More From the Past Few Days

So I totally forgot to mention the most amazing experience I had the other day when we were trying to find our way to the Empire State Building. We stumbled on the New York Public Library. The long and the short of it is this: I discovered that they have copies of Pride and Prejudice from 1813. That's nearly 200 years old! Now only the most scholarly of scholars gets to put their paws on those kinds of books. But after quite a saga of registration etc. I actually managed to have a look at all three copies!!!! One had the owners signature in it. (Brad's Comment: If there had been a window I would have jumped) needless to say, Bradley was and is the best boyfriend because he had to sit for about an hour while I chased down this book. (Brad's Comment: That hour cost me three years of my life).

Entrance Hall of the New York Public Library (Unfortunately there no photography was allowed inside).

A sneak photo of the roof of the first floor hall. Stunning! Looks more like a palace than a library.

The other day when in the Wall Street area, we stumbled across Federal Hall. It's called the birth place of American Government. George Washington, the first president of the USA, took the oath of office there and gave his first public address as President. Random information so all back home know we did get some sort of culture on the tour.

Speaking of culture, today we made the great trek (a couple of blocks down the road past Central Park) to the American Museum of Natural History. I was a little disappointed because our New York Pass only allowed us general access. We had to pay for entry into the really exciting exhibits. We gave the planetarium and the IMAX theatre a skip and got tickets for the butterfly exhibit. You walk through a butterfly enclosure and if you're really fortunate a butterfly might just give you a 'kiss'. One guy actually had a couple landing and dancing on his head.

The biggest moth I've ever seen. It was bigger than Brad's hand.	Random butterfly but it was interesting that it just stayed put.
butterfly 'kiss'.

We also did the standard Rockefeller Centre (Center in Americanese).  It was beautiful. In the middle of winter they have the most amazing flowers blooming. And the genius of it is the hot water baths between the flower beds. The steam that's created keeps the flowers happy so that they bloom. The funny thing was that since it was a privately owned public space, no photography using tripods was permitted. One guy was actually asked by security guards not to use his tripod.

The ice skating rink	The flowers! My favourite place in the city.
The warm water fountains.	Rockefeller center tower

Now the really big news of the day is that Brad has a new toy. He finally settled on the Macbook. It's white and it's really pretty and can do such amazing things. Ahhhh. Jokes aside, it really is an exceptional piece of equipment. With an apple you can remotely run a whole media system, tv, music system, radio, photo's, dvd system and all from one point in the house.  I am slightly green at the moment...lol.

 

Check previous blogs titled 'the Past Few Days' if you're interested in seeing updated photo's. I finally got to uploading them to the computer. Apologies for the wait to all.