Christmas Day!!!

Waking up in the Plaza Hotel on Christmas morning was so so special, and made Christmas morning even more exciting! The big comfy beds gave us a great nights sleep, so we woke up ready for a fancy breakfast downstairs before opening our presents.

The breakfast was rather lovely, with lots of things to choose from - I went for the eggs benedict, which I have to say were probably the tastiest eggs benedict in all of New York, if not the world, and I've had a fair few eggs benedict in the last couple of years in New York. They were delicious!

After breakfast we went back to Mops and Pops's room for a prezzie opening session...

Even being on across the pond, Father Christmas was able to find us all in the hotel! What a clever man he is.

We all had lots of lovely presents, and it was great to be able to talk to Beth on the phone too, so we were all together for a few minutes on Christmas Day. Then it was time to ablute and go for a Christmas Day walk in Central Park...

 It was a beautifully sunny morning, and although the park was quite busy, it still felt lovely and quiet and peaceful. We walked all around, over to the ice skating rink, where hundreds of people were standing watching, waiting for the rink to be open for their Christmas Day skating...

... and round to the boating lake and Boathouse...

It was such a lovely walk, working up an appetite for our Plaza lunch. But before we could eat again, a certain Christmas Elf had a little photo shoot booked in the park...

 

Tom very bravely stripped down to his little yellow tights and donned his elf hat for a Central Park Christmas Day photo... and then quickly got dressed again before the Park rangers had a chance to lock him up!

Then it was time for a spot of Christmas lunch in the Palm Court...

The menu was really nicely broken down into three sections, to begin, to savour, to indulge... and we did all three! 

Mops had the gravlax to start, Tom had the chowder and Pops and I had the delicious cauliflower strudel (much nicer, and less cauliflowery than it sounds!). 

Then Tom and I had the duck cassoulet, Mops had the beef and Pops had the Snapper. There may not have been any turkey on the menu, but it was all mighty tasty. 

Then for pudding, there was a whole island in the middle of the room, full with lots of different treats, constantly being topped up by the pudding chefs...

It was all incredible and a very special Christmas treat!

Then, as with any Christmas afternoon, it was time for a nap. So we went back upstairs for a wee bit, flicked through the channels on the telly and found Home Alone 2! So we were watching Home Alone 2 on Christmas Day, in the Home Alone 2 hotel...

It was so funny seeing the Plaza in the film, and seeing all the bits of Central Park that we'd been walking around that morning... what a coincidence!

Next to the Plaza is the Paris Cinema, a little arty cinema that shows films like the Showroom cinema in Sheffield, or the Hyde Park cinema in Leeds. They were showing the Artist, which had been getting very good reviews, so we all went to see it on Christmas Evening...

It was a great film, a clever idea doing a modern silent film, but made to feel like an old 1920's film... it was really lovely, and a full house too, lots of people must have had the same idea. But I bet not everyone was able to just walk across the road to their hotel room after the film finished.

The hotel looked beautiful at night, with the twinkly tree lights on the road that runs down the side of the hotel, and the hotel entrance...

It was such a very special Christmas Day, it felt really magical being in New York for it, and even more magical staying in the Plaza Hotel on Christmas Eve and waking up there on Christmas morning.

Tom and I went back to Brooklyn that night feeling very happy and incredibly excited about what was coming the next morning...

New York Christmas Lights...

Here's a little video of some of the twinkly lights we saw around New York this Christmas.

Christmas Eve Evening...

After taking in the rooms at the Plaza we went out for something to eat at The Brooklyn Diner in Times Square, where we just got a little snack...

!

Then we walked up from Times Square back to the hotel, along 5th Avenue to see all the beautiful Christmas lights, and to stop off by the Rockerfella to see the tree, passing Radio City Hall along the way...

Some of my favourite lights were the ones wrapped around all the trees, I had no idea how they manage to wrap them round so well, but they make every part of the trees glow, right down to the tips of the branches!

It was really reeeeeally busy by the tree, with hundreds of people all going to see the lights and take in the Christmassyness like we were doing.

But despite it being busy, everyone was so friendly and festive, no one was shouting or getting annoyed at the crowds, there was no pushing or shoving or fighting, it was lovely.

We hung around the Rockerfella Center for a few minutes and waited to see the light show at Saks 5th Avenue. Each year they do something different, this year the had an amazing 3D mapping projection thing on the side of their building. I didn't take a video of it, but I managed to find someone else's on YouTube, so here it is...

Then we carried making our way up 5th Avenue, passed all the fancy shops with their fancy window displays. I think each year they get more and more extravagant and creative with their window displays. This years Bergdorf & Goodman windows were getting quite a crowd outside them...

Then it was time for a Christmassy Cocktail night cap in the Rose Club at the Plaza.

It was a very relaxing bar, with soft green lighting (which we found out changes colour each night) and red candles on the table, it felt very Christmassy. They were delicious cocktails and they were placed on leather drinks mats! No cardboard jobbies here, Oh no. Brown leather with the Plaza crest debossed on them. 

Bizarrely they seemed to go missing from the table though?

Then we went to our rooms for a Christmas sleep, only to find that the maids had turned down the beds, removed the fur rugs from them and put slippers down, on a sheet, by the bed!

But then it really was time for the Slipper Gang to go to bed, otherwise Father Christmas wouldn't have time to visit!

The Plaza...

The Plaza Hotel was absolutely AMAZING!

Everything was so grand and special, from the wreaths and lamposts outside, to the amazing lobby inside, to the lifts, to the corridors, to the bedrooms and bathrooms, it was all just so perfect!

