Trip To New York – Day Seven

Day 7 – Tuesday – The Last (Jed-)Day

Our final full day in NYC. A bit sad but at the same time I will look forward to waking up tomorrow and knowing the next time I go to bed, it will be in my own bed! Yesterday had lots of traveling so today was going to be about keeping it local.

The first thing we wanted to do was head to Macy’s to attempt some more shopping. Whether we’d be successful wasn’t very important but we had to at least try. But as per usual, it was time for breakfast. Andrew’s Coffee Shop was on the way to Macy’s so a good place to start.

My standard Andrew’s breakfast is 2 eggs, medium, with bacon and toast. Swapping the Home fries for french fries. And a tea. The weakest of teas but tea none the less. The staff also offer you hot water to top up your tea (like a coffee refill, but more depressing) but you have to reuse the tea bag. Now that is depressing, using a teabag you’ve already tried to get the maximum amount of tea flavour out of it, on another cup of tea.

After breakfast we headed to Macy’s and split up. When we were last here I spotted some jeans just as I was leaving and I thought I MUST buy them. They looked really cool and were in a style I’d not see before. But I had seen them only while taking a ‘down’ elevator and seeing as there were 9 floor at Macy’s, it might take a while to narrow down where they were!

I went up and down the escalators until I saw them…they were encased in plastic and were part of a display. The Jean I loved were vintage Levi jeans part of their ‘evolution of the 501’ display. The jeans I want are over 100 years old! Trust my luck!

A sales person must have sensed my disappointment as he came over and asked me if I wanted some help. I decided not to admit I had a lusting for 100 year old jeans so just said I wanted some Levis. I knew I didn’t want skinny jeans (or more correctly, my body isn’t skinny jeans friendly!) so I told the guy that and left him to make the decision. He brought back a pair of jeans in the size I requested….but it turns out that my jean size is 2 inches smaller in the style he suggested. Result.

The new pair I tried on were great. $75 which in the UK would have cost me about £100. I did almost pick up a 2nd pair in a different colour but I didn’t want to go too crazy! I already had a football jersey and I actually don’t need a load of clothes, no matter how cheap they are. I also turned down a reduced pair of Red Levis…they were only $20 but, well, I have a folder of photos on my facebook of people wearing red trousers and I’m not sure I wanted to be one of those people!

After being all shopping-ed out we met again and headed back to our hotel to drop off the shopping. It meant we could continue our exploration without having bags with us. Unladen, we had a couple of hours to kill. I still needed to get a copy of the Fire and Fury so I suggested we head back to the Amazon Bookstore to see if it is back in stock. It also had tea and Chai lattes, and free wifi, so seemed like a good plan.

It was only a short walk from the hotel but it really gave me another chance to admire the great architecture of New York. We’d get another close view of the Empire State Building. We arrived at the book store and found a stand with plenty of copies of the book. I noticed that some books were blue under their dust jacks and others were black. I picked up a blue one and it had a comment saying ‘copyright 2018’. That must be the first edition, surely.

Except the other had ‘First Edition published 2018’ so I guessed that was the correct 1st edition. I then had to find the best copy of it as it was a gift. A lot of them had sticky finger prints on the dust jackets. It took a while but I found what I believed to be and took it to the tills. The lady there asked if I was a Prime member and would you know it, I am! Well in the UK but it wasn’t a problem – I could show her on my app and she let me have it for a ‘discounted’ price. It should have been $30 but with the prime discount it was less than $18 including the taxes – Bargain!

With another successful shop completed we grabbed some drinks in the coffee shop attached to the Amazon store. Here, the guy behind the counter congratulated on my cool Assassin’s Creed t-shirt. It made me chuckle and made the whole process of ONLY packing video game related t-shirts for the trip worthwhile! 😀

We headed back to the hotel again. Knowing we wanted to start preparing our bodies for the jet lag on the return journey, we decided to try and get dinner a bit earlier. Near the hotel was a restaurant recommended in the Lonely Planet guide book I was given as a Secret Santa gift. It is called ‘Keen Chophouse’ and specialises in meat! I checked online and it said it closed at 10.30pm which was perfect for us as we wanted an early night.

Leaving the hotel just after 8pm we got to the restaurant and we had no booking so we spoke to the maetradee. He explained there was a 45 minute wait for a table for two. We decided to wait for the table and took a seat in the bar. The bar is notable for 2 things.

1. There was a chalk-written quiz on the wall.
2. There was a massive naked painting of a ‘Miss/Mrs. Keen’ on the wall.

The questions were

a) What flag has 7 colours?
b) What animals are known as ships of the desert?

And here is the the naked Keen Woman.

Dinner for me was an 8oz fillet steak with chips and creamed spinach. The steak was cooked correctly but I must admit it was NOTHING compared to the bone-in Rib-Eye I had earlier in the trip. I was stuffed though with all the spinach and the fries. I didn’t even finish the fries, or the spinach and I even left a little bit of the steak.

When they came back and offered a dessert menu we couldn’t eat another thing! Luckily the restaurant was on the same street as the hotel so I got them to roll me all the way back to my bed! Next time I go to bed it will be in my own bed – I can’t wait.