New York, United States

A few quick days in New York Our fair heroines leave New York for Sri Lanka Monday morning. Faced with at least one night in NYC, we made the logical decision and decided to spend 3 nights for a little vacation before the vacation. The first moments in New York were a little harrowing, even for experienced travellers like thetwinsontour who let nothing phase them. What? How can that be? Well, let me tell you. As I was climbing into the taxi cab, it started to move! That’s right! Sayed, the taxi driver, didn’t care if I was in the car or not, he was ready to go! Seriously, I had one leg in the car. Got the other one in, and he just kept on going! There we are, driving down the airport with the back door open. Fortunately, the airport was gridlocked and we were only going 2 miles per hour, which is not at all. I walk 3.7 mph on the treadmill without breaking a sweat. I could have walked circles around this fool. But it was midnight. And I was tired. And I nearly lost a limb. This may have given us a competitive advantage in the 3 legged race, but that is a small consolation. Anyways, our goal was to see a Broadway musical while we were in NYC. So we saw two in one day. Which is kind of a lot of musical for one day. We started out early (like we left the hotel about 10 kind of early, let’s not get too crazy here) and headed down to the TKTS office in Times Square. That’s a place with a really long line that you can buy discounted tickets for that day. Our original plan was to buy tickets for the 8pm show, but they only sell the matinee tickets in the morning. We couldn’t decide if we really wanted a matinee, and then we thought our preferred show was sold out. So we got out of line and went into a store to plan our next move in the warmth. Since it was cold and windy out, we decided that we would go to a museum where it’s temperature controlled and no wind. Thetwinsontour are always thinking! But then as we were walking past the ticket place we saw that our show did have tickets! So we were back in line for tickets to The Great Comet of 1812 starring Josh Groban. We still went to the MOMA because it was cold out and we had a couple of hours to kill. You know, it costs $25 to get in there now? I guess it’s worth it to see Van Gough’s Starry Night alone, and add to that Picasso’s first Cubist painting (the title is in French so I don’t know how to spell it), some Monet water lillies and you are in Masterpiece heaven. I did experience a near heart attack while admiring the Frida Kahlo, a debacle on the scale of the “fruit snacks in the Louvre caper of 2001.” A mother carrying a two year old came to show the baby the monkey in the painting, and she came harrowingly close to the masterpiece herself, and then kept inching the baby’s outstretched, slobbery, snotty fingers closer and closer to Frida. I held my breath in panic and fear about to witness a tragedy, and then it happened. The baby touched the frame! Who the hell thinks it is acceptable to touch the artwork? I was in shock. Stupefied really. It gives me heart palpitations just thinking about it. It was more than i could handle. Then we were off to see The Great Comet of 1812. It’s based on about a 20 page section of Tolstoy’s War and Peace (which is about a million pages). And the official thetwinsontour rating is Absolutely AhhhMaaaazing! It was so good and would have been worth a full price ticket. They actually have tables up on the stage that people can sit in (those are over $300 regular price, but you would be close enough to see Josh Groban’ s nose hairs, not that anyone wants to see nose hairs), but we did not sit there. We sat in the 8th row of the orchestra section. There were little platform aisles where the actors would walk amongst us and sing and dance. It was quite the spectacle, and you never knew where to look. Do you look at the dancers on the platform next to you, or do you look at the stage, or do you just rotate your head like an owl and try to take it all in? Needless to say, Josh Groban was also AhhhMaaaazing! It was a pretty long show too, 2 hours 45 minutes including intermission. Speaking of which, we went a little crazy during intermission. We were not excited by the merch booth because most of it just had the show logo. The only 2 things with Josh Groban on it were a poster (not putting that in my suitcase to lug around Sri Lanka) and a tote bag. The CD was $30 and had the original cast, not Josh Groban, and it’s only $17 on Amazon. Feeling a little depressed we noticed someone drinking from a nice souvenir reusable cup, so we decided to stop at the bar for a drink. We ordered a vodka and cranberry juice, and the bartender reached for a small glass, and I said I wanted a big