ANHM, naked statues & Macarons!

One of my favorite Japanese snacks, Pocky . I got these at Pearl River Mart the other day. I'd never seen or tasted these flavors before. The honey was all right but the grape was really gross! Well, not that gross, but it tasted like medicine! Not very appetizing.
Our last night in Queens was that Sunday so we headed over to our hotel the next morning. We were planning to just drop off our luggage in the lobby lockers, but since they had a room ready, they let us check in early.! I thought that was awesome! Our hotel was in the Herald Square District and blocks away from a couple of subway stops as well as most major NYC sights. After we dropped our our junk, before going on over to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) .
Because it was the late late morning, we decided to have lunch first after checking out a few dinosaur exhibits. This was the cafe on the 2nd floor (I think, Bert, confirm?). There was a special exhibit on mythological beasts so their lunch theme was "Dragon Wings".
Here are the "Dragon (chicken) Wings" with roasted vegetables. That was a honkin' big serving. We shared the plate between us. The vegetables were quite tasty - potatoes, carrots, baby squash, parsnips & beets.
The view from one of the windows. Sorry I can't be more specific.
Dinosaur bones:
Dead rodents:
The museum lobby:
Magnificent soaring ceilings, marble columns and dinosaur skeletons (sorry I forgot which ones they were) that were simply amazing to see:
African elephants from the 'African Mammals' exhibit:
A trio of windows from the Asian Exhibit (Islamic art area):
A Moai from Easter Island. I don't think this was a real one though. All the little kids gravitated towards this. With the popularity of the recent movie, "A Night at the Museum", this piece was easily recognizable with the kids..."Me want gum gum!" or "Let my dum dum speak"!
Part of the Philippine artifacts exhibit. These pieces from the tribe (can't remember which one, sorry) that reside near the Banaue Rice Terraces.
Okay, so SOME tribes of Filipinos hunted heads. I wish the museum had a more positive image of Filipinos to portray to the masses. There are other cultures that also do the same thing but it's not publicized.
Philippine artifacts fromt he Southern part of the Islands (Mindanao). Those swords are called 'kris' as seen on the popular Philippine tourist wall decorations, "Weapons of Moroland". The Wall of Biodiversity. See that large orange and red flower? That's a corpse flower from Indonesia.
Another apartment building near the AMNH: Subway tiles. They had better ones with designs of dinosaurs and other creatures.
One of a pair of statues by Columbian artist Fernando Botero (in his trademark "everyone is overly plump" style) located in the Time Warner building in Columbus Circle:
I had another photo with me pointing to the crotchal region but of course, I didn't post that one!
The view from the 3 floor of the Time Warner Building. You can see the statue of Columbus out there.
Columbus Circle:
For a late snack we went to Bouchon (in the same building) where TC had a chocolate chip cookie with vanilla ice cream. I figured, we're on vacation and we were going to walk off our calories anyways! We were actually looking for the bakery, but saw the cafe instead. It's right underneath a huge Samsun sign.
Bert's trio of chocolate bouchons (means 'cork' in French) with raspberry sorbet:
My raspberry macaron with lemon sorbet and fresh berries:
This was really good. I'm not a fan of sour thing, but the sorbet wasn't too tart. The fresh berries also made me feel like I was kind of eating healthy. Yeah, right.
Can you see the melted chocolate chips? This was really rich!
It was late afternoon so there weren't too many folks there. Our waiter was a tall French guy with a mop of corkscrew curls (not pictured). I nicknamed him (in my mind), "Wierd Al".

On my way to the bathroom we passed by the bakery that Lotus and Shogun raved about. Ever since my "incident" at Dean & Deluca, I was cautious about taking conspicuous photos.
The counter held many tempting treats.

Macarons, chocolate sandwich cookies and more macarons. The first batch of macarons were traditional flavors like chocolate, caramel and coffee. The second set were more "exotic" flavors (peach, pistachio & I forgot the other one!).I made the biggest (food) splurge. These were pretty big by the way, not the dinky Jacques Torres' sized ones. These particular macarons were pretty pricey. Put it this way, I bought 2 of each flavor (there were 6) - so a dozen set me back $30. Do the math. Plus I bought some pastries for breakfast the next day: a pan aux raisin, a blueberry muffin & a banana nut muffin.

Caramel:

Most of the shops in the Time Warner building were for high rollers. Lots of name brands that I recognized but can't afford. We didn't really look around all the floors (although I noticed they had a huge Whole Foods there) so we left and I think we headed back to our hotel to rest our feet. Later for dinner, we walked around Union Square looking for a place to eat. We saw this Thai place, Montien which is in the East Village. It wasn't too crowded yet. There were a few people at the bar. I noticed at a lot of the place we ate, TC was the only kid!

My green salad with tofu triangles and peanut sauce.Calamari rings with sweet chili sauce. I didn't expect the calamari to look like 'onion rings'. They were okay - not too oily and still crunchy. I prefer the thicker, shorter rings.

Bert's standby - Pad Thai noodles. Nice garnish!

Fried rice (TC's choice) served in a pineapple.

