The Curious Case of Manhattan

Merry Christmas!

Today we were very anti-Christmas and slept-in until 1 pm Eastern time. In our defense that is only 11 our time. A normal Christmas would bring Grace with bells ready to open presents. We missed her today, but we did not miss the bells. ;):) We were dead tired from yesterday's red eye flight and full day of sight-seeing. 

After we finally got up, we went out to search for food. We decided to head to Chinatown because we figured only Chinese places would be open. This was before we left our room. As we left the hotel and entered the sunny world we realized that like any other day New York City does not stop. Stores were open. Restaurants were going. People were EVERYWHERE. This really rocked our world. We honestly thought that Christmas day was probably really slow around here. WRONG. 

We decided to ride the subway to Chinatown and the financial district. It is only $2 per person making it MUCH cheaper than taking a taxi. Our iPhones (God bless them!) are able to give us walking directions and public transit information. We did not have to read a single map as the phone just told us when to switch trains. Money! It was awesome. We had one little hiccup where I thought it read "Grand Central Station" and it said "Grand Street" oops. We missed the Grand St. stop and ended up crossing into Brooklyn! Shoot! We did get to see Lady Liberty that way, though. It was pretty funny. Once we were back on track we landed in Chinatown. Jackson says, "just show me a huge wall and I'll believe that I'm in China!" LOL!! It was very, very, very genuine. The signs were in Chinese. The papers were in Chinese. The people were Chinese. It was very Chinese. After finding that their food was too authentic for my American-ized taste we headed to little Italy. Little Italy was not as genuine as Chinatown. There was a restaurant that looked excellent, but the line kept us at bay. After all we were losing daylight since we had slept in so long! We ended up at a Sbarro (a wonderful place for a Christmas meal- right?!) and had pizza there. It was really weird that so many places were open. It was terribly easy to forget that today was Christmas day. 

We walked to Wall Street and got some cool photos. We went to see the Bull statue that Jackson had been DYING to see. It was pretty cool, but there were people everywhere. Again. We headed back to the subway to get back to the hotel. We only had to ride one train so there was no chance for missing anything. Whew. ;) Riding the subway was very easy, but those things need some LYSOL. No kidding. I am scrubbing myself tonight. And washing my jeans in boiling hot water. Ick. 

We decided to go to a movie tonight as I love seeing movies on Christmas day. Theaters are different here as they do not really have multi-plex buildings. The theatre we went to is really old and HUGE. We stopped in at 6 to get tickets for the 8:15 showing of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It was really a cool movie. I normally do not support Brad Pitt in anyway, but the movie was great. We went to dinner before the movie since we had some time to kill. We had Chinese since it was more American around here. Haha! :) We walked down to Times Square to get cheesecake. The line- again- was too long and there were no tables so we headed back to the movies. We get to the theatre at 7:50- waaaaaay earlier than I would ever get to a movie in a regular town- and we have to wait in a line a block long. Are you kidding me?! We already have tickets. It was just the line to get in. Then there was a 20 minute line to get Milk Duds. GRRRR. These people must be the most patient on earth because all you do here is WAIT! The theatre was really old and historic. It was a great place to see a movie. It was so weird to walk out of the theatre to and be in New York City! We decided to go to bed at a decent hour tonight as we want to get a lot of stuff done tomorrow. 

We are headed to walk in Central Park and then to see Wicked with my roommate from IU, Jenna. We are also going to go to the top of the Empire State Building. It should be a good day.

We hope you all had a GREAT Christmas.