M & M's with Madame Tussaud - Part 4

Look who else likes to tootle around NYC.

This has to be the most either of us have slept in ages. The most relaxed we've been in a long while. We didn't get up till ...I'm not tellin'. It's so nice not to sleep at the mercy of the alarm.

We went walking along in the diamond district. Let me tell you.. I have never seen so much bling in all my days. There were constant rows, block after block, both sides of the street. Major blingage!

There were some very pretty saffire and diamond jewlery that was very appealing. Such beautiful colors. Emeralds. Rubies. Pearls. They was gorgeous.

A new M&M shop opened up with more tiny chocolates than I have ever seen.

Ya just gotta love the humor

You know, it took me four pictures to get the width of this wall and it was two stories tall.

At least this time he had clean underwear!

Since one of us had to be at a meeting, I find myself out on my own. NYC - here I come!

I know where I am going . . . Madame Tussaud's House of Wax. It's only been 4 years now that I've wanted to go there. Off I went.

Right off the bat, I walk through the door and almost danced with Morgan Freeman. That boy looked so real I almost jumped. It was funny!

Did you see how tall this guy is?

Head upstairs and there is the HUMONGOUS Hulk. Wow! Fingerprints and all! I met many people I've always wanted to meet. How tall is Jennifer Aniston? How sexy is Will Smith? Still have no respect for Angelina and Brad...Jody Foster is a class act. The ones that impressed me most were Billy Graham Princess Diana, and Jessica Simpson.

Hmmmm.........

Robin Williams isn't the tallest of people, but I at least got to hold his hand.
Jennifer Aniston

Now here I am taking my time, studying the figurines, reading the plaques....(this is what drives my family crazy about me) If I'm going to be in a museum, I should learn all I can.

Now this one I have to say I was VERY pleased to meet. Heellllllooooo Rock!

I have to be honest, I have no respect for either of these two. You don't cheat on your spouse, you don't get involved with a married man. And why does she have longitude and latitude tattoos on her upper left arm? Tisk, tisk, tisk. I expected more.

Always wanted to meet Jody Foster. She did an excellent job in Silence of the Lambs and so many others.
Now here's who I want to meet. You know, looks just like my 8th grade teacher, Mr. Bellefoire.
Ms. Princess Diana as beautiful as ever. The people are asked to donate their own clothes to make the figurine more realistic. The book behind her is signed by the everyone made of wax. It is opened to her signature.
The Reverend Billy Graham. He has his own ambiance. What is the world going to do without him?

A wise man once said, "A Bible which is falling apart, usually belong to someone who is not."

All the fairy tales I learned as a child, Tom Thumb truly did exist.

My co-worker truly thought I had gotten this close to Jessica Simpson.

Look, the female version of Michael Jackson.
My daughter, at age 9, had such a profound thing to say about Mr. MJ. "Only in America can a black man become a white woman." Need I say more?

We have to admire these men. Remember what they did?
The reason we are at war in Iraq?

Ernest Hemingway

This is for my Tybo. Tybo, you are the first person to come to mind when I saw him.

I come across this one of some young girl hanging upside down from a pole. Now I've seen Prince, (Ty, that one is for you), the female version of Micheal Jackson, had NO desire to take one of Madonna, didn't recognize the NSync boys, and was delighted to see that one of the Spice girls really is pretty. This girl hanging upside down....oh, Britney Spears. (wha wha wha)

When you come in the door there are situations on the TVs where the stars sometimes pose along side their wax selves. Then they like to step out and spook people. This is constantly in the back of my mind while I'm walking around. Who would I like to have surprise me?????

Britney Spears is not one of them. However, I cannot resist the urge to whisper in her ear.."grow your hair back" when I realize her breasts are moving. Um...moving??? I look closer..holy cow!! It's breathing!!!

I step back..(big step) and grab the Chinese girl next to me. I point, "it's breathing"... she looks...she leaps back and yells. She says something incomprehensible to her girlfriend. Then she tells me "get closer - touch it" I'm thinking, holy cow, I've just offended Britney Spears. I don't want to be in the papers....(just kidding guys)

Tiptoe up...look for the fingernail marks in the wax that every creation has had....no fingernail marks...put my hand up to her nose (please don't bite me). Nothing. I'm still staring at the rise and fall of this chest....One person said it very well...'their inflatable'. Works for me. That was a good job fellas!

In true fashion, Madame Tussaud had herself made of wax as well. She waited till she had aged 83 years before doing her own self portrait.
Partway through this I run into the horror room. I pause. Now folks, I'm by myself. There is no David to protect me, I'm on my own....(right. like I'm scared) I ask these three fellows - are there going to be people jumping out at me?? Yes. Yes, great. I pause. 'don't worry' they say 'no one will touch you' I smile, "I'm not worried about that, I'm just checking to make sure I don't piddle down my left drawer leg."

Curiosity has the best of me, in I go. About every three steps, someone behind me makes this loud SLAP. The first time I jumped. After that I got used to it. There was wind blowing, yelling, people jumping out and I was engrossed by the wax figures. I even apologized to one fellow. The guy behind me has this big machete that he's slapping on the wood behind me. At one point, he bumped into me. I had to ask directions...which way do I go?

I make it through and find out it was the blond fellow up front. Hahahahaha! Apparently he has previously chased Paris Hilton through here screaming. Funny. He said since I went through it alone I was tough. Grrrr!

Then the questions come. Where ya from? What brought you to NY? How much is rent here? (see, and you thought he was asking me questions didn'tcha?)

Get through there and I'm off again. What to do, where to go? I hit the streets, enjoying walking around. How much I enjoy just the ambiance of NY life. The people, the energy, the lights. It's great! (though I'm always surprised at how dirty my face and feet are after a day of pedding around)

Stop in for a bite to eat and got to thinking...does God love NYC as much as I do? Wonder what I did to make God love me so much as to reward me with so much? For life is good - very good.

The waitress comes and laughs when I jump as the sound of her voice brings me back to reality. Off I go, I'm heading to the movies. Off to see the Fantastic 4.
Yeah, I know, I went to see a movie in NYC. Lemme tell ya. In our little town, the theatre isn't 6 stories tall with over 25 theatres in it. Afterwards I had to take four different escalators just to get back down to the street.

Met my sweetie in the hotel room and off to eat we go. Neither of us are very hungry but can you believe the size of this appetizer? Carmine's does it's best to make sure everyone gets enough to eat.

Tomorrow, we go home....

Hunk-a-hunk-a burnin' love
Why thank you, thank you very much!

Chinatown, Little Italy and the Phantom makes - 3

After must technical difficulties, we decided to head out. Breakfast was sushi, fruit and hard boiled eggs. The breakfast of champions!

We had much fun taking the subway to Grand Central station. There is a gourmet market with all sorts of things there. Remember in the movie National Treasure where the gal jumps behind the counter to hide? It was one of those.

We tried some balsamic aged 7 years. Very raisiny in taste, kinda sweet. The other was only 2 years and bitter. We were thinking something in between would have been nice but there was none to be found.

From Grand Central we took the subway to Chinatown. We walked around there a bit looking at all the goods before we stopped in Little Italy for lunch.
It is very typical of all Italian restaurants to serve bread with olive oil. However, this restaurant served their olive oil with Parmesan cheese, Italian seasoning and crushed red pepper. It was the best I've ever had!

Lunch was anti pasta. Lettus covered in mozzarella, prosciutto, salami, sticks of Parmesan cheese, olives, it was good! And since I was in Little Italy, I HAD to have the cannoli. Talk about good! It was the best ever! Every bite was full of flavor and delicious. Wonder if I can sneak that on the plane.

After lunch, we went back to Chinatown. You know, they eat some interesting things in Chinatown. We stopped by many open fish markets and I'm wondering...how can they be allowed to just have this food out here without any covering? There were flies landing in the food and people were buying it.
Squid, octopus, lives crabs, prawns, fish, big shrimp with the heads still on...they had it all. Just out of curiosity, I tried to pick up one of the crabs...this old woman is still spry... that fellow tried to pinch me!!!!