glass. She said, ok I can do that, but no extra vodka. So we paid $15 each for a lot of cranberry juice with a splash of vodka. But, we were happy because we got a nice souvenir cup with a lid on it. I hate to think how much they charge for that if you order the proper drink for the cup. We had such a great time, we decided to go see what tickets were available for the evening shows. We settled on Ámelie because it sounded lighthearted and amusing. Luckily, we picked another good one. This one started Phillippa Soo, who evidently starred in Hamilton. Unbelievably talented. It was so good that I didn’t even mind getting a crook in my neck from trying to see around the big hair in front of me. It was also much shorter because it was only an hour and 40 minutes with no intermission (so we weren’t tempted to buy another souvenir cup…) Two Broadway plays and a museum pretty much take up the whole day, so that was our Saturday. Sunday we decided to go to the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately, we didn’t plan enough ahead on this one. I did look a few days before we left to see if we could get tickets to The Crown, but those were sold out until July 26. I didn’t pay attention to the fact that you also need reservations to the pedestal which is only booked out for a few days. So all we got to do was walk around the base and take selfies at every angle, which is still a good thing. We love the Statue of Liberty! The last thing on our To Do list for NYC was to visit Dô (that’s supposed to be a straight line over the O) as in Cookie Dough Confectionary that specializes in, you guessed it, yummy, delicious cookie dough! I found them on Instagram a few months ago, and as soon as I saw the first picture of deliciousness, I knew that we had to go. It’s located in Greenwich Village just a short walk from the subway station. Now, the line part is the tricky part because it starts across the street. There’s a large mob of gawkers in front of the store taking pictures and just generally being in the way, but that is not the line. The line starts across the street. And it’s long! It starts across the street because that is just apartment buildings (what a great place to live!) and an itty bitty park, that way the line isn’t blocking any other businesses. So once you join that line at the end of the street, you wait, and you wait, and you wait so long that you leave your sister in line while you go to the grocery store on the corner to buy pop for you both. Then when you come back, you find your sister has moved approximately 3 feet and 8 inches, so you wait some more. In total, we waited about an hour and a half (we got in line at 3:02pm on a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon). When you make it to the front of the line on the other side of the street, they give you a ticket that will allow you entre to the cookie dough mecca of NYC. They let a few people go per green light. Then you just have to dodge the people that think they got there at the perfect time and are trying to walk in in front of you. Hand your ticket to the lady at the door, and squeeze in the door to wait in line a little longer (but don’t worry, the time goes really fast as you take in all of the sights and take pictures of everything). And don’t try to be too sneaky. There’s a per person order limit of 4 items, so you can’t send one person to order for the whole soccer team. So after waiting in line forever, we rightfully decided that we deserved the biggest helping of cookie dough on the menu: 3 scoops! Go big or go home! That’s thetwinsontour motto! At least when it comes to dessert! Why would you wait that long and get a single scoop? The prices are not outlandish, it was $9 for a triple scoop. After taking a million pictures of my cookie dough, me and my cookie dough, and more of my cookie dough, it was time to sample my cookie dough. Oh. So. Good. It was like a party in my mouth. Like, my stomach gave my mouth a high five. I savoured each delectable mouthful. Savoured with an extra British U because that is so much more than just savoring it. And after spoonful after delicious spoonful, I looked down at my cookie dough and realized that I had eaten about half a scoop. And I could eat no more. I had 2 1/2 scoops left. I tried to keep eating, but I couldn’t do it. I am a cookie dough failure. Luckily, they give you lids, so I was able to take it back to my hotel and and store it in my mini fridge for dessert! And breakfast! Hip-hip-hooray for mini fridges!! Did I mention that our hotel had a tiny dish washer, too? These will be great in my tiny house! That is New York in a nutshell. The highlights for thetwinsontour and therefore the highlights for you our dear reader. Love, thetwinsontour