I visited New York City yesterday and had tons of fun! My Dad and I took a bus trip. I have been to the city plenty of times before, however never as a tourist. Here was my opportunity to be one of those annoying people roaming about the city with a camera/phone in hand and stopping in the middle of the side walk to take photos. All photos are from my phone.
First we went to the Kinokuniya Bookstore. Check out their knitting books and pen aisle:

So many awesome books

Pens!
Next we went to the Empire State Building. First, when they say there is a 45 minute wait, they are lying. It was at least twice as long. Second, it doesn’t help that they have airport-like security set up. You know, the old kind: take your belts and jackets off, all possessions get put into a bin to be scanned, and you go through a metal detector. Really slowed the whole process down. Then the real waiting takes place. [Wait in line, move to another section of the building] repeat 5 times.
Along the way I cannot help but nerd out to the architecture.

Welcome to Rapture
Ok, yes, I’m a nerd, but really doesn’t it make you feel like maybe this is an underwater paradise? No? Ok, maybe I was just very bored.

Can you see it?

Change Begins Here
All the while they have you going past these huge electronic displays (ie. Multiple monitors all display the same movie clips) touting how they have made the Empire State Building a leader in sustainability. Couldn’t they have just printed some posters out? It seems counter productive to be running these elaborate displays. (Sorry no pictures of these.)
Finally we made it to the observation deck. (If you want to go up to the very top you have to pay an additional $15 per person at this time.)

View from the 86th floor

View from the 86th floor

View from the 86th floor
We walked past Macy’s and stepped inside:

The World's Largest Store
We had lunch at the Bread Factory. I did have other food besides cheesecake, but I couldn’t resist!

The desert case at The Bread Factory

Cake!
Walked down to the water. We didn’t have time to take a boat out to the Statue.

Boats
We took a taxi to Grand Central Station:

Grand Central Terminal

Inside Grand Central
Went to see the tree at Rockefeller Center:

Giant Tree
Other things we did: We tried to see the window displays outside of Macy’s but these were so crowded. What we could see looked kind of like the old clay-mation style animations. We went into several amazing bead stores and ate dinner at the Cosmic Diner.
Here’s the loot I came away with for the day:

Loot
Now my whole body aches from walking all day. But what a grand time! My friend Irina was also in the city, but we never met up. Maybe next time…we should plan a yarn crawl!