 

We were immediately greeted at the doors and had our bags taken to the check in desk for us, then after getting our lovely door cards we got into the very grand lift, with the mosaic floors, and went up to the 9th floor to find our room.

Even the coridoors felt special, with no stuff carpets, no creaky floorboards - it was all so bright and fresh and clean. The colours were lovely and the carpet was squishy and soft and there were even lights in the ceiling cornices (or corni?)...

Then we found our room...

and then the bathroom...

It was all stunning. The bathroom was especially impressive, with double doors to enter, heated floors, double basins, the biggest shower head in the world, the deepest bath in the world, and real gold leaf tiles on the wall and floors. Incredible!

The temptation to take one of the bathrobes was very high, but we were a wee bit worried that $100 might show up on the room bill if one went 'missing'.

The bedroom had a very grand chandelier which, along with other lights, could be controlled by the iPad in the corner of the room. You could customise the lighting and temperature just by touching a few buttons on the iPad. I want that set up in our apartment! Or better still, I want to live in the Plaza.

Every detail in the room had been thought about, and nothing had been left out, from the door handles in the bathroom, to the coat hangers...

 But rather than let me write about the rooms, I'll let my very good friend and room mate Tinsel Tommy show you around, in a very special Christmas edition of Cribs...

Christmas Eve...

Tommy Toot and I woke up on Christmas Eve very excited knowing the Mops and Pops (as well as Father Christmas) were making their way through the skies to New York, but we had a little bit of time to wait before they arrived.

So, after some pancakes for breakfast we went to Brooklyn Bowl for a spot of (free!) bowling.

It was free for the first two hours of opening, so we managed to get in three great games and a pitched of Brooklyn beer, all for a bargain price!

In the battle between Tinsel Tommy and Ollie & The Ivy, Tom came out victorious, winning two games out of three (although there was only 1 point in the last game!). Then it was time to make our way over to the Plaza to meet Mops and Pops and check in to our rooms!!!

Just A Little Longer...

I had started writing an excited post about Mops, Pops and Tom arriving tonight, but I'm going to have to wait a weeeee bit longer before Mops and Pops are here as their flight was cancelled (Delta, you're rubbish!).

The good news if that Tommy Toot is in the air as we speak and will be here, in the flesh, in 2 hours time!!! I CAN'T WAIT!

It won't be very much longer at all, and we'll be simply having a wonderful Christmas Time!

(I was going to put the Fairytale in New York song up, but it didn't really seem right!)

This time tomorrow Rodney, we'll be sipping cocktails in the Plaza Hotel!

New York Types...

I found this great little video that was made to support the 'New York Types' exhibition I went to the other day...

I love hearing people talking about New York like this and hearing people regaling their New York stories. It makes me feel very lucky and very proud to be able to live in such an amazing place.

The Chevin...

Last night Ben, Tet and I went to go and see The Chevin play at the Rockwood Music Hall in Manhattan.

The Chevin are a fairly new band from Otley! It's funny being all the way over here in New York and going to see a Leeds band with an audience half full of Leeds people - it's a small world.

I'd not really heard much of their stuff before going to the gig, Ben had seen them before in a small pub in York and noticed that they were playing New York. They were absolutely amazing though! Despite the fact that they were playing in a tiddly room at the Rockwood, to about 100 people (if that), their songs made it feel like there were 10,000 people all in an arena! They write such anthemetic songs already - I think they're destined to play to huge crowds!

They sound a bit of a cross between U2 and The Killers, and the singers voice is incredible! He was really belting out each note and had an amazing range. I didn't take any videos as my phone almost ran out of juice, but this video's off their website...

At the end of their short set (I wish they played for longer, but it was a free gig so I can't really complain!) they were selling their EP so I immediately went to get one, we've been listening to it all day at work! It's blummin' great.

We had a bit of an eventful journey home after the gig. Ben and I jumped in a taxi to head back to Brooklyn and as the taxi turned at the crossroads it got sideswiped by another car! It was veeeeeeeeeery minor, just a slight shunt really, but both cars had to stop in the middle of the busy Manhattan crossroads, much to the annoyance of all the other drivers.

Ben and I swiftly jumped out to leave the taxi driver to it and found another cab. It's funny, only the other day Abi and I were talking about how you never see any car accidents happen in New York. You very occasionally see cars that have had a bump and stopped - but never see them actually happen. I suppose we spoke too soon, as we got front row (or back) seats to one.

Apart from the wee crash, it was a fantastic night. I love seeing live music in these little places around New York. I have a feeling that'll be my last gig of 2011, so it was great to finish on such a high!

It Writes Itself...

This lunchtime I was mooching around up near 29th Street and stumbled across the Art Directors Club building, and saw that they had a special exhibition on - New York Types.

The exhibition is in conjunction with New York Writes Itself - which is a fantastic project about the stories and the people in those stories, in New York. The idea is that New York is a massive story, full of characters, all with their own plots - but it's real life. The idea behind the exhibition was to take some of the things that these 'characters' say and produce super limited edition letterpress posters out of them.

This big statement sits above the desk at the entrance to the exhibition, and it's completely true! Some of the things you hear as you walk the streets of New York, you just can't make it up!

 Some of the prints were brilliant (some of them not so brilliant) and they were all done by a collection of artists. The majority of the prints had a little explanation of where the quotes were heard, so it's great to be able to imagine where these people where and who those people were who were saying these things.

It was a really lovely and inspiring find for a Tuesday lunchtime, I think I'm going to look into New York Writes Itself a bit more, and I think Abi and I might do a little project like this ourselves - we hear so many weird things when we're on the subways or when we're walking around town, there must be a poster series or a book in there somewhere!