Scattered Thoughts . . .

A fter our short visit to Manhattan this past Saturday, we rode on the Long Island Railroad from Grand Central Madison to Rockville Centre then walked the few short blocks back to the hotel.  I have to say that, as a tourist wanting easy and quick access to midtown Manhattan, the new Madison extension to Grand Central is very convenient! I needed to make a short stop at a pharmacy so we stopped at a pharmacy that was next to the hotel.  While we were there, we picked up a few additional drinks for the hotel.  Below, we are waiting for Sheila to come out of the pharmacy...  we somehow got separated in the store so checked out separately... Six hours of sleep the previous night was now taking its toll on Kenzie.  She laid down to take a short nap with her new stuffed animal but I don't think she got more than a few minutes of sleep, if at all.  I managed to capture a photo of her lying with her stuffed animal though... Before long, it was time to drive to my ...

A s we were departing Rockefeller Center with the kids this past weekend, we were walking toward Sak's on Fifth Avenue.  When we got to Fifth Avenue I immediately noticed St Patrick's Cathedral and was reminded that we didn't get to show the inside of this cathedral to the kids when we were here at Christmastime.   We had hoped to show the kids this landmark cathedral when we were here Christmas week but it was locked up since it was nighttime.  On this warm morning, however, the cathedral was open to the public so we walked across the street to St Patrick's. Before entering the cathedral, we quickly went over a few rules and customs so nobody would make a fool of themselves in this famous landmark.  It would have been nice to do a tour of the cathedral but, unfortunately, we didn't have time for that.  I'm not sure the two 12 year olds would have appreciated the significance of what they were seeing in a tour anyway. St Patrick's Cathedral was perhaps Shei...

A s mentioned in my previous blog entry, we visited Bryant Park with the kids twice now.  This last time was just this past weekend during the warmer months so it didn't at all resemble the winter park with an ice rink like the last time we were at Bryant Park with Lukey and Kenzie.  If we hadn't told the kids this was Bryant Park, they might not have recognized it in the warm weather!  The park really does look a lot different in the summer months compared to the winter months. During the winter months, they jam-pack this park with a big ice rink, a locker and changing facility, a few different socializing areas, and close to a hundred small shops.  When all the winter seasonal attractions are packed away for the summer, the park looks completely different.   We quickly walked the few blocks from Grand Central Terminal to Bryant Park... Below, the Public Library is behind them as they try to get their bearings... Below is the back side of the Public Librar...

W henever Sheila and I are in Manhattan and are looking for a place to eat breakfast, we always head to Pershing Square.  The breakfast here is consistently delicious.  Even Lukey and Kenzie love it!  This was their second visit to this restaurant. I had a perfectly prepared omelette (and I'm pretty picky about my eggs).  I also had a glass of freshly squeezed grapefruit juice.  Lukey and Kenzie had freshly squeezed orange juice with their breakfast.  The freshly squeezed juices are incredible! Lukey and Sheila had the French Toast on Challah bread which is delicious.  If I remember correctly, Kenzie had a fresh fruit bowl for breakfast... The main purpose of our visit to Manhattan was to visit FAO Schwarz.  Lukey and Kenzie had never been there.  Actually, we found out that they didn't even know this toy store existed because they had never seen the movie "Big".  Anyway, we still had a little time to kill before FAO Schwarz opened so we...

I never did finish writing about our Christmas trip to Manhattan so I should try to get back to that now since I am feeling well enough to write at the moment.   I came home from Manhattan with COVID and have been struggling with this virus and complications since then.  (We are now a week into March!)   As if that hasn't been enough to knock me down, I'm also now dealing with a significant re-injury to my extensive spinal injuries which may or may not be related to long-COVID inflammation.  I've had problems with COVID inflammation in other bouts of COVID so I'm leaning toward this spinal problem being triggered by the same.   So, for more than two months, I have been mostly couch-bound.  Needless to say, I never did finish writing about our trip to Manhattan with Lukey and Kenzie.  I'll get back to that now. Our pre-Christmas trip to Manhattan was so long ago at this point that I've forgotten about many of the details of this trip.  M...

W e had planned to go to a rather unique diner after skating at Bryant Park during our trip to Manhattan at Christmastime.  Actually, we had each of our meals planned for our entire trip, even our breakfasts.  After skating at Bryant park, we walked the few blocks to this diner on Broadway only to find that the line to get into the diner was wrapped around the building and then, as we peered around the corner, we noticed the line was more than a block long!  Instead of waiting on that very long line in the brutal wind and frigid temperatures, we headed to Junior's diner one or two blocks closer to Times Square.  We had only a 10 minute wait there so we had breakfast there.   Skating at Bryant Park was later than our skating reservation at Rockefeller Center so, by the time we left Bryant Park, we were well into the busy time for breakfast.  I was hoping we would still be early enough to avoid the big crowds but we were not!  Fortunately, I had a f...

This blog entry consists mostly of photos of windows we saw on Fifth Avenue.  We did some window shopping, however, I should mention that we did quite a bit of shopping in quite a few stores on Fifth Avenue during our stay in Manhattan too.   I'll cover our disappointments in another blog entry but I have to add a bit about our disappointments here in this blog entry since window shopping, in general, is something that left us quite disappointed during this trip thanks to Sak's Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor.  (Plus, I'm still a bit bitter about being infected with COVID yet again due to this trip so I'm left with a lot of bad feelings about this trip... a lot of bad, bitter feelings.) First, Lord & Taylor is now gone so their windows and Christmas decorations were sorely missed.  Their Christmas window displays were always among the best on Fifth Avenue.  Sak's Fifth Avenue also used to be among the best but, this year, Sak's seems to have given u...