Christmas in Manhattan

In an effort to distract ourselves from the fact that we had no family to celebrate Christmas with, we took ourselves off to New York for 7 days. The day before we arrived there was a massive snow storm, much to Boris' delight.

The buildings had on their best livery- Sax 5th Ave went for the snowflake look, but others had exquisite window displays.

We did a great deal of walking, but it was difficult to prevent the icy blast penetrating our numerous layers of wool. The only problem we really had though was that once we went inside we roasted. We spent lots of time dressing and then undressing as we moved between cosy inside and Artic outside.

We did many of the usual tourist type things, including a boat trip on the river, which gave Boris the opportunity to see the Statue of Liberty up close and to also get a good look at the Manhattan skyline. They are only allowing 10 people up the statue at a time these days (selected by lottery) we we didn't attempt to get lucky - the odds are too great given the number of people. We did, however, make it up the Empire State Building and got a great view of the city under snow.

There were skaters in both Central Park (particularly picturesque) and Bryant Park. Very Christmassy. Boris, of course, was mostly interested having in snowball fights.

The museums were wonderful. The Natural History Museum had the best dioramas I have ever seen , and their dinosaur exhibits were also remarkable.

Boris enjoyed the Andy Warhol pieces at the Museum of Modern Art, and has started to show an appreciation of Roy Lichtenstein.

The Metropolitan Museum was astounding - the stuff they have! I particularly enjoyed the impressionist collection, but also the early Italian masters - of which they had an abundance. W hardly scratched the surface in the three hours we were there - it would take weeks to get around it all.

One late afternoon we left Boris watching TV in the hotel (he'd done his dash looking at cultural masterpieces) and Rod & I went to a Kandinsky exhibition at the Guggenheim.

On Christmas Day we went to the movies on 42nd St. It was packed! We were at the opening night of "Sherlock Holmes" - very enjoyable it was too. Perfect Boris-type movie - lots of action and an easy story to follow...

On the last day Boris and Rod both picked up food poisoning - we think Rod got his from the place we had breakfast - (surprisingly, as it was a nice little restaurant which looked clean enough), and Boris later on in the day from a kebab roadside cart (which wasn't surprising at all). Both had a really rough night and the next day we had to get up early to head for the airport. Thanks to that scare on Christmas Day when that Nigerian tried to set off explosives on the flight from Holland, we had to be super early at the airport to deal with security. We managed all that, then about an hour before our flight was due to depart, it got cancelled. We ended up waiting hours before getting on an indirect flight to Atlanta (via North Carolina). You can imagine the state both Rod and Boris were in by the time we got home -poor things. It took days for them to recover. Anyway, they are both fit and well now, ready to take on the New Year!