In My Life – what's happening in your life currently? | Page 195 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

We got back home yesterday after a wonderful weekend in New York City. On Friday, we took a train from Lancaster, PA to Penn Station. Even though we arrived three hours prior to check-in time, the hotel had a room ready for us and let us in it early. After dumping our bags in the room and a quick freshening up, we went to a great sports bar for some sandwiches and couple of cold ones. We then hit the streets for a walk around the area to scope out some stores and restaurants for future use – basically just toodling around, killing time before heading to Yankee Stadium for a baseball game. Being the first game since the All-Star break, the Yankees started their best pitcher – that is what I had hoped for. The weather was absolutely perfect – mid 70’s (F) with no humidity and a light breeze. The game was close throughout as neither team had a lead of more than one run. The Yankees scored in the bottom of the seventh and held on to win, 4 to 3. All in all, a perfect game on a perfect evening. On the way home, we decided to get off the subway a few stops short in order to walk through Times Square and the Theater District. That was an experience in itself as the sidewalks were thick with people. There’s a saying, “people were packed together closer than sardines”. We were jealous of the sardines. There were times when we could not move in either direction. After a while of going through that, Zag, displaying otherworldly determination, started weaving (ZigZagging?) her way through the dense people-infested sidewalks. I had all I could do to keep up with her. Brazilian rain forest explorers paled in comparison.      

Saturday was a bit bizarre and fun at the same time. First, when we headed down to breakfast, we discovered that one of the two elevators was out of service. That was a bit of a pain because it wasn’t fixed as of the time we left on Sunday which caused some long waits. But, once we were able to get on, everybody was cracking jokes about it and that was fun. There was one Asian dude who made me laugh so hard I had tears in my eyes. The guy was hilarious! Anyway, we had plans to visit The Dakota and the Strawberry Fields memorial. But, we slept in rather late and the Subway that goes past 72nd street did not stop there on the weekend – it was an express to The Bronx instead. That meant taking the train all the way to The Bronx and coming back down via several transfers. We didn’t feel like going through all that, refused to take the bus and decided not to do a cab. Figuring both landmarks were not going away any time soon, we decided to go there during our next trip to NYC and went out shopping and sightseeing instead. After a while, we stopped in a brew pub on the ground floor of the Empire State Building. We had one beer and decided not to have a second as we wanted to get back to the hotel and rest up before going out to dinner and then to the U2 concert at Madison Square Garden. The decision to leave after one beer also turned into a case of perfect timing. Soon after leaving the bar, we noticed that NYPD had a street blocked off. Seeing all of the police cars and motorcycles, we were naturally curious so we stopped to look around. Soon, throngs of onlookers arrived, so we figured it was a motorcade. Sure enough, within minutes, an uncountable amount of motorcycle cops, police cars, unmarked SUV’s and emergency vehicles came roaring through with a couple of limos in their midst. We had no idea that President Obama was in the city because we don’t care and rarely watch the news. Seeing the presidential motorcade was cool and frightening at the same time. Frightening in that every one of the unmarked SUV’s had several men armed with machine guns that they were not shy about displaying. The need for that level of protection leaves me feeling…I don’t know, it’s hard to describe…creeped out? 

Since we liked that brew pub so much, we decided to have an early dinner there before heading to the concert. Perfect timing was in play here again. While sitting at the bar enjoying our dinner, Zag exclaimed, “oh my God , look out the window!!”. Me and everyone else looked outside to see two tour buses. These are the double-decker tour buses with the open top deck. Normally, they go unnoticed as the city is lousy with this type of bus. These particular ones, however were noticeable due to the occupants…who were all naked. They wore nothing but body paint and smiles. They sat at a stop light for minutes while everyone at the bar and outside on the sidewalk filmed them. The people with the phones/cameras were laughing their asses off while the nudists were shaking their asses and other assorted body parts off. Only in New York. After dinner we walked to the concert and saw the best show we’ve ever seen (review here). After the show, we stopped in a bar with a slew of fellow concert goers for a late night nosh and a few more cold ones. Then, yesterday we took a nice relaxing train ride back home. It was one of the best weekends we ever had. We will definitely go back to NYC soon for more fun – what a great city!!!  

That’s great, mmm! Hope it goes well for you. Keep us updated.

@trcanberra – does the real estate market slow down during the Australian Winter? When we were trying to sell our house in Maine during Winter of 2013-14, it was agonizing. Then, in Spring 2014, showings were frequent and we closed on the sale at the end of May. I feel your pain. Best of luck in the coming months.

Ahhh Girl said
Does Hobart have a good airport?

Well, it has an airport. It’s not too bad – I have been there for work a few times in previous years. It’s a nice town and has the advantage of a Cascade brewery (very nice Oz beer) and a nearby Cadbury chocolate factory – which would satisfy at least two BBers I know of 🙂

It also has the cheapest housing near a CBD of any city in the country – so after I split any proceeds of the house sales with my X I could probably buy a nice house for my son and I – and still have some savings set aside for emergencies. Job prospects there are also decent.

It’s a teeny bit colder than here though!