Christmas time in New York (part 2)

The Saturday of our New York trip was all about the christmas windows of the stores. We started at the bottom part of central park. The first windows we saw were the ones of Bergdorf Goodman. We saw Tiffany's & Co's windows and spend time in the store itself, it's so nice to see all the shiny jewelry. The one of SAK's, for which we even had to wait and get in a little "room" to look at it (it showed a video of ice, changing color). especially Fifth Avenue was really crowded, so it took us a long time to walk on it. Some windows had "scenes" from different countries, which turned around and looked very pretty.  Some other windows were really fun too, because together they made a story about a Yeti. There were just so many other great windows, I just never had so much fun, looking at store's windows.
In the Rockafeller Center was also a christmas market, which was, compared to our german ones, really modern! We actually could go into the stands, and most of them had the special light, which keeps the stand a little warm. Of course that was crowded too, but the stands really had nice things. We ate fried pickles, which sounded weird to me the first time, but they were so fantastic, I loved them!
We continued walking on Fifth Avenue, watched the windows and went in some stores, we went in two Lindt and one Godiva store, to get the free testers ;)
The last big stop on our list were the Macy's windows. I think Macy's spent the most money for the windows. They were really nice, it was telling a christmas story with a little boy, and it really looked so pretty.
Inside of Macy's was a whole floor just with christmas ornaments and decoration. We spent a lot of time there, and ended up eating at Macy's too.
It was such a long day, and we walked so much, through so crowded places, but it was worth it!

The last half day, sunday, Max and I went to have lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe on Times Square. It was so awesome, and it was so much fun! The atmosphere was great and the food was amazing. Luckily we had reservations, because there were many people waiting already for their turn, because they had no reservations.
Afterwards we went home and packed our stuff together. Nicole and I drove home that day, and when we arrived at DC, there was snow! I was so excited about it, and form any crazy reason, I got snowdays the next two days, which means I had no school on those two days!

Christmas time in New York (part 1)

We spent last weekend in New York again! The reason we went was to see the christmas windows and decoration.
The first day I went to the city with Nicole, looking for a flea market, which we didn't find, because it was only open on weekends, and because Nicole still has her concussion we took it easier this day. So we went to the......... park, a park, which was built on an old subway station. There were still the rails, and it was all overgrown with plants, and they put art in the park. It was really nice to walk around there, because we passed apartment, and also a school.
We went to a crepe restaurant for lunch, which had so great nutella hot chocolate! After the whole meal we decided to go and have a mani- and pedicure. That took us a little while, but we could watch the people walking by the store while the nail polish was drying.It really was very relaxing, and it was good for Nicole too to relax. Afterwards we were more energized to go to the Chelsea market, which had many different stores, most of the expensive, but it was really fun to look at all the stuff, especially with the bakeries ;).
In the end we met Max for diner and we went to a middle eastern restaurant which was really good too.

The next day, friday. we went to the natural history museum in the morning. We spend a lot of time in the subway, because we first took the train in the wrong direction, got off, but Nicole didn't do it in time, so we waited for her to get back, took an express  train, which was also an mistake, because it just drove by our stop, so we got off and to go all the way back again. But we did arrive at the museum, and the first "part" we went in was the underwater area, because I wanted to see the huge whale. I really liked to see all the windows with underwater scenes, it was made really well.
We also went in a stones and minerals section, and in a part with animals from North America. But we also had not too much time, so we had to hurry through a little bit.
The thing we were hurrying for was the Broadway show "Christmas spectacular", performed by the Rockettes. It was really  a fantastic show, there were many different scenes, with great dancers and actors. The show was all about christmas, and in the end, when they were performing the scene with the three kings visiting the child, they even had real animals like sheep and even a camel! It was so amazing and so much fu to watch!
After the show (it was raining instead of snowing) Max and I went to see the huge Christmas tree in Rockafeller Center. It was really crowded, but it was worth it going through the crowds of people, because the tree looked great! It has a huge Swarovski star on the top, which looks so beautiful. It was even possible to skate in front of the tree, but usually people were waiting for their turn for 4 hours and the tickets cost 40$! That was not really worth it, obviously ;)
Then we went home, I also got one more New York experience, in which we were in the super crowded subway stop, with a crazy man in front of us.
Good two days :)

Black Friday shopping!

After the thanksgiving diner and watching the movie Max drove us to the Potomac Mills mall for shopping. It was really full, even though it was midnight! For those who don't know: black friday is the day after thanksgiving, on which stores have many sales.
The stores had really good deals, we went to Gap, Hollister, Aeropostale, American Eagle and so many other stores. It was really fun, and it was so crazy to see how many people are willing to stay up long until the morning (obviously we were these people too ;) ). We found many things, for example jeans, a backpack, shirts, sweaters and other things, and got them all for a good price :) And it was so much fun to go shopping at midnight for 5 hours!
In the end we were in that mall until 5 in the morning, and surprisingly I didn't feel that tired. But, of course, as soon as I came home I went to bed immediately and slept until 2 pm, which is not that long though.
We spent the rest of the day and the rest of the weekend with decorating the house for christmas and we already have a christmas tree!

Thanksgiving

On wednesday I had no school so we started preparing food for the following day, Thanksgiving! 
On Thursday morning we watched the Macy's parade in New York in TV. It is a huge parade, and it is organized so well. They had little parts of many things, like TV shows, and even famous people were performing there. It kind of reminded me to the "Faschingszug" in Germany, even though they are not half as big as this parade. 
We still had some preparations to do, but we were pretty much done when our friends Carlos and Gaby came. Of course we also had turkey, I think ours was 16 pounds, and it was a pretty big one. When Max cut the turkey, so we wouldn't have to bring the whole turkey on the table, I couldn't stop staring at it, because I never really saw a turkey being cut and I have to say, it also was kind of disgusting, but when Max was done and we got to eat it, it tasted really good. We also had a lot of other food, Nicole helped me with doing sweet potatoes, there was bred and stuffing for the turkey, and so much other stuff I forgot the name for and for desert we had pumpkin pie and a caramel one. Everything tasted really good, and it was so nice to sit with the family and friends and talk and just enjoy the time. Nicole even had a tradition, in which everyone says for what we're thankful for before eating. 
After a while (and after they made me play the guitar for them ;) ) Carlos and Gaby left and we started watching a movie until my friend Madina would come over for Black Friday shopping!