We saw a good place for breakfast last night so headed there and had a proper American breakfast which left us both stuffed. We thought it would be a good idea to walk off the food so we headed up to Central Park and spent a couple of hours exploring there. It's amazingly large with several massive lakes and baseball diamonds inside. It was very busy with lots of joggers and cyclists out being fit and there we were sat on a bench knackered drinking coke to try and stay awake.
On the way back to the room about midday we came across a protest parade that was so large that they closed the Avenue of the Americas, a major street in NYC that is normally grid locked 24/7.
Back at the hotel we decided to have a rest for an hour before heading out again.
We decided to take a look at the High line which is a conversion of an old overground railway line into an attractive walk way. On the way we hit the protest again, only now it was much bigger with bands and placards everywhere. The whole of midtown was shutdown because of it. Typically the protest parade was heading the exact same way we wanted to go, in fact the end of the parade was about half a block from the High Line. The quickest way to get there turned out to be joining the march just ahead of a band and following it to the end.
People were wearing t-shirts with slogans such as 'save trees', 'no fracking' and the like so Mark fitted right in with his 'Save Ferris' t-shirt which got more than a few comments.
We'd looked up to see if today was anything special and it was the international day of peace, so we feel like we did our bit.
Before hitting the high Line we grabbed a quick hot dog, there was a whole selection of dogs to choose from but the vendor only understood 'hotdog' so we just had one of those each.
The High Line itself was a bit disappointing, it was very busy and it needed a couple more months to establish itself as the new part we were at had just opened yesterday, still, it was a good walk.
On the way back we passed Madison Square Gardens and then popped into Macy's which had the worlds shitiest toilets (literally).
Back to the room to get changed and then we headed out to the Rockafeller Building as we'd tickets to go to the top to watch the sunset. It took about 30 minutes to get to the top as you have to queue for security, queue for a photo, queue for the lift and then queue. When we got up there though it was well worth it, the views were stunning and despite it being overcast all day, it had cleared up nicely for the sunset.
We'd got there early so had plenty of time to look around before the sun dropped and the buildings turned on their light showing New York in all of its glory. Its traditional to do the sky deck on the Empire State Building which is taller but by doing it from the Rock you get to see the Empire State Building.
When we'd got bored of pushing other tourists around the sky deck and photobombing people taking pics with iPads we decended back to ground level and sought out food.
We chose a large restaurant and sat upstairs and ordered a couple of steaks. Mark followed this up with a ridiculously rich chocolate dessert which was about 1000 calories. Mmm chocolate.
After dinner we had a few beers and then the only places we could find were Irish bars, so we had a few there before retiring for the night. It was our last night in NYC before starting the road trip, although we will be back in a couple of weeks.
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