That reads, "Sea Cucumber, Pork Intestine, Fried Chicken Feet, Fried Duck Feet, Pork Uterus"
(dinner served)

That was interesting, but the grocery stores were more interesting. You know a pound of dried scallops is worth $70? They have these little tiny fishes, salted eye yolks, sea weed, whole duck with the head and eyes, pig stomach, duck feet - lots of duck feet, and fish balls. Go figure.

Looks like a neat house eh? It's a bank!

We went into a candy shop down there. You won't believe what these people call candy!!! We found some good stuff like rose petals, chocolate covered ginger (VERY strong), and dried fruits. Then there was the not so good stuff. Dried squid, dried, spicy cuttle fish, and the absolute worst was the dried crabs the size of your thumbnail. They might have been small in size but they pack a mighty punch to the gullet that almost made me share my cannoli with everyone there.

There is a traveling chef that said it best:
"It makes you want to cut off your tongue, rip out your eyeballs, dip your face in a bucket of lye and throw yourself off a cliff."
From there we went to the flower district. Orchids as far as the eye can see and in a rainbow of colors.
Tonight we went to see the Phantom of the Opera. Unfortunately Hughe Panero is now performing in Las Vegas so there was no melting in my seat. In fact, there was alot different.
Need to keep in mind these people have some pretty big shoes to fill. My opinion...it wasn't bad, but it wasn't as magical as before.

Inside the theatre. See that chandelier? It's going to fall right above the heads of the people sitting underneath.

Museum of Natural History - Part 2

We got up late - well for us anyway... After stopping to get a small bite to eat, we attempted to take the subway downtown. Unfortunately, the train we needed to take wasn't running so we had to take the bus.

Of all the transportation NYC offers, we've never taken the bus. For a $2 charge, you can go anywhere you want to go. Why own a car in this city?

Downtown we went to the Museum of Natural History. Now here's a place we could spend all day at and never miss the time.
We saw all sorts of things. First we started off with history of religions. Buddha's, Islam, Christianity...it was very intersting. It even covered beliefs back with Shaman...very interesting.
These are all sorts of ceremonial masks. Different ones are for different ceremonies.
This is a turkish headdress worn by women. One would imagine this would be a little hot.....

Children's toys made of ivory and bone.

These are calendars from Yakut, Russia. The long stick on the side has slits in it. Short one indicate days, longer ones indicate months and celebrations. The round ones have holes in them for pegs. When the inside circle is full of pegs, one peg is put on the outer side.

The Creed (Armenian version)

Rituals of Christianity

A very, very old Bible. How I would love to be able to look through this.
One whole floor was about active volcanoes, earthquakes and rocks. There are sulfur chimney's from under the sea (shown above), lava rocks, and all sorts of stone. It was very cool.
You have no idea how huge this shell was. A person could stand behind this and just touch in inner edges. Big. Very big.
Huge spider crab.

There was a whole floor of creatures from tiny to gianormous! There was a squid that streatched all the way across the room! A huge whale suspended from the ceiling. Jellyfish and worms I don't want to know where they live.
The size of this sting ray was enormous. To the left was a humongous jelly fish.
The redwood tree was over 2,000 years old when it was cut down. The markers here dictate different world events during the life of the tree.
The dinosaurs were probably the most intersting. Of course I had to get that room in. Big. Very, very big. You could even touch some of the bones.

Now how sharp are those teeth?
These are actual dinosaur eggs.
The dodo?
A real life unicorn. In the front there looked like there was room for another one. Maybe only one can exist at a time.

After that, of course we had to have some more Totonno's pizza. When it's that good, you gotta have more!

We're sitting there on the patio people watching when we both made the same comment. This was the most relaxed we had been in a long, long time. It is nice when the soul is at perfect peace.
Back on Time's Square we are walking back and forth. There was a sight I've not seen before. All down Avenue of the America's there was a festival. Just like home!

From there we went down to Rockefeller Center. There is a TV show I used to watch all the time while I was pg with Doog Boog, Mad About You. I love that show. The girls love that show today. The story is that the two were engaged while ice skating in Rockefeller Center. Ever since then I have always wanted to be there with the person I was in love with. This made the 5th time...God is good...
Would you believe this guy has his office in his car? I kid you not! There was a printer, fax, phone, computer and vase with flowers right there in his car. He does it all from his parking space.