A Walk Around Midtown Manhattan

After arriving at our hotel, the Hilton Midtown, we were anxious to go on our first site-seeing walk of this blustery cold Christmastime trip.  

There would be plenty of walking over the next few days but I'm sure this first nighttime walk in midtown Manhattan was the most impressionable for Lukey and Kenzie.  This was a bit of a culture shock for them...  the skyscapers, the architecture, the lights, the hustle and bustle of crowds, the horns, the sirens, the trucks...  this was something different, for sure.

We dropped off our bags, dressed warmly for the cold wind whipping off the ocean and through the canyons of tall building, and then headed back down to the lobby so we could make our way out the front doors of the hotel to Sixth Avenue.  

Here is the very large, expansive lobby of the hotel...

As you step out of the lobby onto Sixth Avenue, there is an old Checker Cab in front of the hotel.  Personally, I miss those unique giant cabs.  I'm not at all fond of all the new types of cabs...

We made our way down Sixth Avenue checking out all the decorations.  On our first block, we passed little kiosk shops lining the first half of this block.  This photo, below, shows these little shops closed up early in the morning because I didn't have a photo of them at night while they were open during our first nighttime walk.  

As it is every year in midtown Manhattan at Christmastime, the Christmas decorations were impressive, beautiful and could be seen as far as the eye could see into the distance.  

There were no skimpy decorations...  there were no tacky decorations (well...  the FOX Christmas tree and decorations are definitely flirting with 'tacky' which is why you won't find any of their nonsense in my blog)...  there were no annoying, tacky blinking Christmas lights...  all the decorations were high end and done very artistically.  Trees were fully wrapped in white lights from roots to branch tips.  

Decorated trees and Christmas trees were everywhere.  

Radio City Music Hall was standing prominently across the street on the corner of the next block.  We had to carefully maneuver through the Christmas tourist crowd while also navigating around all the hucksters selling stuff on blankets on the sidewalk.  

For reasons that are pretty obvious in most of these photos, I think I'm going to start calling Kenzie "Mona Lisa"...

There were giant candy canes, giant toy soldiers, and giant Christmas trees...

Kenzie thought it would be fun to pose with this giant toy soldier and it did make a nice photo especially to see the sheer size of these toy soldiers compared to her size.  For the rest of our trip, this toy soldier would be affectionately known as Kenzie's "toy soldier boyfriend" since it was her idea to pose with this guy...

There were Christmas trees that were so large that there was a pathway cut through the base of the tree so you could walk through the tree.  We watched a proposal at this particular large Christmas tree, below, in front of hundreds of tourists. 

We passed by the Steinway showroom, featuring what I would call a rather toy-like, even tasteless, pastel red grand piano.  Truthfully, I like the keyboard action on Steinways...  it is very light and very responsive when maintained properly but I'm not fond of the mellow, less-bright, mildly muffled sound compared to Yamahas.  My preference is a Yamaha CFX Grand.  Regardless, it was nice to see a piano showroom on our walk.  Coming across a piano showroom is a rarity in today's world.

Lukey had a brief opportunity at every crossroad for a very short break in hobbling around on his crutches as we waited for the traffic lights to change.  Plus, he had a break every time I would stop to shoot a photo.  (Yes...  as you can see in this photo, below, it is very obvious that his crutches were far too short and improperly adjusted for his body but that is how he insisted on using them which, unsurprisingly, resulted in a bit of unnecessary pain for him.)  Most of the time, the photos I captured were shot on the fly as I was walking but I stopped occasionally which also gave Lukey a short break...

Every now and then, we would catch a glimpse of the Empire State Building towering over midtown Manhattan which was never missed by Lukey.  We were still about nine blocks north of the Empire State Building in this photo below...

Below is one corner of the New York Public Library.  I was able to provide some interesting info for Lukey and Kenzie about this very unique and deceivingly large public library.  

The first thing to point out was the building itself...  It is made of 12 inch thick blocks of marble that came from Mt Dorset in Vermont and that the entire building, inside and out, is made with this marble.  

The lions at the front steps were named "Patience" and "Fortitude" by Mayor LaGuardia during the Great Depression because that is what he felt New Yorkers needed to survive the depression (Lukey and Kenzie knew nothing of the Great Depression so these Lion names were likely lost on them).  

I pointed out that the library is the size of the entire city block.  Although Bryant Park sits directly behind the public library, the library extends underground beneath the park.  

We didn't get an opportunity to get inside the library but I explained that this library is like none they have ever seen before.  I'll have to find a good video of this library to show them someday...  by "good video", I mean one that is produced in a very high video quality showing the incredible artistic details inside this architectural landmark.  Most of the YouTube videos I've found are pretty lousy so they don't show the details well enough.

After walking a few blocks down Sixth Avenue, we then scooted over one block to Fifth Avenue so we could make our way to the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree.  

As we walked up Fifth Avenue toward Rockefeller Center, we could clearly see a crowd of tourists packed shoulder-to-shoulder around Rockefeller Center so we opted to turn off Fifth Avenue early so we could approach the iconic Christmas tree from the side on 49th Street.  We definitely had a little more breathing room on this side of Rockefeller Center on this night (which isn't always the case...  we happened to get lucky)...

We then slowly made our way through the tightly packed crowd toward the ice rink in front of the Christmas tree.  As Lukey and Kenzie watched people skating on the rink, I'm sure Kenzie was getting excited about doing the same the following morning with Gee.  

After we squeezed through the crowd toward the ice rink, I then turned Lukey and Kenzie's attention to behind them toward Sak's Fifth Avenue and their annual light show (I'll write more about this disappointment in another blog entry - spoiler alert - we weren't too impressed and prefer their previous light shows)...

After looking at all the decorated windows at Sak's, we crossed 50th Street over to St Patrick's Cathedral and walked around three sides of this landmark cathedral.  We talked about Nan and how much she liked this church as we looked up at the towering cathedral.  

I wanted a few photos of St Patrick's Cathedral from across the street so we headed across Fifth Avenue to behind the sculpture of Atlas.  (Kenzie wondered aloud why we were taking a photo of Atlas's butt hanging over their heads!)

At this point, it was getting late and our stomachs were beginning to grumble about getting some food so we made our way back toward the hotel.  On the way, Sheila placed an order online for pizza and garlic knots for take-out.  We picked up the food and walked the block back to the hotel and ate a late night New York pizza dinner in our hotel room.  

The food was delicious and this pizza was something Sheila and I had been looking forward to since our last visit to New York.  Pizza in Vermont is mostly inedible garbage.  There should be another name for it because it does not resemble real pizza in the least.  At least Chicago, Michigan and California had enough sense to make their own names for their adaptations on true pizza.  

Ironically, all we had in the freezer when we arrived back home in Vermont was a couple of frozen pizzas...  regardless of how hungry we were, none of us could stomach more than one small slice of that dry, bitter stuff after having sweet, soft, gooey New York pizza!