Of course, it was way too much for all of us to finish. We couldnt' even bring the leftovers back because we didn't have a fridge (or a microwave). I know we could have had Thai food back in San Diego but I didn't want to eat hot dogs or hamburgers again. With an Asian restaurant, at least we know that TC will eat some version of rice (be it fried, steamed or sticky). We knew we weren't planning on eating at really fancy places (we didn't bring the clothes for it either!) but we didn't want to eat fast food either.

Coney Island, Times Square & The Dakota

For this Sunday afternoon, Bert made the decision for us to venture off to Coney Island , the last stop on the N train. It would turn out to be a nearly 1 hour ride.
Ahh - the countdown for the hot dog eating contest at Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs . [Edit on July 8th - turns out that American Joey Chestnut beat the 6-time winner Takeru Kobayashi this year. Ugh - 66 hot dogs gulped down in 12 minutes!].
Shot from across the street. This place would be packed later:
It was almost 11 o'clock. None of the amusement parks were open just yet. The boardwalk was still mercifully bare as were the beaches. You could tell we weren't in Southern California. No gigantic fake titted chicks with tans or silicone trout lips. No buff muscle Mary's or frat boy dudes here. Not to say that Easternerss are unattractive. That's not the case. It's just refreshing to see people being themselves. There were people of all shapes, sizes, ages, and ethnicities here. It wasn't that fake artificial & homogenous standard of beauty that Southern California "dictates" which happen to be thin (if you're a woman) and/or surgically enhanced, blond, tan and fit automatons.

Bert's main reason for coming here was this is the last year of the old or "classic" Coney Island. Behind this wall are the makings of the "new" Coney Island Project, where it will be bigger and better or whatever they're proclaiming it to become.

There was also a Nathan's on the boardwalk:

Wanna arm wrestle? One of the coin operated games near the Wonder Wheel ferris wheel:

We rode this sucker and it was pretty fun! It's the only ferris wheel of it's kind to have swinging cars.

Eastern view from the Wonder Wheel:

The Western view from the Wonder Wheel. Looks like housing projects. Below is Water Flume ride at Astroland:

We rode the Water Flume (seen below) which was pretty fun. Only one major drop towards the end and we got a bit soaked!

It's a good thing we ate after the ride! We had to try Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs before we left Coney Island. Holy shite! The line was out the door! It took us about 30 minutes. To our left is another line (can't really be seen) for those folks who wanted to buy seafood or chicken. There was a line inside and outside Nathan's!

Finally, at long last:

Bert's chili dog:

A gentleman in front of us had extra printouts of a two for one coupon for hot dogs, so we took advantage of it. I didn't think the hot dogs were anything extra special. True, they had a 'skin' on the dog which gave it a bit of an extra 'snap' when you bite into it. They were beefier tasting than the kind you'd buy at a store however. Not bad...

After Coney Island, we took the N train back to the city and ended up at 42nd Street near Times Square. The ride took about 50 minutes! Fk! I am not a fan of Times Square! I'm not the kind of person that likes to be in the hubbub or crush of excitement.It's too crowded and too noisy! Duh, I know, it's Times Square, but I hate having my personal body space invaded by others. I felt so claustrophic and that I would end up getting crushed and killed! And this wasn't even a big event or anything.

When we passed through, the median was closed off. There was a huge stage with various performers. We caught the tail end of some act from Connecticut (looked like a high school dance troupe) plus the beginning of a Chinese acrobat performance. It was too difficult to see the stage (although it was on the jumbo-tron screen), so we decided to cross the street of death and head for...

the biggest toy store in the world, the Toys 'R Us in Times Square, which is 4 stories of toys, toys and toys!

The life size T-Rex (it moves too!):

Good ole Spider Man. Unfortunately, my photo of an airborne Superman stopping a huge truck came out too dark.

We rode the ferris wheel and stood in line for about 20 minutes for the privilege (ha ha). Nothing is free here! We got a duddy car - it was the Fisher Price Little People. Why couldn't we get Jimmy Neutron or Scooby Doo? Turns out you can't pick what you want. At least we didn't get those damn slutty Bratz dolls or the vapid Barbie-mobile! That poo monster looking thing is a character from the Candyland game board (forgot his name!!!!)

I remember that Captain Jack recommended Gray's Papaya so we decided to give that a try as well. This is the one at Broadway and 72nd. The link I provided is outdated by the way.

I read that particular link prior to our trip and noted that the dogs were .75; well, they raised their prices by $1.00! The dogs were like Nathan's - they had that skin that snapped when you bit into it. But again, I don't really eat a lot of hot dogs and therefore am not a connoisseur of this type of food. It was all right! Their fresh pineapple juice was really delicious though!

I know, a sacrilege - TC and I like ketchup (& relish - I know Lotus is gagging) on our dogs. Bert likes mustard and onions or chili if he can get it.

Although I originally wanted to check out this bakery I read on another food blog, it was too far north so we wanted to check out Central Park. We The Dakota Apartments, located on the corner of 72nd St. & Central Park West. It was a sobering moment knowing that John Lennon was shot to death on his own doorstep by a crazed fan.

We ended up spending the rest of that afternoon looking for Herschel Playground (which we found). We walked across a giant grass field, looking sorely out of place as couples , groups of friends and families had picnics, threw frisbies, or sunbathed. It was a long and tiring day. We ended up going back to our friends' place where they were kind enough to order pizza for dinner.