We got up late, which was actually pretty early on the west coast, and went downstairs for the free breakfast. Finding a seat was nearly impossible. The breakfast area was packed and the food was typical hotel free breakfast food and just OK. I never eat anything from the steam area and stick with cold cereal, which I did this morning.
I checked my email before we headed out and got a message from Carnival that the Vista was having propulsion problems and Grand Turk was being replaced by Nassau. Yay.
On this day we’d explore the area near the Flat Iron Building, which is also near Madison Square Garden. We had tickets for a Knicks v. Mavericks in the evening and wanted to see how close the Garden was to our hotel. It was close which made it easy to decide that walking back to the hotel after the game would be a simple thing. First we stopped at Guitar Center, right around the corner from the hotel, so Grant could browse through all the pretty guitars. I’m a little surprised he didn’t buy one on the spot. It was a large and impressive store.
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| Good Morning America is filmed here |
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| Empire State Building |
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| We traversed through a park with sculptures. |
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| Flat Iron Building |
I have a thing for a show called Say Yes to the Dress and Grant was nice enough to find it on the map and make sure I could at least walk past the store. Other than that, our only goal for the day was to explore, eat, walk and take a lot of pictures, which is exactly what happened.
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| Kleinfeld! You'd have to watch the show to know... |
Working our way down Broadway, we made it to Madison Square Park and ate at a place called Eataly. I wasn’t too keen on eating there initially because I expected it to be very touristy resulting in food that would be typical restaurant-quality Italian food: overpriced and bland. Boy, was I wrong. Homemade pasta, spicy sauces, excellent cheese! I could’ve stayed there all day long browsing. The place is both a restaurant, actually several restaurants, and a grocery store. They offer Italian goods, lots of both packaged and fresh pasta, meats and fish and a deli. There’s even a coffee shop at the front. Great, great place and I highly recommend it.
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| Madison Square Park |
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| Eataly for lunch and a coffee after |
After lunch we worked our way back to the hotel to take a breather (read: nap) before going back the way we came for the Knicks game. I grabbed a back of honey roasted nuts from a cart and snacked on those on the way. Grant found the corner where the photo from a Kiss album was shot and we duplicated that for him. He was thrilled to find the exact corner.
We were disappointed to see our room hadn’t been touched by housekeeping (no extra coffee packets!) until after we left for dinner. I’ve always appreciated, actually expected, my hotel room to be cleaned by noon at the latest.
Dinner was at O’Reilly’s Pub and Restaurant. Skip it. Overpriced and the food at Nine Irish Guys at New York, New York casino in Las Vegas is better.
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| At least the salad was OK. |
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| Grant had Chicken Parmesan. He liked it. |
Doors opened at the Garden at 6:30 and we were in line for our seats. We were seated in Section 114 Row 8, which were very good seats. We saw Mark Cuban roaming around, but the stars of the show were the Knicks. It was a great game and they won, which made it even better. I even bought a delicious YoYo snack cake from the concession in celebration.
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| I could do this job. |
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| Go team! |
We got back to the hotel around 10:30 and fell into bed. The next day was going to be our exploration of Central Park and I wanted to be fully prepped for it.
Good night world.
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