A new adventure begins...

Just Cruisin'...

Seven days. One ship. Fourteen decks. Seven hot tubs. Four ports of call. 2319 nautical miles. 4.5K people on board. 10,000 eggs per day (!!). One fantastic week.

Our cruise ship, Freedom of the Seas, docked at. Labadee, Haiti.

How one jumps into the pool...

Labadee, Haiti. Gorgeous clear water.

Labadee, Haiti. Aqua Park... Heaps of fun!

Labadee, Haiti. Just chillin'.

Exploring the ship... Pharoah's palace.

Nightly towel sculptures courtesy of our room attendant, Livingstone.

Grand Cayman... Oh so nice...

Grand Cayman sand... So white.

Beach Queen... Couldn't get this chick out of the water!

Grand Cayman... We had to take tender boats from the ship to the port!

Rockclimbing wall on board.

Our 'stateroom' ('cabin' would definitely be a more apt term!)

This cruise was definitely a fun time. We settled into the groove of cruising after a day or so, and grew used to the small amount of rocking of the ship, the free ice cream machine on the pool deck, the complimentary room service, our room attendant's cool animal towel sculptures each night, our friendly dinner waiter - Slama - and the multitude of wait staff hovering over us at every meal offering to get us whatever we wanted, having our beds made and fresh towels given each day, on board activities like Trivia and the Scavenger Hunt (our best placing was second in both!), and of course trying an amazing array of different types of foods on offer each day. Our shore excursions were mostly fairly laid back with a couple of beach days on gorgeous beaches, and our more active adventure participating the 'The Amazing Race Cozumel' (where we came in at 5th place out of 11 teams!). It was also lovely to soak up some heat again after a month of cold winter weather!

Our 'stateroom' ('cabin' would definitely be a more apt term!)

 

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Orlando snapshots...

Nine full days in Orlando... Nine full days of full-on, serious fun with Aunty Jo and Uncle David (and not a lot of time for much else!)

We've done:

Two days at Disney - one day at Magic Kingdom and one at Hollywood Studios.

Shopping at the outlets (brilliant post-Christmas sales and bargains).

An airboat ride on a nearby lake/swamp:

A day at Discovery Cove swimming with dolphins.

Seaworld:

Legoland, including the New Year's Eve fireworks.

Universal Studios.

Wherever we went, we wore lots and lots of different styles of 3D glasses:

Kennedy Space Centre.

We've had a full-on time here with Jo and David, and have loved every minute spent with them. We've all loved different elements of our time here: Beth, our thrill-seeker, has loved all the thrill rides and adult roller coasters she can now ride; Liam loved using his camera at Seaworld, Discovery Cove and all of Legoland; Andy and I loved the Kennedy Space Centre; and we all had a ball during our airboat ride.

But I think it will be that we did these things together in the short time that we had that made everything we did that much more special. Thanks Aunty Jo and Uncle David for spending this time with us, organising everything and being the greatest group leaders we could have wanted. We've had an absolute ball.

 

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A most unusual Christmas...

I don't think we'll soon forget our Christmas Day in New York 2013. It was by far the coldest, yet clearest, day of our stay there, with a top temperature of about -2 degrees. Brrr...

We took a bus trip to the northern part of Manhattan to see some areas we'd not seen yet. Stopping in a park for morning tea, we realised it wasn't the smartest move as even though the sun was shining, it felt as though it wasn't even there at all. As we wandered around, we noticed that even puddles on the street were frozen solid.

Back on the bus, we went through Harlem and stopped off at a 'soul food' restaurant for lunch. This turned out to be one of the top meals of our trip - good, clean whole food. Yummm...

With full, warm tummies we made our way to Central Park where we found the Lasker Rink and proceeded to ice skate in the freezing cold for a long as we could stand it. Actually, it wasn't long before the sun began to set and the temperature grew even colder, so we began to make our way home. On the way, we witnessed a most spectacular Christmas sunset.

 

 

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Wrapping up New York... Final days...

With just a couple of full days left in the Big Apple before Christmas Day, we had a number of things left on our list of things to do: The Museum of Natural History, a return to FAO Schwartz toy store, plus some last minute Christmas shopping.

With rainy weather on the Monday, we decided it was the ideal time to visit the Museum. Unfortunately, so did many other New York families, as it was the first day of the Christmas school holidays, and so the museum was packed! We had to queue for quite some time to gain entry, but we had some cool dinosaur skeletons to astound us as we waited.

It was a taste of more things to come as we spent the next 4-5 hours wandering around all the exhibits. We all seemed to enjoy different elements of the museum: Beth loved the astronomy, Andy liked the dinosaur skeletons, Bec loved the earth science and animal displays, and Liam enjoyed the gem hall....

At one point we paused to admire a view across to Central Park, only to notice that the queue we had been in before was now snaked all the way out of the entrance foyer, down the front steps and down the street in the rain! We felt ever so glad that we had arrived early!

On the following day, Christmas Eve, we had a long list of objectives, which included making the most of a most glorious day and taking last minute pictures of the everyday New York sights we came across...

One of those sights included this picturesque bridge in Central Park...

We managed to revisit the amazing FAO Schwartz toy store where we purchased a few little Christmas pressies...

And we indulged in some most decadent and lovely treats at the chocolate fountain in Dylan's Candy Bar...

Yummmm... At just $1 a treat, it was hard not to go back for seconds.

