Back in cold Sweden again!

I hardly know where to begin. We came home yesterday night after two weeks in the States, and they have been two of the most amazing weeks in my life! I think I'll split the trip up in three parts, since this blog post would go on forever otherwise. I'll start today with the New Yark part, then get back later with a post about Washington DC, and do a final one on our stay in Clifton Forge and Douthat State Park!

We left last Sunday, on the thirteenth, which turned out to be a pretty long day! We arrived in New York, on JFK airport, around five in the afternoon local time, which for us was actually ten in the evening. When we arrived at the hotel (We stayed at the Pearl Hotel on 49th west) it was closer to midnight our time (which was local time 19.00), and we were just beat! Ten hours of flight is kind of draining! But the hotel was sooo nice! The room was really pretty:

And the service was excellent (although they couldn't get me a glutenfree breakfast, but that was ok since we had a refridgerator in the room and the supermarket on the corner sold glutenfree bagels). This was one of the better hotels we've ever stayed in. Anyway, we decided that we had to try and stay awake until at least nine pm, so we went out to look at the supermarket and the closest surroundings. I don't really remember what we saw that night, but we fell asleep pretty fast once nine o'clock rolled around!

The next day we first went to the Apple store, since Thomas wanted to buy and Ipad 2 (they are apparently sold out all over the world, so he didn't find one). There was a line of people at least 200 m long outside of the store, just waiting until the store got a new shipment of Ipads! Luckily for us, they were waiting outside the store, so we could at least go in and have a look around. Apple have some cool stuff! We didn't buy anything, and went on to have coffee at a Starbucks (we don't have Starbucks in Sweden, so this is a novelty for us :) We also had lunch at TGI Friday's, which we also don't get in Sweden), which we really enjoyed. We also went to the Disney Store on Broadway (which contained way too much Micky Mouse and Tinkerbell and way too little Donald Duck for my taste), Toys 'R Us on Broadway (which had a five storey Ferris Wheel inside! 

And a whole section dedicated to Willy Wonka candy which I bought for my sister), 

and ended the shopping day with Midtown Comics on Times Square. My oh my how much we loved that store! We ended up spending lots of money in there, but the comics were really cheap compared to the imported ones back home, so we got lots for our money. Plus, the dollar is very cheap right now!

The comics we ended up buying were the following (starting at upper left in the photo): 100 Bullets (issue 2), Constantine Hellblazer (issues 1 and 2), Freak Angels (issue 1), Fables (issues 1, 2 and 3), Lucifer (issue 1), Northlanders (issue 1), Transmetropolitan (issues 5 and 6), Chew (issue 1), Y - The last man (issue 1), Locke & Key (issue 3), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (no issue), and Little Adventures in Oz (issue 1 and 2).

Quite the haul! Both me and Thomas LOVE comics (or graphic novels, as they should be called), and it was so much fun just browsing in this store. One of the employees came up to me almost as soon as I came in and asked if he could help me, and ended up giving me great tips about new comics after I told him I was looking for the Locke & Key one (that is the best comic there is!). I think he was probably pleased that a girl came in and actually knew something about comics! He was very nice though, and as it turned out a huge fan of swedish death metal, so he got along with Thomas too.

The next day was spent doing a bit more shopping, most of the stores that we didn't have time for on Monday. We started the day by going to the top of Rockefeller Center to look at the view, which was really pretty. We managed to get most of the photos just before the sun disappeared too.

We then went to Nintendo World store, which was really awesome. I got to try the new Nintendo Wii game Kirby's world of yarn (great name, don't you think?), which was very cute and kind of fun (although I really suck with the wii remote!). We also bought a small plush toy for my sister from the Pickmin games (which we have both played and loved). 

We also visited the Gap, where Thomas bought a shirt (we don't get the Gap in Sweden), and Victoria's Secret (which we also don't get in Sweden), where I got free reins! Boy did I enjoy this store! I ended up buying a brah and matching panties (they're green with white dots on, they look like a princess cake!) which are probably the best fitting underwear I've ever had, a pair of lace panties and a small nightgown/negligé. I wish I had been able to go here before I got married, so I could have bought my wedding underwear here!

