This morning we met the Winklers and went out in search of a decent breakfast. This led us to Astro Cafe, in business since 1980. There was a choice of foods, which were very nice and the price was also very reasonable for New York. When breakfast out of the way the first stop and some might say most important stop of the day was M&M World. The boys, and me, were in chocolate heaven. Who knew there were so many different ways to have M&Ms. We even had our moods scanned by the mood machine which determined that Ryan and I were in the pink - sweet, sweet, sweet mood, while Connor was multi-mix.
After exploring the shop high and low we all settled on having our own customised M&Ms made. Connor chose "Chicago Blackhawks", "I Rule", M&M World Clipart and Stars Clipart; Ryan chose I Love Cats", "Firepaw, Firestar", Statue of Liberty Clipart and Waster Bunny Clipart; Melissa, sharing with David chose 4 Clipart images of New York, M&M World, I Love NY, New York Apple, and Statue of Liberty. Once the artwork was chosen you had to chose the size you wanted to order, pay for your purchase, choose the colours of M&Ms you wanted and then pour them into a machine to have the images printed into your M&Ms. What was particularly amazing is that the machine is able to sort the M&Ms so that the image is always printed on the opposite side of the chocolate to the traditional "M".
When we were able to drag ourselves away from M&M World we made our way to Toys R Us on Time Square. Here Connor purchased ice hockey cards and a card holder, while Ryan purchased Pokemon cards and Batman Lego. We dropped all of our purchases off at the hotel before putting a temporary holt to shopping and instead turning our attention to sightseeing. We met up with the Winklers and walked down to the Intrepid Aircraft Carrier Sea, Air and Space Museum at Pier 86.
The Intrepid was huge. We spent most of our time on the Hangar Deck. Here we watched an interactive film of what it was like to be under attack from the Japanese Kamakazi pilots during WWII. On November 25th 1944, the ship was hit by two planes killing 69 crew members. The eerie part was that at the end of the film they told us that the main narrator had been killed that day, and if we had been standing where we were now, with him, we would also have died. In total, during WWII, the Intrepid shot down 301 Japanese aircraft and sunk 122 ships. The Intrepid was also deployed in Vietnam and in 2001 was used to house 750 FBI Agents investigating the September 11th terrorist attacks.
On board the ship we were able to see many aircraft stored in the Hanger Deck and on the Flight Deck, try a range of interactive exhibits, go below deck to see the cooking and sleeping facilities, and climb up to the Captain's bridge. We also watched films about the history of the Intrepid and the space shuttle Endeavour. We were able to see the shuttle from a distance - it and some other sections of the museum are still closed off following Hurricane Sandy. Concorde was also on display on the main deck and there was a submarine that David and Connor happily explored. Overall it was a great museum that kept everyone entertained for a long time. Once we were done we had just enough time to take our things back to our hotel and have a few minutes down time before making our way to Madison Square Garden to go to an NBA game tonight. Go Knicks!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment