packed days since Saturday we all kind of deflated Thursday. We didn’t leave our house until right before noon and our feet hurt badly. In addition none of us really had any items left undone on the NYC bucket list. So what to do?

Christine suggested the Tenement Museum and off we went. To a super crowded museum where all tours and admissions were sold out for the day. Hmmmmm. But in the gift shop they had a little book about NYC museums and apparently there was a chocolate museum nearby. And even better - we would pass a bubble tea place to get there:

The chocolate museum was tiny but SO good for 4 worn out tired people with tired feet. We had Mexican chocolate prepared exactly as the Aztecs would have done it (well, except for the electric kettle I assume.....):

And there were samples and a store at the end with deep soft couches and coffee. Just what we needed.

By the time we were done there were not many hours left over to spend before we needed to catch Aladdin at Broadway. Which we spent..... drum roll please...... walking and eating!!!!! What a surprise. Thanks to Teresa we had awesome vegan sushi:

The broadway show really needs no explanation. It was a musical as good as they get and we were all highly entertained by Genie in particular.

And suddenly the trip was over. And Friday was spent walking to the subway, walking underground on Penn station, sitting in crowded trains, waiting in crowded lines, and changing terminal (not gate!) last minute. But we made it home, stepped in the door, threw all our luggage on the floor and rushed right back out to pick up our beloved Bailey❤️

And later that night Kristian and Ulrik returned from their Japan adventures. So all is good. I am sitting here drinking fancy Japanese coffee from my NYC mug with a sleeping dog at my feet

Our table is overflowing with wasabi KitKats and other Japanese - ehm - delicacies, Danish candy from my sister, and bike accessories from Flying Tiger Copenhagen in NYC:

Ulrik is building special edition gundam figures in his room, Kristian is sleeping and Luca is hanging out with the love of his life. The iPad........

Over and out

Ramen noodles, a naked squirrel, and all the walking in between

Today we started the day with stay-in breakfast from the local grocery store after a somewhat - ehm - interesting visit at a (too) cheap pancake place close to Chinatown yesterday.Teresa ordered a Belgian waffle with strawberries and got a cold waffle with strawberry jam from a bucket. Yum🤢. On a positive note we didn’t have to wait long to pay the bill and leave as the Chinese lady bossed us around and out.

Teresa and I went by ourselves yesterday as we had a day planned for the classic discipline of “daughter shops, mom pays”. 3 hours later Teresa had spent 30$ on one and only one pair of jeans and we were hungry. With a little help from google we found an awesome ramen noodle place where we had some of the best ramen soup ever:

And then we shopped some more. Aka Teresa found one and only one t-shirt she also liked. Well, maybe that pre-shopping trip last week really did do it’s job✌🏻

Today we headed for some culture. On our way to the metropolitan we passed Carlo’s bakeshop from the tv show cakeboss. Teresa used to watch it a lot and was really excited to go. The excitement kind of vaporized as soon as we got into the store:

We were not impressed but Christine insisted on buying some cake to eat in Central Park:

And it was decent and OK, but not a place we would go again.

We chose to go to the Met as Luca has a bigger assignment on the old Egypt coming up, and they have rebuilt a few temples in there:

It was quite impressive and they had a large section of everything from the different dynasties. By the time we finished the Egypt section we felt quite full of museum for the day and headed back into the park, where we met this little guy:

It really puzzles me how this poor naked rodent made it through the winter.

The last stop of the day (after Times Square, the M&M store, a Starbucks, knitty City, and the flying tiger of Copenhagen) was the flower show at Macy’s. Wow. That was truly impressive:

So here we are. With absurdly sore feet and one day left in the big apple. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

Over and out (ouch)

Nacho fries, fishy icecream, and solving a Manhattan mystery

If Luca could get away with eating one thing only it would totally be French fries. And in NYC there is a little hole in the wall restaurant serving nothing else. They are triple cooked, served in cones or covered in salsa, beans, and cheese:

There was even “Swedish poutine” with fries, gravy, cheese curds, buttermilk fried chicken and....... lingonberry jam. Weird! But very tasty. Luca gives it a solid thumbs up and would love to go again:

And if you make a left turn when you get out and start walking towards Chinatown you will find Taiyaki serving fish-shaped custard-filled cones filled with icecream and toppings:

After those two visits we seriously started doubting if we would ever feel hungry again. But at the end of the day and some 33.000 steps later we did have room for dinner:

As we walked around Manhattan Luca was really puzzled by where they keep the schools. Especially as we met a few classes on field trips. I tried to point to a building and explain to him, that it was a school and he hard a hard time buying that. “But they don’t have any playgrounds! Where do they play?”. Well as we went to cross Brooklyn bridge we solved the mystery.They just block the street in front of the school and send over an NYPD officer, er voila!

When in NYC.......

After what felt like a looooong day of travel, but what was really nothing compared to the hours my sister had to spend on a flight to get to New York from Copenhagen, we found her in Newark. We were taxi’ing in right after her SAS flight in the airport, but since we flew domestic and she flew international it took quite some waiting time to reunite. Here’s Luca and Teresa waiting (and waiting and waiting):

And the first thing she did when we arrived at our house in Greenwich village was to empty her suitcase on the table:

SO! MUCH! CANDY! Nomnomnom.

Still we made it outside for a nice long walk by the river with the hoards of locals who also behaved like they had not seen the sun in ages:

And when we woke up this morning I had one, and only one, thing on my mind: to get to the Nordic food court at grand central station ASAP. But breakfast did come first after all and we found a fancy place with avocado mash and lemon curd granola for the brave and “toast bar” for the not so brave - aka Luca:

And then we walked and walked and walked until we made it:

And then we walked and walked and walked some more to get to Central Park and sit outside in the bone-chilling-where-did-the-sun-go cold to enjoy our Danish “smørrebrød”:

We did of course pass a lot of stores on the way back and Luca decided to spend quite a bit of his spending money on a giant box of lego in the LEGO flagship store:

We just dined in fresh rye bread (from Meyers bakery at grand central station) with warm liver pate, that my sister smuggled across the Atlantic while we all complain about our sore feet:

Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings 🤩