It's a long weekend in the US, so we're in New York.  We decided to fly early on Saturday morning rather than late on Friday night,  no point paying for a hotel room for Friday night just so we have some place to sleep.  The downside of that appraoch is the 4.00am alarm clock, and the 6.00am flight.

It's easy to forget how long it can take to get from A to B.  The flight is about 2 and a half hours, but we spent the best part of another hour and a half catching trains and subways, and then walking to our hotel.  We're staying at the Millenium hotel just off Times Square.  Sorry, let me correct myself, we were supposed to be staying there, but it appears we were one of the lucky people plucked out of their big hat to be upgraded, so instead we're staying at 'The Premier'.  Some of the perks of which include complimentary breakfasts during our stay, complimentary coctail hour (2 hours actually) with heure d'oeuvres (finger food to you and I), and the internet that I'm using to write to you is also complimentary.

They were also nice enough to allow us to check in even though we arrived long before the check in time.  And as if all that wasn't good enough, our room is the right next to the elevator, rather than the usual situation of having to walk to the end of an endless hallway.

Once we had settled in it was time to hit the street, first job was Lunch.  On a previous trip we had found a restaurant just off Time Square that had good food and surprisingly good value (Time Square tens to be expensive).  When we were here last time it had closed down.  So we went in search of a nw favourite place to eat.  It's memorial day weekend so the number of visitors to New York is greater than usual, and most of them seem to be standing in lines in Restaurants that we'd like to try.

We eventually settle on The Brooklyn Diner and to my surprise they can seat us immediately.  Their strategy for dealing with the demand is to pack people in as closely together as possible.  There isn't room to walk between the tables, they actually have to pull the table out to let me get to the seat on the other side.  This sounds terrible but actually wasn't at all.  The place is nicely decorated, and there wasn't anyone to my right, and there was a partition between us and the table to my left.  So, despite being squashed in, it still felt like there was lots of room.

When the menu arrived the prices were high, but no higher than I'd expect for Times Square.  Had we known the size of the portions we would probably have shared Sandra's chicken sandwich, which was more than enough for two. There's a charge of $5 for people sharing entrees.  That would have actually made the meal extrememly cheap, and yes the sandwich was more than big enough.  Sandra boxed half of it and we shared that half later in the evening back at the hotel room.

After lunch we went back to the hotel to drop off the boxed sandwich.  I waited downstairs to take a few photos while Sandra went upstairs to drop off the food.  Then we headed out for a day of wandering around New York.  First stop FAO Schwarts, the toy store which Sandra had been looking forward to seeing.  She was a bit underwhelmed by the place, it definitely didn't live up to the image she had built up in her mind. 

Next door to FAO's is the Apple store, which looks like a cube of glass sitting on the sidewalk, but this above ground cube is just the entrance, a spiral staircase or elevator takes you down to the store itself which is pretty impressive.  Neither of us were particularly interesting in buying anything so this was purely a sight seeing visit..

Central Park is just accross the street so we took a stroll through there, the place was teeming with people sun bathing,  temperatures in New York are quite high this weekend, getting up to Florida levels.  We were both thirsty at this stage, but the curse of getting used to credit cards is that we rarely carry cash, so we couldn't buy from the various street vendors.  We made our way back to Times Square and bought some drinks before heading back to the Hotel room and getting ready for the evening.

When we got to the hotel room I noticed a problem.  Sandra had mentioned that she had put the sandwich in the fridge.  I assumed the room had a mini fridge, it has a fax machine so a fridge wasn't a big stretch.  Unfortunately the "Fridge" was actually the minibar, and she had removed the top shelf of drinks etc to make room for the sandwich.

Minibars in hotels are clever things, they can tell when you've taken something out, and a quick check of our account showed that we had been charged $41 for the 8 small drinks that had been moved.  It must not have been the first time this had happened because the concierge seemed familiar with the problem, reversed the charges and sent us up a mini-fridge.

The main reason we decided to come to New York was to see the stage production of "Inherit The Wind".  We wanted to be at the theatre at about 7.30pm.  We relaxed in the hotel for a while, had our drinks and finger food at about 6pm, watched tv for a little while, then got ready for the theatre. 

The location of the hotel really couldn't be better.  It's right beside Times Square, right beside many of the big theatres, and about a 5 minute walk from the Lyceum where Inherit The Wind was being staged.  Our seats were in the front row of the Balcony which was good but a row or two back would have been better.  The guard rail got in the way and we spent most of the play leaning forward.  Not too big a deal and the play was every bit as good as I expected.

Afterwards we had a drink at Connely's Irish Pub then walked back to the hotel via Times Square, popping into Toys'R'Us for a few minutes.

We got a knife from the hotel restaurant and divided up the sandwich that very nearly cost us $40 in mini bar charges.