NYC Week 3: I finally saw something other than my hotel...For the past two weeks (half-weeks, really...) I've been staying in a small boutique hotel in midtown Manhattan... off the beaten path, out of range of tourists... quiet, with lots of good restaurants nearby and a bagel shop across the street. This week, I'm in a 45-story hotel in Times Square. Tonight, after dinner (a buffalo steak at a somewhat cheesy restaurant with farm scenes on the wall, mediocre, overpriced food and EXCELLENT beer brewed in-house), I ditched my heels for walking shoes & jeans and explored a little. I did all the kid stuff... The Hershey's store smells like imitation chocolate smell... like a Hershey-scented pencil I had in elementary school. It does *not* smell like real chocolate. And, for the record (a few of you will know why this is significant...) you cannot get red Hershey's kisses, even in the Times Square store. Across the street, a 20-foot tall blue light-up M&M beckoned me - M&M World. A two-story shrine to M&M's, featuring just about every imaginable product with an M&M logo slapped on it, and a giant wall of M&M's in 22 different colors that you could mix to your heart's desire. I felt like I was in the movie Spaceballs... "Spaceballs the doll... Spaceballs the lunchbox... Spaceballs the toilet paper..." I had to call my little sister and tell her all about it :) If they had had M&M toe socks, I would've come home with a pair, but alas, that seems to be one of the few items they're missing. A few doors down, there's a Tasti-D-Lite. YUM. Too bad I wasn't carrying any cash and they don't take credit card... maybe I'll get some deliciousness tomorrow night... And finally, to finish off my kid's tour of Times Square... Toys-R-Us. 4 stories. One guy in a Geoffrey giraffe costume (photo op!) One 15-foot tall animatronic T-Rex (photo op!). One 2-story girl haven full of Barbies. One life-sized Lego statue of Captain Jack Sparrow. One 6-foot tall Lego statue of the Statue of Liberty. One working ferris wheel. Seriously. There were kids on it. Oh, somewhere in there I directed a girl from Norway to the Statue of Liberty. She was a little lost. And there was a little French boy in Toys-R-Us who was enamoured with the T'Rex. For the record, "T-Rex" translates to French. "Il y a un T-Rex! Un T-Rex!!!" Oh... and Madison Square Garden has an office building on top of it. FYI. | 
