Lets start at the start, although this will be brief!

The cast: I'm Mark (duh!), and my DGF is Louise. Vicky is her sister. Her Parents are Carol and Garry, who we were taking to NYC for the first time for their 30th wedding anniversary. My best friend Dan came too (he was dating Vicky until a few weeks ago), but he's a quiet chap, so you wont here much about him

Sunday: Lou’s mom was hysterical when she saw that instead of a taxi or shuttle bus we were actually going to NYC in a limo. That was quite cool. Hotel was ‘nice’, but not fantastic. Excellent location, rooms were more than big enough, but some of them look quite dated – carol and garry’s room had been redecorated and had a massive flat screen TV, and was ace, the other two rooms looked like they needed decorating and had old TV’s. I’m sure when they’re done renovating it’ll be ace – they’re doing it one room at a time. There are obviously some very small rooms there too as one day I was talking to lou with the door open as I was leaving to get morning coffee and the woman next door walked past, and couldn’t help but comment that our room looked massive compared to hers. The hotel was on 50th at 7th, right opposite the Gershwin Theatre where Wicked is. It has a nice Japanese restraunt attached, but we didnt eat there...

Sunday afternoon we walked around times square, and because it was Sunday… we went the pub J one of MANY MANY ‘irish bars’. I found out villa lost 6-0 to Newcastle. Bad times!

We went to a place called Charley & Co as they had an all day happy hour and '$10 Beer and a Burger'. This appealed to Garry no end, so here we went!

We unpacked, didn’t eat again, and went to bed. Monday was when I stared making them WALK. EVERYWHERE!!

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Monday: We woke up and went for a walk for breakfast. We found a nice looking Deli called the cranberry café, and had breakfast. This place was really busy, and took their time service us, so we didn’t go back there. The breakfast was very nice, I had pancakes and French toast. Lou had a full on breakfast, including ‘home fries’, a unique looking pile of potatoes, onions and peppers. Blech (im allergic to onions).

We walked over to the King Tut exhibition – went to go in, and two of the four New York passes we'd bought didn’t work. They called the pass place for us and we just had to go fill in a form and get two new ones, no questions asked. I think they just had faulty chips on them. The heavens opened while we were there though, so got soaked walking back to Tut. The exhibition was ace, it has the first ever (and currently only) re-creation of Tut’s skeleton – he was very small, even at 19. I also never knew he was married, and had two stillborn children - hence there being no heir to the throne at the time, even though by 19 most people had several children then.

We were still pretty stuffed from breakfast, so decided to go around Madam Toussauds before even thinking about lunch. This is a pretty standard place, if you’ve been to the one in London you know what to expect – they’re no longer charging for photo’s with Obama though, that distinction now belongs to Robert Pattison!

We were finally dried out, so time to get wet again – we took a walk down to Madison Square Garden, as the MSG tour was next on our to do list. It wasn’t until we got inside the arena and near the box office that we were told they had temporarily suspended the tour until the winter while they do some renovation work – pfft. They don’t mention this on their website (that I noticed, anyway).

It was way too late for lunch now as we were planning on having a big meal for Carol and Garry’s wedding anniversary (it had been thirty years and one week). So we skipped lunch and went up to Rockefeller Plaza to book the NBC tour. The first gap they had for a group of six was 10.15 the next morning – fine by us, we’ll take it! We also pop in to Radio City, but they book their tours on a daily basis with no set times, so we have to come back tomorrow and hope. We walk back to the hotel via many shops, and refresh / shower / change for dinner.

Carol and Vicky are quite fussy eaters, so we tried to go to mainstream / easy looking places for dinner where we knew they’d eat. So we went to Olive Garden, the place that backs on to the Times Square TKTS booth. We had a cocktail or two while waiting for our table, and the meal was really nice – I can’t remember what I had for starters, but for the main course had a mixed grill, which was basically two massive kebab skewers of chicken and steak. Nom nom!! They also brought us daft amounts of breadsticks and salad, which all got demolished. I was sooo full it was untrue by the time I’d finished. I was in fact so full, and everyone was so worn out after our fist day, that we resisted the Irish pub next to the hotel on the way home, and went straight to bed!!