On Friday evening it was time for our annual trip downtown to Philips Arena to watch our home basketball team the Atlanta Hawks take on the Washington Wizards. The main event for us though was to listen to the school chorus sing on the court before the game. This year both girls were singing and they sounded great! Disappointingly, the Hawks lost to the Wizards 86-112. Winter appears to be gone for now and we had great fun yesterday afternoon, walking and clambering along a little known local path beside the Chattahoochee River to reach a hidden and unique bamboo forest.
Suddenly it's Girl Scout Cookie time again! This year the girls are confident saleswomen and the wonderful neighbours in our community are keen and ready to order! Susan has even volunteered to be the Cookie Mom for Claudia's troop, ordering in and distributing all the cookies. P.S. We take international (Sweden and UK!) orders too, with delivery and payment in the summer! This weekend we had Winter! All schools closed early and the whole city stopped working at 12.30pm on Friday so that everyone could get home before the anticipated Winter storm began during the evening. The temperature dropped to -8 degrees celsius over the weekend, but we managed to dust off our winter gear and find the snowboards. Disappointingly, there wasn't any snow here in the city but there was plenty of ice to go sledging down! It was a new experience to see trees bent over due to the weight of ice and admire huge icicles on the flowering bush outside the front door.
Today's new cultural experience was the school Spelling Bee! Thirty five students from 3rd-5th Grade were on stage today, battling it out to win a place in the district Spelling Bee. Kerstin was one of the finalists from her class Spelling Bee, so she was up on the stage, having chosen to take part, after spending the winter break practising a list of 450 words. She got through to the fifth round and was in the final group of eight; very impressive for a girl who is only in her second year of schooling in English!
On our final day we had another early start as we had tickets to the Top of the Rockefeller Center at 8.30am! The weather was perfect and we enjoyed more spectacular views across the city. Afterwards we walked up 5th Avenue to Central Park and made our way via the the many playgrounds to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We only had time and energy to see less than half of the incredible collection. However, just as we were leaving the museum, we receieved a message to say our flight was delayed by over 3 hours. Frustrated but undeterred, we treated ourslves to a yellow cab to take us to the Intrepid Museum; an aircraft carrier on the Hudson River exhibiting dozens of aircraft, concorde and the space shuttle Enterprise. It was a very long day in the end, with further delays at the airport, and we finally got home to bed at 1am.
On Thursday the weather was very cold and rainy so it was time to visit the museums. We all wanted to see the Natural History Museum, athough so did thousands of other visitors so it was an intense and crowded experience!
On Wednesday morning it was another early start to beat the crowds to the top of the Empire State Building. The views from the 86th floor observatory were spectacular and just being in the building was an impressive experience. Afterwards, we walked back to Times Square via Macys and the New York Public Library, stopping for lunch near Bryant Park. It the afternoon it was time to experience a Broadway show. We went to see Cirque du Soleil's Paramour at the Lyric Theatre which was excellent.
We got up early on our second day and took the subway to Lower Manhattan so that we could beat the crowds to the Statue of Liberty. We didn't have to queue long for the boat and by 9.30am we were sailing out to Liberty and Ellis Islands. It was a fantastic experience! In the afternoon, we walked up to the New York Stock Exchange then visited Federal Hall, another national monument, before heading to the 9/11 memorial which was a poignant experience. We admired the spectacular Fulton Center before taking the subway back to our hotel in Times Square. An awesome day!
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AuthorsSusan, Jonathan, Kerstin & Claudia Archives
September 2017
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