After a long day of shopping, we returned home to our little apartment where we facetimed and talked with family back home, and then each wrapped up presents and placed them under our very own living Christmas Tree. Lacking Christmas wrapping paper, we recycled our shopping bags and used a Nikko marker to label each gift.

Despite looking like a pile of rubbish with our little Tree poking out, we all went to bed in anticipation of the most unusual Christmas that awaited us the next day.

 

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New York... Days flying by...

Entering the second week of our New York adventure, the days began to fly by as we continued to tick off our list of things we wanted to see and do...

I was generously allowed a 'Mummy only' shopping day whilst Daddy entertained the kids for the day. We had discovered a small, quiet and little-known ice skating rink on one of our earlier walks at the South Seaport, so the kids spent about 3 hours having the best time skating. For about 2/3 of that time, they apparently had the entire rink all to themselves!

Meanwhile, I was having a ball shopping... Century 21 was great for bargains, and I enjoyed the best homewares store (Crate and Barrell) where I found some cute Christmas decorations for 50% off. I was still keen to go back to the New York Public Library, so wandered around there and refuelled with a hot chocolate whilst enjoying the front courtyard and playing on Beth's camera...

After a long day, both parties met up at MoMa (the Museum of Modern Art) at 4pm, where entry is free from 4pm to 6pm on Fridays. We were all a little tired and hungry, but we still wandered through and admired some of the Monets, van Goghs, Picassos, eventually finding some of Andy Warhol's well-known Campbell's Soup pop art.

On Saturday, we were keen to check out the farmer's markets at Union Square on what was a gorgeous and warm day. Here we had heaps of fun trying and purchasing some of the best and freshest local New York/ New Jersey produce. Our favourite discovery was probably the hot apple cider (basically hot fresh-pressed apple juice), and we went home with organic whole milk, fresh artisan bread and cheese, local apples, organic yogurt, and some fresh local veg straight from the farmer. Yummmm...

Sunday turned out to be a winter 'heatwave', with temps up around 19 degrees. It was funny to see some New Yorkers making the most of the heat and getting around in shorts and Tshirts!! We had a quiet day, visiting a local church (Hillsong New York), doing laundry and a little Christmas shopping.

That evening, we took advantage of the warmer weather to do 'Top of the Rock', which is the viewing platform at the top of the Rockefeller Center. It was much more bearable than the top of the Empire State Building had been and the lights of the city were certainly dazzling and pretty. We could even see the Empire State Building dressed up in Christmas colours.

Following this, we were wide awake and ready to enjoy the Christmas atmosphere with the thousands of other people who were walking the streets and enjoying Christmas displays and lights. Streets were blocked off for pedestrians, there were NYPD cops everywhere directing people and traffic, and street carts selling all sorts of delicious smelling food. Everything felt alive, buzzing, and heaps of fun!

Our last stop for the night was the much-anticipated Nintendo World. Liam and Beth were both extremely happy to finally visit this most exciting shop. There were game consoles to play everywhere, as well as plenty of merchandise to consider taking home as a souvenir. (Sadly, the shop closed about 5 minutes after we went inside, so we had to plan a return visit another day).

 

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New York... Remembering 9/11

A trip to New York these days is hardly complete without a visit to the 9/11 Memorial, and it was on our list of places to see, too. Before our visit, we tried to explain to the kids about the events of that day to help them understand why it was so important for us to go and see. In the 'Preview Site', where we collected our visitor passes, we showed them the pictures on the wall that roughly outlined the events of that morning. It may have been a little hard for them to understand, but to us it brought back many memories, and for me I couldn't help but feel a little overwhelmed with emotion... Here we were, at the actual place where the two tall buildings used to stand and that planes crashed into, where they actually crashed to the ground, etc etc. I wondered about the buildings in the immediate area around the site: if they could speak, what stories would they tell us?

But upon entering the actual memorial site, it hardly felt like a place where tragedy had been. There is renewal, quiet (well, apart from the noise of construction that still goes on around the perimeter of the site), growth, the calming sounds of flowing water. It all feels peaceful, hopeful, honoring, ordered, and even in winter it's very, very pretty.

When you visit the memorial, you see the occasional white rose placed beside the name of a person who died that day. It signifies that today is their birthday... Every day, a white rose is placed beside those whose birthday it is. Even now, the thought of this special gesture brings tears to my eyes.

And then there is the new building, towering high above the memorial square, all shiny and new and very, very tall.

I feel so privileged to have had the opportunity to visit this place in person and to see how it has moved forward after such terrible tragedy.

*************

Following our visit to the World Trade Centre, we took the subway uptown to Soho, where we made our way to the highly recommended Housing Works Bookstore. This turned out to be the discovery of the trip so far. Not only does this place stock hundreds of second-hand books that could pass as new and for just a few dollars, the look and atmosphere of the place is just how any good bookstore should be: oh so bookish! It's the sort of place you'd picture in the movies... Oh, wait, it HAS been used in movies! And weddings and other functions, too.

We spent a good hour or two here and didn't even realise we were hungry for lunch until we left and realised it was 2pm!

It was a late lunch we had at Nom Wah's Tea Parlor in Chinatown. As soon as we exited the subway, we could tell we were in Chinatown just by the smell of grease and deep fry oil. We'd heard Nom Wah's has been around since the 1920s and is very good, so headed there. We weren't disappointed (although admittedly we were starving and could have eaten anything) and all left with full, satisfied tummies.

 

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