Weeeee love New Yawkkkkkk!

"I’ll have to turn off the engine," said the bus driver. "New York City has very stiff anti-idling laws."

We had already heard about the "no-talking-on-cellphones" law for when you’re crossing the street. Nevertheless, everyone crosses on red lights, including blind people with canes and parents with children!

It was exactly 4 p.m. Thursday; and we were waiting for our escort to return to the Travac Tours bus with our Sheraton Manhattan room keys.

The trip from Ottawa to New York City on our mother-daughter trip had taken exactly nine hours from our 7 a.m. departure, including an hour for lunch at Denny’s at noon.

The bus was full, with a surprising age range of men, women and children.

En route Travac escort Elaine Hickey doled out home-made muffins, bottles of water, and offered candies – and a steady banter about what to see and New York trivia. She handed out pamphlets, booklets and discount coupons, and showed a New York tourism movie, as well as a regular Hollywood movie.

Once in the city, we were on our own, and Naomi and I headed right to the discount same-day theatre ticket kiosk on Broadway and bought the last two tickets to Tony Award-winning "Avenue Q", described as "Sesame Street on crack".

The second day we lined up again for tickets to the "Drowsy Chaperone". It’s an experience to be in those long, snaking ticket lines.

Avenue Q is an adult puppet show, where the actors hold the puppets but are visible themselves.

We didn’t get seats together, so we switched seats at intermission to see the view from opposite sides. The show contains such memorable songs as:

"You’re a little bit racist"
"The Internet is for porn"
"There’s a fine fine line between love and a waste of time"
and "It sucks to be me."


In the evening street hawker/comedians promote late night comedy clubs for after theatre; but we didn’t try any.


So many food options. We had dinner the first night at Zen Palace, a vegan, vegetarian chain, but we both couldn’t stomach the zenmaki, a combination of string bean, carrot and soy ham wrapped sushi style in sesame nori.

Blossom, an upscale vegan restaurant in Chelsea was much better.

We had breakfast at Ellen’s Stardust Diner down the street from our hotel, where the singing waitstaff perform on an ear-shattering sound system and the wall has photos of the "Miss Subways" beauty queens from the 1940s.

Walking down the street, we saw a truck parked with a giant blow-up rat in the back of it. We found out later that the rat is placed where "undocumented" workers are doing construction work.

Then in the pouring rain we took a city tour Friday of all of Manhattan, included with our package, and learned a lot about the city.

When we stopped at Trump Tower for a bathroom break, we actually encountered The Donald himself with his bodyguards in the lobby. We took his photo and added it to our celebrity collection, with Angela Lansbury from the sidewalk on Broadway.

Saturday morning the rain finally stopped and we spent a breathtaking morning in beautiful Central Park, a few blocks walk from the hotel. So European-like, with rowboats on the pond, violinists playing underneath historic carved archways, and runners, dog walkers and strollers enjoying this natural paradise. We liked it so much, we returned Sunday morning as well and hated to leave.


Saturday afternoon and evening visits with Naomi’s friends working four jobs and living in tiny accommodations gave us a look at what it’s really like to live and work in New York City and pursue a career in theatre.

There is competition for everything in New York, not just for theatre roles. If you don’t like the prices at a restaurant or store, you can usually find what you’re looking for at the price you want to pay.

Early in the trip we had walked out of an overpriced diner, and then found Pick a Bagel down the street on 7th Avenue that offered twice as much food for half the price. We returned to Pick a Bagel a second time on our way to Central Park.

The bus left New York City at 1 p.m., Sunday, with a rest stop three hours later, and a buffet dinner stop at Plainsville Farms turkey restaurant in Cicero, N.Y., followed by a stop at the Duty Free. We arrived back in Ottawa at exactly 10 p.m. as promised.

As laden-down tour members assembled their purchase receipts and shopping bags for Customs, I realized that what we were bringing back was intangible. We had spent all our money on theatre tickets, and food, and the memories and digital photos were our carry-on.