Promises Promises in NYC

Giving up the Ice Skating as one of those things that just wasn't meant to be, we instead embraced our love of plastic interconnecting toys and headed into the Lego shop to buy a couple of Lego themed souvenirs. NornGirl bought a brick and I bought a Toy Story 3 Lego Alien keyring. It was then a quick dash across town to get in line at the TKTS booth in Times Square for some discount show tickets, our first choice would have been Avenue Q but as we saw the sign and got in line it became apparent that it wasn't on that day. D'oh! Instead we looked around and desired to give one we'd never heard of before a try. 'Promises Promises', caught our eye and so that's what we bought tickets to.

We had a wrap and beer at a Chipotle on the way back to the hotel where We dolled ourselves up and headed out for our anniversary night out.

First came the show which was at The Broadway Theatre. The musical of Promises Promises is set in New York and it's the same plot as the film 'The Apartment', a comedy with a romantic plot that plays with themes of affairs and attempted suicide. Set to the music of Burt Bacharach, we're led through the story by the lead character Chuck who is a quite junior employee working in the corporate world of a 1960s insurance company whose life takes a few twists involving his love interest and his apartment.

When we were there, the character of Chuck was played by Sean Hayes (aka Jack from Will and Grace). His comic acting as you'd expect was brilliant and really made the show.
Both he and the female lead of Fran who was played by Kristin Chenoweth (of West Wing, Pushing Daisies and Glee fame) did a great job and it was great fun, Kristin's voice is quite something.
Apart from one or two rather unbelievable moments in the plot around the Fran character, there wasn't really a downside and although not our first choice it was a great substitute.
As far as an American cultural experience goes, it really was very American, which you'd hope for really being on Broadway! However this did leave us ending up laughing at somewhat inappropriate moments that most of the room didn't seem to get - ah well!

Leaving the theatre with the glow of having had a good laugh we made our way out into the rain for the grey blanket was still snuggling the tallest of the city's skyscrapers. Our next destination was the Marriott Marquis View Lounge for some drinks and deserts.
The viewing lounge is on the 47/48th floors of the hotel and rotates around a central column giving a view of the city and the Hudson river. We had a lovely desert and some nice drinks and enjoyed a little us time chatting as couples on their anniversaries do (in our own 'special' way). The view was largely of clouds and rain but beyond the raindrop painted glass we could still make out a fair few of the NYC Skyline's well known features.

Sadly, apart from the guy who served us who couldn't have been more helpful; our experience did end up a little tainted. This was because a rude member of staff commandeered the rare sighting of a lift that a group (of about 8) of us had been waiting on for a good 5 minutes or more. It wasn't like the member of staff had some urgent repair work to do, he just had a trolley of supplies and the place was closing for the night. We were not amused, especially as it took the best part of another 5-10 minutes for another lift to reach us. We were even less amused though when the hotel never released their hold on a reservation of money they had placed. Norn Girl even emailed them weeks after the event and they said they were in touch with their accountants to release the hold. It never happened. In the end - a month later, it was our bank who by default broke their hold on the money in our account - sure $48 to some of their clientèle might not be much but to us that is a fair old chunk of money. It has to be said that this was all 4 months ago now so I wouldn't worry if you're heading there soon, they could have been one off's. Thankfully we didn't have to worry about too much on the actual day and another good thing about the Marriott was that the lift to the rotating restaurant is quite a ride - it moves through a massive space inside the building. If you stand facing towards the glass and just look out it's like a theme-park ride. It was awesome!

Overall, my personal opinion on the rotating viewing lounge is that if you have a bit of money to burn, the place is worth a one off trip, but given the cost of it (over $120 after you count the cover charge, the desert buffet, two drinks each and the service charge, the bill came to over $120) it won't be on our to do list if we're lucky enough to return to NYC again.

We ventured out happily into Times Square, a period of very heavy rain had left what was usually one of the very busiest parts of New York almost empty, an odd sight indeed.

My head at this point was filled with fond memories of our wedding the year before, I was also happy as always (when not in the dog house) at being present in the company of my wife Norn Girl which was made more special by being surrounded by one of the biggest urban rainforests in the world. We merrily meandered back to our hotel. The day hadn't gone completely to plan but we'd enjoyed ourselves nevertheless – as Norn Girl wrote; “the whole holiday was really a celebration of our anniversary anyway and we were really looking forward to what we had planned the next day... “ and that day was 'AWESOME DAY!'

[Back to Part 1 of this 2 part post]

The Morning of our First Wedding Anniversary

I never did finish these posts about our trip to NYC... so here begins a two part story of Day Six... the day of our 1st Year Wedding Anniversary. We had some events planned but as with all of the best plans... the day didn't pan out exactly as we'd envisaged, nevertheless we enjoyed our anniversary muchly regardless.

The events you could really split into three:
1) To start the day it was to be Ice Skating at the Rockefeller Centre and shopping around that area/5th Avenue.
2) Buying some tickets and heading to a show in the evening
3) Heading for a romantic desert buffet in the rotating restaurant looking over Times Square.

Unfortunately weather familiar to Belfast - a blanket of grey clouds - had found it's way to NYC. By the time we had grabbed some breakfast and headed to the Rockefeller Centre there was a fine drizzle of rain turning the sidewalk a darker hue. Skating in the rink was on hold so in the hopes the rain might stop we started on the shopping side of our mornings plans.

The Nintendo Shop was first up - the bad thing being we had all day and I didn't want to buy things there and then that I'd have to carry about most of the day. Instead I got Norn Girl to pledge that we could indeed return later in the week at a more opportune time. Unlike public showers at a leisure centre, the water falling on our heads wasn't stopping of it's own accord shortly after it had begun. By this point I also needed to release some water of my own and we began to look for a Starbucks or some public toilets.

We were going to be heading towards Tiffany's on 5th Avenue anyway so started that trek early. It turned out that there was a distinct lack of toilets or Starbucks along that section of 5th Avenue. Norn Girls radar for coffee thankfully pinned down an outlet... it was hiding on the 1st floor of none other than Trump Towers.

A more gaudy interior to a building you'd be hard pushed to find. It took me back to episodes of hotel inspector I'd seen, except instead of horrible cheap brown and orange wallpaper it was expensive marble but of the same ilk in terms of it's effect. Focusing on the fact I was now busting to go, we made it to the Starbucks stall and whilst being served Norn Girl asked if they had any toilets. The toilets are on the lower ground floor, to get to them you go down the escalator and through a corridor that will have you wondering which hole in some iron-rich clay soil you fell down. Credit to Mr Trump though, his building has decent toilets. Some would say that like his apprentices they were probably designed to handle a lot of crap being thrown at them.

Relieved, we headed on. Next stop was Tiffany's, even as a guy with little regards for most mind numbingly formulaic romantic comedy, I had indeed seen and enjoyed breakfast at Tiffany's. However this was but an atom to the planet that was Norn Girl's glee at being there in person. It was all very sparkly but also like most of 5th Avenue, very expensive, very much too expensive for our poor bank accounts. Randomly most of the gold seemed to have been crafted into it's current form in Spain (going by the labels), it seemed a convoluted way of buying some jewellery made in Spain. As New York City was already proving to be very expensive though, we didn't have all that much money to spare and sadly common sense had to take precedence. Nothing bad ever happens apparently and Norn Girl did leave the shop holding a little blue box in a blue bag. The box contained a cute glass snowman Christmas Tree Decoration.

Pausing for photos outside the shop we headed back to the Rockefeller Centre. We arrived at a bad time, they'd restarted skating but we couldn't wait for the start of the next session.

To be continued... [Part 2]