On December 9th, we awoke to a wonderful blanket of white snow covering everything. It has been a long time coming, but when it did arrive it made everything look wonderful.
Then reality set in and Rosie got out the snow shovel to dig out the driveway before taking Liam to school in the car. Bruce went to work with Ron, since he knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant. The roads were slushy and they were stuck on the 401 for an extra 50 minutes getting to work.
When Liam got home from school, he went out to make his first real snowman and did a fantastic job. The best time to make snowmen is when you have fresh snow since Liam was able to create a big roll of snow by just rolling a small ball along it.
Frosty might stay there now for the rest of winter, depending on what happens in the next few days. He might also find himself buried under all the snow that Rosie scrapes off the driveway.
A few days later Bruce had to stay back for a cricket game after school and a major snow storm came through just before he had to drive home. It was a scary experience driving down the 401 and sliding every time you touch the breaks. Most of the journey had to be done at 40kph, but he got home safely. It was the scariest driving experience he has ever had.
This is the good and the bad of snow, great fun to play in but not much fun when it comes to getting places.
School finished on the 18th, after a staff party and then a few drinks at the Woolly. There was also a great concert on the last day at school, with an exceptional puppet act. We packed the car on Friday night and left for our Christmas holiday on Saturday morning. The border crossing looked good and we got to the border quickly but then we had to go into immigration to renew our entry permits, one and a half hours later we were able to continue with our journey (amazing how a 5 minute process at an airport can take so long at a border crossing).
The drive along Highway 20 was as beautiful as ever as we drove down to Tannersville where we were to spend to night. Bruce found a nice hotel with a spa and heated pool. which was the criteria for all the hotels on this trip. Tannersville was in Pensylvania and had an Outlet Shopping centre, where we intended buying clothes and shoes to take home with us. We managed to arrive just before the Blizzard of 2009 hit. The Blizzard managed to drop 15 inches of snow on us overnight and made it difficult to get to the Outlet shops, but nothing was going to stop Rosie.
The next morning Bruce had to clean off all the snow and we drove off to NY with and inch of ice on the bonnet (the heat of the engine melted the snow over night and then it froze).
The Blizzard caused kaos up and down the East coast but they are quick to clear the roads and our trip to New York the next day was relatively easy. We again chose to stay in New Jersey, this time at the Sheraton, which was situated right on the Hudson River with fantastic views to New York. To get there we just had to walk down to the river and catch the Ferry across to 42nd Street. There was a heated gazebo for us to wait in. Liam and Bruce went for a swim in the hotel when we first arrived and then we had a quiet dinner at the hotel. We were upgraded in our room when we arrived so Bruce and Rosie had a nice king sized bed in a separate bedroom.
The room looked out over the river and we had great views of lower Manhatten and the financial districts of both New York and New Jersey.
The next day we planned to go up the Statue of Liberty, but when we arrived there were no tickets to go up so we didn’t bother visiting and went to the Rockerfeller Centre to see the Christmas Tree and go skating.
We had to queue up for half an hour, but were entertained by the Zamboni cleaning the ice and making it nice and smooth for us to skate on. Bruce and Liam went skating while Rosie looked on.
Bruce quickly remembered the basics of skating and Liam also picked up quickly from where he left off last winter. They were both zipping around the ice at the base of the giant Christmas tree. An experience they will remember everytime they see a Christmas movie set in New York.
After skating we had an early dinner in the Rockerfeller Centre and then came out to see the Christmas lights and the Christmas tree properly lit up. It was quite beautiful and a good end to the days activity.
Once back at our hotel, the views back to Manhatten were magnificant, all the lights and action on the water.
The next day we started out by going for a long swim in the pool and generally have a play around. We then went into New York for lunch, where we decided to goto the Hard Rock Cafe so that we could have the American experience. It was very popular, especially with families and we had a lot of fun.
After lunch we spent an hour in Toys R Us so that Liam could put together his wish list for Santa. This is a great store with lots of interactive toys to play with and experience. We were pleased that we weren’t buying anything since the queues at the cash registers wound all around the shop.
We then strolled down to Macy’s on Fifth Avenue to view the window displays. The theme this year was writing a letter to Santa, so Liam started out by writing his computerised Santa Letter. Each window after this was showing the progression of the letter until it finally reached Santa.
We then had a look around Macy’s, including a Starbucks before moving onto John and Cheryl’s apartment on Broadway. We had a nice bottle of Cloudy Bay SB to celebrate John’s heritage and their impending return to New Zealand in February. They were busy packing so everything was in disarray. We had dinner at a nice Italian restaurant on Broadway, very New York style with everyone packed into small spaces but as expected, the food was good and we had a great evening. Unfortunately we had trouble catching our bus back to ferry, they changed the route for Christmas and we were on the wrong street, but eventually we took a taxi back to the ferry terminal and had a pleasant trip across the river back to our hotel.
The next day we again started off with a good swim in the pool before getting ready to go see the Lion King at the Minskoff Theartre. We had tickets for the matinee production so we went in at noon and had lunch at a great little pizza restaurant called John’s Pizza, which was two blocks down the road from the theatre. John recommended it and I remember going there with them a few years ago when I was over for Ross’s wedding. The atmosphere was again fantastic and a great way to spend a bit of time before going into the theatre.
The Lion King was great, we were down near the front and in a great position to enjoy the animals as they came down the aisles during the opening number to come onto the stage. We loved the Leopard and the giraffe’s, but all the animals characters were excellent.
Liam enjoyed the musical and again it was an experience that hopefully he remember for life. If it encourages him to go to further productions in the future then this would be tremendous.
After the play we walked over to the Empire State Building, passing some nice Christmas window displays on the way. The queues weren’t too bad so it only took about an hour to get through all the security, purchase tickets and then get up to the top. When we were last in NY we went to the top of the Rock to view Manhatten during the daylight hours. Therefore we wanted to see the views from the top of the Empire State Building during the evening hours so that we could see all the lights. It was absoluting freezing out on the viewing platform (not at all like they show it in the movies) but the views were great. We were able to look back at our hotel in New Jersey which was fun.
This time we didn’t wait for any busses, but just walked back to the Ferry terminal, after a long wait for the subway to get us close. We then found that the bus would have picked us up at the Empire State building, unlucky.
The next morning we started the next part of our Christmas adventure and set off for Stamford where we were having Christmas.
One of the effects of the blizzard was to make the streets on New York city very unpleasant to walk around. There was snow piled up on the verges and you had to find tracks through it to get to the paths. Since people park cars on the side of the roads overnight, there were lots of cars trapped behind a wall of snow (up to their windows) where the snow ploughs had just pushed the snow up against them.
They just didn’t seem to have the same level of ability to remove snow that Toronto and Mississauga has.
