New York New York....the city that never sleeps....

So after my big hair appointment, for which you will have to wait for pictures until my DSLR recharges, we drove into the RV park in down town Jersey City - just across the harbour from NYC - and checked in. Glenn did an awesome job driving the RV in city traffic but we were all very happy to be here.

So we jumped on the subway into Times Square and munched on NY hotdogs and pretzels while we formulated a plan to fill our afternoon....

We let the kids decide so of course we started with Hershey's World and M & M's World - total chaos, it was like a tourist feeding frenzy, thousands of people just buying everything in sight! The M&M's store was three stories high!

After that the kids wanted to see Central Park so we strolled up town and went for a wander. They had a play at the playground, with thousands of other kids, and we wandered through the park to check out the not so touristy areas. It is freezing and the skating rink is still partially frozen and the trees and grass are only just coming back to life now.

Then we decided to see how the other half lived and wandered into the famous Plaza Hotel. Sigh. So beautiful.

Then, since we were on 5th Avenue, we thought we'd do a spot of window shopping with 1 million of our closest friends! It was so busy, they had lines of people waiting to go into stores. We stuck to the windows and kept moving, I pressed my nose up against a few but maintained discipline. I doubt we would have made the dress code for most of the stores I was interested in!

So after drooling at things in windows we wandered out of the tourist area and found a place to get a 'slice' NY style, the kids LOVED the massive slices!

Then we grabbed giant hot chocolates before heading back to Times Square to catch a surpise concert in the 'Blue Box' - it was Nicky Menage, which the kids were very excited about. Glenn and I had no idea who she was but apparently she is a big deal because there were people EVERYWHERE.

After checking out the concert we hit the souvenier shops for more magnets for our growing collection, and the boys again busied themselves looking for a 'Kai' numberplate for our youngest foster cadet. (Kai the boys have dilligently looked in every souvinier store across the country, it's very sweet to see how dedicated they are to finding their big bro a numberplate for your door! No luck so far, Mum and I may have to visit the factory and commission one when we are in China in October!)

Finally we decided we were cold enough and ready for hot showers and warm beds so we jumped on the safest subway in NYC with four rookie cops who were VERY happy to be heading home after a long shift on the first of a four day holiday weekend. There are police absolutely everywhere and we felt very safe the whole time we were wandering around.

Tomorrow we will check out Lady Liberty then we are heading into Flushing, Queens to find a kosher restaurant and then catch a Mets baseball game. Then it's off to the famous revolving restaurant from "Sleepless in Seattle" to get a birds eye view of the Empire State building.

Stay tuned for more pics!