The most surprising thing about the Radio City Music Hall tour was that you didn’t exit through the gift shop … mind you it was just next door.  And they sold cold bottled water – hooray! (yes single use plastic water bottles are terrible but it’s still feeling like 35 freakin’ degrees, sorry. We are at least putting them in the recycling)

It was time for the next part of our Rockefeller adventure – ‘Top of the Rock’ – the high observation point that isn’t the Empire State Building, basically (we did that last time).  For Top of the Rock, Im glad we splashed out a little extra for the ‘VIP’ tickets that get you past the queues, else we would have waited at least an hour. It was worth it just for the time saved.  The lift ride to the stop starts interestingly.  The lights close, and suddenly the whole lift goes pitch black, before the disco lights come on in the ceiling and give you something to watch as you climb about 76 storeys into the air.

 

Before long, normality is more or less restored and you’re on the 76th floor – ready to take in some amazing view of New York City on this hot, humid, and hazy day.

It was a bit surprising that even this far up, there wasn’t much of a breeze for the most part – it was just scorching, another “Feels like 37” day.   Wondering if the floor was going to melt beneath our feet, we didn’t stay up there for all that long. Just long enough to gaze at the lovely Empire State Building again, and get a glimpse of the lovely Chrysler Building as well. In the distant haze you could just make out the not-sydney-harbour-bridge Hell Gate Bridge, too.

When it came time to descend (with the lift doing it’s same pitch-black-then-disco-lights trick), we found the nearest Starbucks to sit in the aircon and cool off with a huge cup of their really-quite-lovely lemonade.

For old times’ sake, we headed a few blocks up to Central Park, to see how it was going.  Saw a few sights on the way.

We reached Central Park and quickly reached a conclusion. It’s toooo darn hot.

But we saw a squirrel 🙂

We didn’t adventure on much further – even the squirrels had lost their seemingly boundless playful energy.  They were just walking from place to place rather than flitting about at 100 miles an hour.  We definitely we not capable of any flitting. Just sitting.  With an ice cream. In the shade.  We declared it an “at least we tried” – then turned around to get back to the hotel and it’s marvellous aircon.

We reached the hotel just in time for room service to come and make up the room  But, not to worry, we’d put in some washing that we had to pick up so it was as good a time as any to do that.  On the way there, is a place proclaiming it had good coffee.  Can this happen in New York? I was determined to find out.

First good sign: it had Flat White on the menu.  Second good sign: Just look at the coffee!

It was a proper, good, flat white – with no cinnamon on top. I’d give it an 8/10.

After the little detour, we got back to hotel and just let the aircon bring us back to some degree of humanity.  Maybe it was with a degree of irony that the show we went to see tonight was Disney’s Frozen – The Musical.  Perry kinda bought tickets on a whim because they were cheap, and because hey yeah why not?  The seats were off on the edge with partially restricted vision, but that’s OK … just like the show.  I guess maybe if I were a kid it’d totally blow my socks off when Elsa comes on, but the big ‘Let it Go’ number somehow didn’t have the massive impact and gravity I thought it would.  The sub-second costume change was pretty nifty part way through the song, though.  If nothing else, at least I now know what happens in Frozen – it’s more than just one song.  All the cast performed really well and it was visually impressive and all that…just, I dunno, left me a bit cold (haha).

Sorry if those notes on the show are a bit short, but it’s late.  If I can think of anything to add, I’ll do it tomorrow.  More adventures in holy-crap-its-hot-here-in-New-York-City await!