Day 15 – Celeb Sightings

The best thing about staying at Katie’s manager’s place was that he gave us a list of things to do to authenticate our New York experience. We awoke and headed out into another sweltering day (why does the heat wave come at the END of the summer?!) and went to a bagel shop down the street and went across the street to pick up some lox (which I never knew was a form of fish) and some cream cheese for our bagel. We then walked to Central Park to sit and eat our breakfast. I thoroughly enjoyed the lox on the bagel although Vero wasn’t really a fan of the smoked fish.

Central Park turned out to be a highlight of the trip as this place is huge! There was really too much to explore in one visit so we just picked some highlights and traipsed through the Park. I would love to have a park like this down the street from me as they have some great bicycle and walking paths. You have to really pay attention to the traffic lights in the park though because if you jaywalk you may cut off a cyclist going full tilt and they will crash!

I was personally looking forward to seeing Strawberry Fields, the section of the park dedicated to John Lennon. When we arrived there I realized that it was just that – a section of the park. I was expecting some strawberry plants or something. There was a nice emblem in the sidewalk which said Imagine.

We also had our first celebrity sighting! We were walking by this woman holding two children in her arms and I looked at her while she passed…the brown hair, the huge sunglasses, the big lips…BIG LIPS! We did a double take as she walked by us and realized it was Angelina Jolie! Miguel was disappointed he missed it completely as he was looking elsewhere. That was a pretty cool event. The picture here is from some celebrity sighting website we found the day after.

I was surprised not to see many vendors as Claude had told me they were all over Central Park. There were a few near the exit of the park but they didn’t have much in terms of merchandise.

We started going down 5th Avenue in the heat and didn’t see too much at all until we spied FAO Schwartz. I had never really heard of this toy store, but apparently it’s featured in the film “Big” with Tom Hanks where he plays a giant piano (by stepping on the keys). It was a neat toy store and Miguel and I posed with some life size Darth Vader and Chewbacca LEGO statues! That was very cool. We also got a demonstration of the life-size piano which was neat. The most memorable experience of the store was the extreme air conditioning in the store which was a reprieve from the outside elements.

We then went to Sak’s – a giant department store which was alright. Katie was in search for a dress for a wedding she was going to so I just explored around for a bit but mainly sat down for awhile and relaxed as we had been walking a lot. Sak’s is pretty cool for the fact that it’s a dozen floors of departments, mainly fashion from what I could see. It’s worth paying a visit but I don’t know if I would buy much there (read: expensive!)

We then hooked over to Madison Avenue and kept walking down the street. In the back of my mind, I was keeping a watch on the area we were heading because I was in search of the Marvel Comics headquarters. When I was a kid, I always said I wanted to visit New York to see where the mighty Marvels work.

We ended up at the Empire State Building but it was a 45 minute wait so we decided against going up into it. There is always next time! We then went away from the main strip to find Marvel Comics but I must have written down the address wrong! We could not find it at all which disappointed me as I led us astray for a few blocks in search of the building.

We headed back towards downtown and the crowds of people were starting to pick up as we got closer to Times Square. THIS was what we were waiting for! We traveled through a rougher looking neighbourhood where merchant booths were set up all along the sidewalk. I remember one guy yelling “Get this stuff before the cops come!” I picked up a few souvenirs and when we hit Times Square, it was a little overwhelming.

Thousands of people in the area and billboards lighting up every product imaginable! There were tons of musicals to find along Broadway and I now understood the term for Off Broadway (as in, some theaters are off the Broadway Street). At this point, we had all had enough from traveling for the day. Miguel and Katie headed home in a cab while Vero and I decided to head to the theater which had the musical Rent to see if we could get tickets.

There was a big commotion at the Rent theater as there was someone outside signing autographs. I guess Rent fans are quite fanatic! We went to the ticket booth and we had the option of picking up some cheaper tickets for $55 each, or we could wait for an hour, put our names into a lottery to get access to the $20 seats for the first row of the house! While I must admit this was an extremely enticing offer, I convinced Vero that it would be best if we just paid the extra cash and go home and rest awhile before the musical, instead of waiting until an hour later, then some time later to find out if we won or not. This is an amazing deal though and I would recommend it to anyone in the future.

We hoofed it home on the subway, relaxed for a short bit of time with some bread, cheese and wine while Vero ironed out my clothes to make me look good! It was the least I could do as we were heading out for a night on the town in New York City with the greatest looking girl there! We arranged to meet up with Katie and Miguel after the musical and headed downtown. I was pretty hot in my jeans and long sleeve shirt, but it wasn’t unbearable.

We got to the theater and found our seats to the extreme left of the stage on the floor level. From our view, we couldn’t see a small portion of the left stage but this was fine as most of the action happened in the centre. We managed to sneak over a few seats closer to the center as some people didn’t show up.

Surprisingly, Vero saw a friend of hers from Ottawa sitting a few rows in front of us! We called out his name and was surprised to see us there (as we were to see him!) He had said he was up for the weekend to see this musical and was surprised to hear we got our tickets that day as he had his own for months. Small world.

Rent was a pretty good musical. I am not used to musicals…I realized it takes a lot of focus to listen to the words that they are singing as this is the entire dialogue! I realized that when I listen to music, I listen more to the music rather than the lyrics! They had an actual band up on stage in the corner which was great and they had a very dynamic cast. Essentially, Rent is a modern musical which deals with people being evicted from their apartment and their struggle to stay there. Other stories weave around with dealing with AIDS and drug addiction and rock n’ roll. I must admit that reading the Wikipedia entry on it the next morning made the story a lot cleare for me!

I found it odd that every time the main character Mark came onto the stage, the crowd would go wild! I thought that maybe this was just part of the regular show…it wasn’t until I looked on Wikipedia that I found out that the actor who was on stage was Anthony Rapp (of Dazed and Confused fame…well, really, he’s probably more famous for being in Rent) who was in the original production in the early 90s! He was back for a six week stint after being away from the musical for quite a few years. I was very glad to hear that we took part in a piece of Rent history. I also realized that this must have been the actor outside signing autographs for the fans in the early afternoon.

After the musical, Vero and I phoned Katie and Miguel and found out that they were heading back to the apartment as Katie had forgotten her license and they were unable to get into the club we were planning to meet at after the musical. We headed back home and waited for them (while grabbing an excellent slice of pizza around the corner!). When we went upstairs, we sat down for a bit with a glass of wine and decided to not go back out for the night. We had had our share of excitement for the day and were excited to get some rest. We stayed up for a few hours having some wine and watching TV before hitting the sack.