Our last stop for the day was Babycakes bakery in Chinatown, a small glutenfree bakery that Virginia had scouted out for me. I went sort of wild in here as well, as I wanted to try pretty much everything they had!

The best one was definitely the chocolate doughnut in he right bottom corner. I haven't had a doughnut in fifteen years, I've never seen a glutenfree one before! Great stuff!

Tuesday night ended at a small Japanese restaurant called Yakitori Totto, which was completely awesome! It was one of those restaurants where you sit at the counter and the chefs are on the other side making your food. We had lots of skewers with different stuff on them, my favorite was the one with grilled Shitake mushrooms. I think I could live on these alone! This restaurant was actually so good that we went back on Thursday night for another filling :)

On Wednesday I got to meet up with Virginia (who writes the blog Virginia is for...), which was absolutely fabulous! We had planned to go to the Natural History museum, but it was completely packed (there was even a line outside to get in!), but we went and had lunch at the Stack Shack, and then Virginia and me went yarn crawling. Can you believe I didn't get any photos of any of the yarn stores?!!! I guess I was too busy looking around! First we went to Annie & Co, which was a really nice store. The following skeins ended up following me home:

Madelinetosh Lace (100 % merino, 868 m/113 g) in colourway Ms Taylor

Madelinetosh Merino Light (100 % Merino, 384 m/100 g) in colourway Norway Spruce

Madelinetosh Prairie (100 % merino, 768 m/114 g) in colourway Oxblood

Then we took a bus to Knitty City, which was also a really nice store! There were several people sitting around in the store knitting, and they were really helpful. The following skeins went with me back to the hotel (which sounded a lot dirtier than it was meant to...):

Madelinetosh Merino Light (100 % Merino, 384 m/100 g) in colourway Mulled Wine

Malabrigo Sock yarn (100 % merino, 402 m/100 g) in colourway Lettuce

Then we took the subway (yay! I got to go on the NY subway!) to School Products yarns, which was a really weird store. It was located in a sky scraper of some kind, so you had to know it was there. Then we took the elevator up to get to the actual store, where we had to ring the bell to be let in! I guess that might be typical of NY? Anyway, the store was a bit different too, they only carried Karabella yarns and a lot of unbranded yarn on cones. I ended up just buying these two skeins of this:

Karabella Yarns Lacampo (60 % Llama/40 % Cotton, 124 m/50 g) in a teal tweed colour (10901)

The yarn crawl was really awesome, and it was so much fun to get to meet Virginia in real life! Most of my blog friends seem to be so far away in different countries, so it's kind of unreal to actually meet any live!

Then me and Virgina parted, and I went back to the hotel to meet up with Thomas again. This night we got to go see Phantom of the Opera on Broadway! I'm a huge Andrew Lloyd Webber-fan, and Thomas loves this particular musical as well, so this was really a high point of our trip.

On Thursday it was St Patrick's Day, which we totally didn't know about when we booked the trip, so we went to see the parade on 5th Avenue in the morning. It was a lot of military and police men, and after a while we sort of grew tired of the (very drunken) crowds, so we went to the Museum of Modern Art ( MoMA) instead. This was a very beautiful museum, and we got to see some Warhol:

Lichtenstein:

And my personal favourite, Vincent Van Gogh:

I don't really know why, but I love Van Gogh, and the Starry Night painting is one of my favourites. I got goose bumps just by looking at it! We're not that big art fans, or at least we don't know that much about art, but we liked a lot of the stuff at MoMA. 

For the evening we went back to Yakitori Totto (it was just that good), and had our last night in NY. It was kind of nice to go to this small, kind of quiet restaurant on St Patrick's Day to avoid the crowds, and a perfect ending to the NY stay.

Friday was mostly spent on a bus to Washington DC, where we took a cab to Arlington for our stay at the Hilton Garden Inn hotel. We were really tired from travelling, so we just had dinner at a nearby libanese restaurant (they had awesome hummus), had a quick drink at the hotel bar and went to bed.

Ok, I'll have to get back to you with the rest of the stuff! We're still very jet-lagged, and I have to go to bed as I have to work tomorrow too. And we have lots of cuddling to do with Hobbe, as he's stayed with my parents for the past two weeks :)

/ Jenny