Day Nine: 4th July (Fireworks or almost…)

Central Station was our first destination of the morning. It really is a magnificent building. From the outside it looks like any ordinary historical building but when you walk inside the high ceilings and stairways are really nice. You feel excited as if you are travelling somewhere special. Or maybe that a lion, zebra, hippopotamus, giraffe and a handful of penguins are going to burst through the door. Ok so that would only happen in an animated film.

We had lunch in the food court in Grand Central. The food court is great. The atmosphere is nice as you feel like you are in a train tunnel. There are lots of different food options. I had soup and a cream cheese poppy seed bagel which was delicious! Then Heng and I shared a piece of cake from Magnolia Bakery and both agreed that it was overly sweet and not that good at all. The cupcakes are good but I don’t recommend the Lemon Cake. It is the icing that is the worst, very very sickly sweet meringue icing.

Delicious

ergh way too sweet

After lunch we couldn’t resist going shopping again. Where else but Macy’s where all the sales are. It was awesome with lots of great bargains to be had. Heng got some good clothes and I finally got that new pair of jeans I was after. We overstayed at Macy’s though and this leads to the rest of the story of the day.

As quickly as we could we headed back to our hotel and got ready to go. Then we walked down towards the Times Square station to get the 7 train. This turned out to be the first mistake. There were people everywhere and it took a long time to get to the station. We got the train and then arrived in Flushing.

Second mistake was not to work out exactly how to get to the boat to begin with. Oh in case you don’t know we were supposed to be on a July 4^th Fireworks Cruise. Laura asked the station people as we couldn’t see a taxi anywhere. Turns out they are black cars in Flushing not orange cabs. We got in a cab after getting the taxi driver to check his GPS. He couldn’t find the Marina. We passed it at least once and ended up driving around an airport. When we got to the Marina the ship was gone. Off in the distance to part unknown I am sure. DAMN!

Anyway we consoled ourselves by having a not so good dinner at an Asian restaurant in flushing. I have never had so much terrible canned corned concealed in dishes before. Then we headed back to Manhattan. We saw some of the fireworks in the sky near our hotel and then watched the rest on our hotel TV. Not exactly the night we planned… Oh well.

Looks better than it tastes