New York, Day One

We didn’t run the noisy AC during the night, so the room was very toasty when we finally crawled out of bed around 10:30am (7:30am body-clock time). We visited the diner next door, had a kinda-ok breakfast, except I made the mistake of giving Bjarki one of my walnuts, which was so thoroughly rejected that he refused to eat anything whatsoever afterwards.

Then we walked to Central Park and stopped at the first playground we found. It didn’t take long before we determined that another Icelandic family was at the park (what are the chances?!) so we chatted with them for a long while. The kids played and played and played, and we didn’t leave the playground until it was well past 1pm. Then we headed south towards the Natural History Museum but by that time both kids were delirious with hunger so we headed to the Shake Shack for some really yummy burgers and shakes.

Having mostly regained our sanity, we headed into the American Natural History Museum where we managed to spend just over an hour before Bjarki blew his top and we had to leave. Anna really enjoyed the visit though, and we can envision a time where Bjarki will too. The dinosaur bones were most impressive. Anna also puzzled over a human skeleton on display (the pelvic bone was a big mystery, so were the huge eye sockets).

To give the adult legs a break, we then headed for a second playgound on the edge of Central Park that we had seen while walking south. While there I needed directions to the nearest restroom (thank you Anna), and approached a lady that seemed to be corralling a few kids of “I-need-to-go-to-the-toilet-NOW” age. The man she had been speaking to turned as I spoke to her and gosh-darnit, it was somebody I’m pretty darn sure is a famous actor (wearing glasses and a baseball cap). Very, very famous actor. Last name very close to Demon. First name same as Deirdre’s husband. Which totally makes sense since actors would have the free time on a Wednesday afternoon to hang out at the park with their kid. I tried not to flinch, but I’m sure I did.

Anyway, off to the toilet we went. Afterwards, Bjarki (by then also known as Mr. Hungry-and-Tired-and-Off-by-Three-Hours Grumpy) managed to bring the daughter of the aforementioned actor to mild tears, which prompted an exchange of a few words. I’ll be sure to let him know what he did if said daughter ever becomes famous. At some point Bjarki almost got a lift up to a platform from the weirdly familiar person but he looked around for me to give permission but I was so close that I just lifted him myself. Bottom line: It’s weird weird weird bumping into people that you feel you ‘know’ but really don’t. And it must be equally weird being that person everybody thinks they know – and know that they do.

At the end of the day we took the subway north again, stopped by at a Whole Foods (where Bjarki lost it again).  Then Finnur took the kids to the hotel for a bath while I waited on a pizza. Getting the kids to fall asleep with us all in the same room continues to be a bit of a challenge but we managed except that Anna woke up again and discovered I was on the computer (did you notice my blog updates below?!?) and couldn’t fall asleep until it was almost midnight. I’m sure that will make for an interesting tomorrow.

As I’m writing this it’s a little past 1am New York time (10pm my body-clock time) and it’s just started raining outside. The weather forecast is pretty scorching for the next few days, but hopefully we can work around that. Oh, and we plan to bring snacks for the kids unlike today. Rookie mistake! 🙂

Finnur did shoot a low-res image of the aforementioned weirdly familiar person leaving the playground, but I don’t want to post it online.  If somebody is really really curious they can send me an email, or leave a message and we can go from there…