Mitch's 50th Birthday New York Trip
November 24, 2005
This day starts with a the
Macy's Day Parade.
We got up around 6:30 am and took at taxis to 6th & 56th. We walked to Broadway
and arrived around 8 am. The sidewalks were already lined, but the intersection
/ corner was empty, so we staked out our claim. We had a south facing corner,
but were on the rail and could see straight into the street. Then the
police started moving the barricades. By the time they finished, we were 10 feet
into the street, but they made the corner more square and we ended up facing
more south :( The good thing was it put us out beyond the light pole, so
we had a clearer view of the balloons. I believe it was in the mid-30s, dry with
a few sprinkles of rain. The kids were great about waiting and everyone was dry
and warm. Naomi had her snow pants, I had my motorcycle rain suit, the
kids had snow boots, mittens and layers and layers of clothes.
The parade got to us around 9:30 am, it was windy and the
balloons were blowing around. We only saw one balloon that was damaged when they
passed us. The balloons made were the parade, seeing them the night before on
the ground was fun, but seeing them in person was really great. The parade
lasted about 2 hours. In rained very lightly 2 or 3 times, but we stayed dry. It
was well worth the trip, the only thing that would have made it better would
have been snow :)
After the
parade, we walked to Rockefeller Center to take a few last pictures of the tree
with the lights on it and then checked out of the hotel. The
Waldorf-Astoria was very nice for the 2 days. After checking out, I camped the
family in the lobby and walked 4 blocks to the car rental to pick up the car.
When I got there, there was about 6 people sitting around waiting and no cars.
We had 2 pm reservations for T-Day dinner with Naomi's family on Long Island and
no car to get there. Finally after 2 hours, I got a car and we headed toward the
restaurant. Our Mapblast instructions were all wrong and we got lost
in Jamaica. Finally after a few calls, we found our hotel in Plainview. We
finally made it to dinner at 7pm. Dinner was very good but because we were so
late there were no mash taters, yams or pumpkin pie.
There are 4 pages of pictures for this day. Click here to see
pages 2, 3 and 4.
