29th December 2016 – Day 7 in
New York City
It rained on us
this day. We chose to do the Highline walk, which was quite interesting
(saw a car made out of tyres with a tree growing through it and some art of a
naked man???). Afterwards, we went into the American Stock Exchange,
which I thought would bore the kids shitless, but surprisingly it was quite
interesting. We learned more about Alexander Hamilton (founding father of
New York), his duel with another lawyer Aaron Burr during which he was fatally
wounded and which brought about his untimely death.
Boy Wonder
learned the sign language used on the stock exchange floor and I actually
videoed him showing what he’d learned. It was surprisingly fascinating
stuff. We saw a stupid amount of gold, which always makes me smile,
except when the gold is in the form of a rubbish bin or a fax machine.
What the fuck is with that shit? Some people have too much money.
After we left
the stock exchange, we walked past the bronze bull. People had formed a
giant queue to stand in front of the bull and have their photo taken, most of
them stroking the animal’s huge testicles (okay, whatever floats your boat…hard
not to judge, though). Do you know what we are? We’re
arseholes. We strode across the road, ignoring the patiently queuing
Japanese, and took a photo with the bull. Who gives a shit if someone
else is in the background. It took a grand total of thirty seconds, and we
walked off again. Arseholes for sure.
We found another Irish Pub called 'Molly’s Pub', and were horrified at the
attitude of the bitch serving us. Considering these stupid imbeciles want
us to leave them a tip, we found it incredulous that she slammed our cutlery
down and barely contained her boredom when she told us the specials and took
our order. She even rolled her eyes at us at one point when we had the
audacity to ask a question. Boy Wonder looked at me after she stalked off
and said pointedly “well she’s a bitch!” I didn’t pull him up on that
succinct description...CORRECT! I turned to the Captain and said, “bare
minimum tip for her, she’s rude and doesn’t deserve it.” I don’t care if
she is dependent on the tips; change your attitude, hoe-bag! Slightly
offended by the attitude.
30th December 2016 – Day 8 in New
York City
We decided to
start with an early morning at the observation deck of the Rockerfeller Centre,
which is dubbed, “Top of the Rock’. The queues weren’t long here and the
elevator trip up was quite exhilarating with a clear roof and what looked like
shooting stars zipping past as we elevated. I videoed it because I’m
weird to the extreme.
It was just past
sunrise and brilliantly sunny so we had a completely different experience in
comparison to The Empire State Building…plus I hadn’t done anything remotely
retarded that might result in the ruination of this event.
I found Boy
Wonder sitting inside and begged askance of this odd behaviour, not taking in
the magnificent view. The stupid boy chooses this moment to tell me his
fear of heights means he can’t go close to the view because he starts to panic
and sweat and shake. Oh my fucking God! “Why didn’t you tell us
this before?” I demanded. He didn’t want to ruin anybody else’s fun with
his phobia. Bless my stupid boy.
When we got back
down to the bottom level, Captain Fantastic decided to get a shoe shine.
I was mortified and told him I’d come back later. We found the restrooms
and returned, only to see him sitting back reading the paper, his trilby
perched on his head while an overzealous man polished the bejesus out of his
shoes. He was not the only man getting a shoe shine and I felt
embarrassed. I looked at my daughter and said “oh my God, what is he doing?” A
fellow Aussie chose this moment to walk past and peer in at the Captain and the
other guy sitting near him and said to the man beside her “look at these
wankers, will you?” Miss Marvellous and I took off like a shot; we didn’t
want to be associated with a wanker. Miss Marvellous took a sneaky photo
of him and he was stupidly happy about it. He was thrilled with the
polish and told anyone who would listen how great a job this guy did for such a
small fee. It was hard not to blush but yeah, okay…each to their own, I
guess.
After The
Rockerfeller Centre, we took a two hour boat ride that the Captain wanted to go
on. Within minutes we were bored stupid and I started to doze in my
seat. Rain began pelting against the glass so we couldn’t take photos of
anything through it because our view was obscured, even if we wanted to.
