Biffo!

Thursday was another day of chillin' out around New York.

Tracey and I went uptown early and wandered down East 42nd Street (in line with Times Square and running east - west across Manhattan), this is where Grand Central Station and the Chrysler Building can be found. There is the famous photo of Grand Central Station with sun streaming in the windows lighting up the room, no chance of that happening now as it is surrounded by high buildings. It is a very impressive building, the photos show its beautiful blue roof and fantastic architecture.

We continued down 42nd to the Chrysler Building. This a seriously sensational building. It is on par, if not better than, the Queue Building (aka the Empire State Building) - I definitely think it is a better looking building. The gargoyles and eagles on the outside are all chrome as are the spike and famous curved bits at the very top of the building. There isn't a viewing platorm or anything like that so Tracey and I formed a queue of our own in 42nd Street, just so we didn't miss out on our daily dose.

Then we headed back to to Bryant Park for a hot chocolate from the Max Brenner shop and to wait for the teenagers to make their way uptown to meet us. Then we headed across to Times Square to go to M & M World. Tracey and the boys were talking about this M & M World and I thought they were talking about the singer Eminem and I was wondering what would be in there. They soon put me straight with much eye-rolling.

M & M World is pretty impressive. Three levels devoted to all things M & M - tshirts, stickers, dispensing machines, boxer shorts, chocolates, plates, cups, soft toys, and anything else you can think of. We loaded up on some interesting M & M paraphenalia and an appropriate amount of M & Ms themselves before heading up to 5th Avenue again to do some shopping, yes even the teenagers joined in.

After battling the crowds for a while we headed back to the apartment to rest up before we commenced our evening's entertainment!

Thursday evening saw us off to Madison Square Garden to watch the New York Rangers play the New York Islanders in ice hockey. Apparently this was a huge match, intense local rivalry, New York pride on the line, more important than life itself!!

The Islanders were the past greats having won 3 or 4 competitions on the trot in the 1980's but have dropped off a bit in recent times, the Rangers were the up and coming favourites.

This is one strange game. Luckily I started chatting to they guy next to me otherwise we wouldn't have had any idea, and would have been left sitting in an empty stadium waiting for the 4th quarter to start! There are about 26 teams in the comp across both the US and Canada. The NY Rangers were playing Thursday and then backing up gain to play on Friday, none of this 1 week break between games nonsense. The game has 3 x 20 minute periods of play and there are 6 players from each team on the ice - the goal keeper, 2 defenders, and 3 offensive players. The objective is, of course, to get the puck into the opponent's net, the puck weighs about 1.3kgs so it has a bit of weight behind it and they sure don't hold back. There were unlimited substitutions and they seemed to change the whole team about every 3 or 4 minutes during the game.

There was a lot of crunching into the barriers like you see on TV and in the movies. There were a few fights which are pretty pointless as they all wear so much padding, and when a fight breaks out they all stand back and watch for a few minutes before the Refs step in and stop them. Fighting and tripping all earn you time on the side lines usually 2 minutes for a trip and 5 minutes for a fight.

Anyway that's enough of a lesson. I thought it was a good game, it sure takes a lot of skill to be skating (backwards as much as forwards), controlling the puck, and avoiding the opposition. Many of the players were from Eastern Europe or Sweden where I guess they learn to skate at a young age.

The end result was the Rangers won 4 to 2 much to the crowds' delight.

The Islanders really did not rate a mention. At an NRL game both teams get introduced and talked about before the game starts, this game was a Rangers' home game so the Islanders were not mentioned or introduced. The crowd was very well behaved, except for some yobs yelling out during the National Anthem, and all in all it was a good night.

After the game we were back on the B-Line home.

Tomorrow it's van Gogh, Cezanne, Degas, Matisse, Tolouse-Latrec, Picasso, Dali, Monet, and soooo many more!Read more