Day 18 in New York

Yesterday, Thursday, we went wandering through the East Village area. We searched for the CBGB site (which was not easy as there isn't even a little plaque or anything to say that it was once a historic venue), we took a peek at Tompkins Square Park, poked our heads into Katz's Delicatessen (famous Jewish deli) but didn't get anything as it was packed, wandered past a movie being filmed and stumbled across a little 'cafe' called Tuck Shop, which is basically Aussie favourites that you can't buy here such as meat pies, sausage rolls and lamingtons. We then walked up St. Marks Place which is a really cool street with heaps of cafes and little stores. It was very cool and I would loved to have gone at night to hangout but we don't have any time left.

Artwork on the side of a building in the East Village

Apparently this used to be CBGB's

Next we caught the subway to Times Square as we were planning on doing the NBC tour and then heading up to the top of Rockefeller Tower. As we found out, the only tour time left was 5pm which didn't work for us as we wanted to go up the tower then so we could see it in daylight and then stay to watch the sunset and see the skyline with all the lights on. So we bought tickets to go on the tour on Friday. We then had to wait around for a couple of hours until we were ready to go up the tower. There was no point heading back to our room and we had already looked at most of the shops in the area. We did however go into Saks Fifth Avenue (to use the bathroom haha) which is an amazing store, very expensive, but looks awesome. After that we just hung around Rockefeller Plaza until we were ready to go up Rockefeller.

It took us a while to get up to the top as they have scheduled entry times and security to go through to manage the hoard of tourists that go up everyday. We finally got up at 5:45, just in time to see to see the city in daylight before the sun set at 6pm. The views were amazing! After sunset, when all the lights have come on, looks the best, but the photos didn't work out very well (wish I had a tripod).

View from Top of the Rock looking north

Top of the Rock looking south

Looking south

Looking south-west. Yes that is Times Square where all the light is!

We then headed back to our room, grabbing Christie's favourite dinner along the way (Chipotle), and then spent the rest of the night trying to see if we could fit all the shopping we had done in NYC into our suitcases. Not an easy task!