A couple in front of us sucked face for most of the trip, pausing briefly to collect
the view before returning to their tonsil hockey. Thanks for sharing.
This is the
longest two hours I have ever endured and when it finally ended, I was drowsy
and wondering why the fuck we did that to ourselves. It was not what the
Captain thought it would be but he stoically insisted he enjoyed the
trip. I beg to differ because he looked absolutely ready to nod off
through most of the boring trip himself. That’s two hours of my life I’ll
never get back.
That night we
perched on high stools and ate burgers washed down with beer at the House of
Brews on 46th Street in the Hell’s Kitchen area.
31st December 2016 – Day 8 in New
York City
We had finished
our New York Pass tourist leg of our New York trip so we found our way to the
Chelsea market, which proved to be unexciting and rather hipster. We
wandered around town, we went to the Century 21 department store for a look
around.
Miss Marvellous
wanted to go into Victoria’s secret, which became a nightmare for me. The
Captain followed me in and stood in a corner grinning like a creep and all the
young girls buying ‘panties’. Eeeew Captain, get the fuck out. We
joined a queue that took an eternity to get through and whilst in the queue, I
received an urgent text from Boy Wonder, who was kicking the kerb and wishing
we'd hurry the fuck up, telling us to quickly come outside because it was
snowing little flurries. Well I missed the snow in New York because
Offspring number one needed my credit card for very expensive knickers that
contained very little material.
After we finally
made it to the front of the queue, three quarters of a fucking hour later, the
chick assisting me at the register kept asking for PIN numbers for the overseas
credit card that it didn’t have and insisted I couldn’t make my purchase
without it. Fuck you, just take my Australian one and let me the fuck out
of here before I actually die of old age waiting. Jesus!
After this, and
I was a little disgruntled that I’d missed the flurry, we made our way back to
Harlem, carefully avoiding Times Square all day because it was New Year’s Eve
and we didn’t have the inclination to get caught up in the crowds and mass
hysteria that would surely be taking place there.
We had dinner at
Amy Ruth’s Soul Food restaurant and I lost my second ‘snowman erection’ hat
there (left it on the table - it was shitty, itchy and scratchy anyway...but my
noggin was feeling the cold).
I could barely
keep my eyes open for the countdown to midnight and New Year’s Day. We
watched the ball drop (Whoopee!). I
kissed my family and fell into bed and into a coma. The exhaustion of
this trip was starting to take its toll.
We found out the
next morning that there were two million people in Times Square; one million
more than last year, and adult nappies were a must. You can keep that
shit for yourselves!
1st January 2017 – New Year’s Day –
Day 9 in New York City
What a beautiful
start to 2017. Walking in a gorgeous city with the sun shining, even if
it was only 2◦C, but the squirrels were out and playing and I was happy.
We found ourselves in Central Park again. This was to be our last
day in New York City and I didn’t want it to end.
Boy Wonder, Miss
Marvellous and I decided to go ice skating in Central Park. What a
treat! The Captain sat this one out, preferring to watch us wobble and
fall and rebalance, then finally get it. Boy Wonder spent a grand total
of about three minutes on his skates before his shins and calves gave him
grief. This was because he kept losing his balance and his skates kept
going out and bending his ankles so he looked like an incredibly special unit
out there, trying not to break an ankle. He took the skates off with
great relief and went out to find The Captain. Miss Marvellous and I had
so much fun. It was very wobbly going at first but then we found our
balance and just thoroughly enjoyed hours of circling the great white rink (The
Donald Trump rink).
After the
skating, we took in more of Central Park...parts we hadn’t seen. The
Captain spied an artist so we went over to look at his wares and chose a
wonderful painting of the New York cabs. We purchased this
canvass and rolled it up to take home with us where The Captain would use is
skills to frame it himself like our other works of art at home.
We walked
around the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, which provided some absolutely
beautiful photo opportunities. We saw a group of men playing music and
singing fifties and sixties songs, quartet style and we saw more squirrels,
which elicited an audible groan from Boy Wonder.
The kids and I
took the train back to Harlem but The Captain decided to walk.
