New York: Day 2

Our itinerary for Day 2 was as follows:-

Martha Stewart – Macy’s – Empire State Building

After spending half a day at Martha’s studio recording, we decided to go on foot and explore the area around 28th St for a bit before heading to our next destination. We had lunch at McDonalds (I know you might think, ‘All the way to the States and they have McDonalds??’ But hey, we have to make comparisons between McDonalds Malaysia, Australia and New York ok?) :) Our conclusion, McDonalds in the States does taste better. Then we decided to head to a shopping institution here in US, Macys.

I was only wowed by one factor in this shopping centre. Everything else was just like any other departmental store. I was awed by their escalators!


In this day and age, I have only ever seen escalators made of steel/metal. I’m talking about the standard black, silver and white ones. At Macy’s top few floors, the escalators are made of wood!




Think about all the work someone had to put in to make each and every groove on each and every step to fit into the joints of the top step. Each groove the same depth and width as the one before. Gosh... I was so in awe of the handiwork. Maybe the amount of work that goes into making these are not as detailed as I envision it to be, but it sure looks like a very time consuming job!

We headed to the Empire State Building next. Had to experience ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ you know.. :) To reach the top we had to go through row upon row of red rope queue lines. It was a good thing there were only a handful of people there that day. It would be an absolute nightmare if it was jam packed. Can you imagine having to move a step at a time while waiting to get in through at least 4 rooms of zigzag-ing red queue lines? We walked through each room weaving our way through the maze of red lines completely thankful that there was no queue.

Crazy maze of red rope - There were 4 of these massive rooms


Image of the buildng set in marble

Image of the building set in glass, stone and tiny reflective tiles

We saw a video of the history while waiting to ride the lift up to the 86th floor

Alex up on the observation deck

Snow on the ledge of the building

We took the lift to the 80th floor and queued again to wait for a separate lift to take us to the 86th floor. Once we were there, it was a quite a fight to ignore the blinding cold. But it was worth it. It was absolutely beautiful to be up top with light snow falling down on us. Although visibility was reduced to ~3 miles, we could still make out the shape of the Chrysler Building, Brooklyn Bridge and Macy’s.

Macy's and the queue of yellow cabs outside the store

The pinnacle of the Empire State Building

The Chrysler building through the icy sky

This was me pretending to play with the snow off the ledge before hitting Alex with it

25 cents to look for a view through the lens


End of a nice day

Another landmark of New York done

cheryl