In April we flew to New York in order to celebrate my mother's sixtieth birthday. New York is familiar to all of us, but especially to my mother because she is working as an hostess de l'air for Finnair and for my brother because he lived there whilst modelling for many years. We were like most others not aware of the fact that Eyjafjallajökull would erupt and that most air traffick would be cancelled for a while. At the airport one flight after another cancelled and we were some of the last passengers to board any airplanes leaving the Finnish airspace that day. Happy we still got on board and we were able to make our trip, we arrived to JFK airport full of excitement.
We stayed close to Times Square at a nice hotel, but I think that we would all prefer staying downtown in a quieter area if we ever were to visit New York again. Well, then again we were in the midst of all the hustle and bustle and as a family that love to walk everywhere we were able to do just that. During our trip that was supposed to last four days but became a bit longer because of the flight restrictions we had the time to see and do a lot. We had brunch with some Finnish friends at a lovely place called Pastis in Manhattan's meatpacking district that has actually been home to 250 slaughterhouses and packing plants. We also went out to celebrate a good friends birthday and started with dinner at the Fig & Olive restaurant. After that we went to some famous nightclub that I really liked because they played R&B there but we did not stay on for long before we continued to a burlesque club called The Box. Interesting place indeed and I think that if I would not have lived in Europe for many years I would have been flabbergasted (love this word). It was a nice experience and even if the yet-lag was felt of, we had a great night indeed.
We did also visit some other great restaurants such as Oceana and had breakfast at le Pain Quotidien that is my favourite place for breakfast and brunching in Paris. Le Pain Quotidien could be found in many places in NYC and is definitely a place that I recommend if one likes ecological food and French bread.
We also did a lot of shopping and some of my favourite stores and definitely worth a visit are American Apparel and Abercrombie & Fitch. Not only can one shop wonderful clothes at A&F, but there are many beautiful people to look at at the same time (see picture of the two models).
As I already mentioned we did a lot of walking around and when we realised that we were not able to make it home on the scheduled flight we enjoyed a manicure and pedicure at a small Chinese place and went for a long walk in Central Park. We had lunch at a lovely small cafe and watched locals play baseball. We also visited the site of the formal World Trade Center.
On our last day we also met this man begging with his dog on the street and he told us that his leg was broken and that he had found the dog on the street one day. Impossible to know if what he was telling is the thruth, but he sure was amazingly good-looking and pleasant and I guess that I was lucky to have my mother with me because I might have just sat down begging with them otherwise.
We also had coffee with a friend of mine in downtown New York and that is where we met this lovely little dog. We also went to see the musical Rock of Ages. Our parents saw Billy Elliot and even being very different genres we were very content with both plays.
Then we did of course pay attention to all the horses in NYC and I did interview some NYPD policemen or actually a police woman about the life of their horses in New York. You can read more about it here.
On our last day in New York when we still were not sure if we would get home that day or not we went to see the Museum of Modern Art, Moma since there were some very interesting exhibitions at the time-being. Unfortunately it was closed but then again we would not have had much time to walk around the museum since we had a message from one of Finnairs airhostesses. That night we landed happy and excited in Tampere Finland. I don't think that I have ever been so happy to be back home.
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