That night, we caught the train back to W48th Street and dined at La
Masseria Italian Restaurant. Cool!
2nd January, 2017 – Day 10 in New
York City and our last
We had a morning
flight back to Los Angeles. Once again, the Captain was on a
different flight and advised us that morning that our flight was delayed
again. Bloody hell. Boy Wonder asked The Captain if he had
remembered our money and the Passports because he didn’t know if he had it in
him to save the day again. Oh pleeeeease!
Airport security
was becoming an interesting occasion. As we were standing in the queue,
we spied Scott Cam standing beside us. He’s not a celebrity over here, no
one gives a fuck about him. Boy Wonder took a sneaky photo to show Dad.
Miss Marvellous
had security issues with her bag because she thought she would be clever and
put all of her snow globes in her carry-on luggage. She got called over
and advised that there is a water issue and the snow globes related to this
rule. Fuck me. Our cases had already gone through and we were
shitting ourselves that we were going to have to leave the globes behind.
Instead, they checked each and every snow globe, like she’d hidden some deadly
chemical in them. They’re so fucking nervous over here. Perhaps if
you didn’t allow every fucker to have a gun, you wouldn’t need to be this
nervous.
It was my turn to go through security and this time, I remembered to take all
of my bracelets off, and my watch so we should have been good
to go. Nope, I got hauled aside and asked to stand with Miss
Marvellous. There were three security people at me and I was wondering
what the fuck had made them so nervous. One of the Security guards, a
large black woman with a ‘do not fuck with me” expression written all over her
face, raised her brows and said “Ma’am, do you have anything in your back
pocket?” I immediately reached behind me to check but she held her arms
up in panic “No, no!”
I shot my hands
back up into the air like I was under arrest and because her voice is very loud
and she was very nervous and I didn’t want her to fucking shoot me in front of
my children. I said “I’m just going to check my pocket” and she
responded, “s-l-o-w-l-y”, like this little Italian is going to go all
Jesse James on her arse. Jesus! I slowly, at the pace of a snail,
lowered my left hand and found a bulge and I was like “what the fuck?” in my
head. I whipped out a lip gloss and startled the security chick
again. Shit! I stated unnecessarily that it was my lip gloss,
because these fuckers had me all nervous and they were all clustered around me
like I was going to mace them at any second.
She said she
needed to pat me down. I thrust my hands into the air again in a show of
compliance and said “go for it” like I was up for anything. I just wanted
to go through the fucking gate. She looked pointedly at me and said,
“Ma’am, would you like to go to a private room for this?” Now I started
shitting myself. I nervously asked “Um, are you going to take my pants
and undies off for this?” Mrs ‘do not fuck with me” threw her head back
and guffawed out the word “No!” Why the fuck would I want to go to a
private room to be patted down if you’re not going to ram your fingers in my
arse? How weird.
I was smiling
and giggling because I was so bloody nervous. I said “if I get to keep my
pants on, we can do it here.” She proceeded to thoroughly pat me
down. I mean, if I was naked, I’d think we were going to have sex soon,
there was a lot of boob and butt rubbing going on and she even patted my…ummm,
mound. Nope, that’s all me sweetheart. Better still, the other two
were watching us like we were shooting a porn video. Then she brought out
her wand and I started sweating and wondering if I should have chosen the
booth. She just waved it all over me (more stroking), up between my legs
like I’m hiding a mini bomb in an orifice. I turned around and there was
a queue of very curious people on the other side of the X-ray machine, watching
this foreplay; I felt my face burn. Jesus fuck! Boy Wonder was
on the other side looking bored out of his mind; Miss Marvellous wore a
smirk. She’s a sick fuck, that one.
We made our way
to our gate and got told to move gates twice because these people have no
fucking idea. Our flight left on time (the Captain was
misinformed). I sent a text to the Captain to inform him that our
fight was leaving on time and his flight information source was flawed, that
his son saw Scott Cam and forwarded the sneaky photo, of which he no fucks
bout.
In summary, New York was my favourite part of this month long trip and I was sorry to leave her but...Los Angeles was
beckoning…
