Tuesday, December 13, 2016

NYC and Ocean City - Maryland


The Yankee Stadium tour was interesting for the boys, girls went shopping in Harlem.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it is bizarre being in the minority of white people in the district shopping area.

In and around our area on the Upper West side, most high rise apartment blocks are around 5 stories high. That is because anything 6 and above requires an elevator. Our last day in NYC saw us have a lazy time, wondering Central Park playgrounds and visiting Strawberry Fields, a
part of the park dedicated to John Lennon, so his Widow - Yoko Ono can look out of her penthouse window and view it. It got too cold at -1 degrees Celsius and we headed back to the apartment to watch the NFL games.

Our room consists of only 2 double beds, a TV and a basin. As we don’t have a fridge to keep our food and drinks cool, at minus 1 degrees Celsius, the window ledge did the job! The sun sets here at about 4.40pm. Snow began to fall at 5pm! Our doorman laughed because we hadn’t seen much snow before and built the kids a small snowman. The snow all turned to slush by morning. 

Up at 6am and onto our Greyhound bus out to Ocean City – Maryland. All buses equipped with wifi and charging stations, much to Makalea’s delight for 8 hours!! Our plan is to have 4 days of peace and quiet – off the grid to recover and recoup our finances after Manhattan, living on take out and snacks for the 6 days, we were looking forward to be able to cook.


Ocean City is an Atlantic coastal resort town – an absolute entertainment mecca in the Summer time.  Home to about 8,000 residence, this town swells to around 350,000 people on weekends in the Summer, hosting around 8 million visitors annually. 2 amusement parks line the Atlantic Boardwalk, which lasts for 37 blocks, copious mini golf centers, restaurants, bars and surf shops – all closed for the season! You could fire a cannon up these streets today in Winter and not hit anyone. The Connor’s thought they could walk a couple of blocks to find a Grocery Store and buy some food, but unfortunately 'no', 30 blocks later, we found the only Supermarket open in town in Winter. We do have ocean views from our apartment though and it is just beautiful.