It was not nearly as busy up around Rockefeller this morning but there were still a good number of people around. The police vans had all gone. After a quick breakfast we walked along to St Thomas' church for the Christmas morning service. It is a huge church and it was full - even the overflow chapel. It was a very high church service - with the smoking ball, the gold robes, boys & mens choirs & chanting. I have never seen all that in an Anglican Church ...

It was raining this morning & forecast to continue until about 2pm. We headed out on foot towards Grand Central Station and came across the Grand Central Market. Thus was full of fresh food stalls - beautiful looking cakes & gingerbread houses, every type of cheese you could want, meats, fruit & vegies, nuts & spices & flowers. It was busy in there with people most likely getting food for their Christmas celebrations. We also found the holiday...

Not long after we arrived, we noticed the daily queue outside a bagel shop in the next street. We googled it and found Ess-a-Bagel had a reputation for having the best bagels in NYC. We decided to check it out for brunch this morning. We stood outside the store in the queue for about 15mins and then at least another 20mins inside the shop. There were about 10 different varieties of bagel to choose from and at least 15 different flavoured cream cheeses. They incl...

We had decided we would go to Harlem today to have a soul food lunch. We had plenty of time before lunch so we walked up to 5th Avenue. It wasn't so crowded at Saks Fith Avenue so we got a better look at their Christmas windows. I wanted to see the Tiffany windows so we walked down 5th. We got to a corner that was all blocked off. Every person had to tell the policeman where they were going to see if they could continue or not. The issue was we had to pass Trump...

We caught the train uptown to Columbus Circle where there were some Christmas markets. As we wandered around, things started to look familiar. It seems all the Christmas markets have the same stalls. But, we did find a stall selling 3 cashmere scarves for $20. Seems was too cheap to be real cashmere but they were soft, we hadn't put scarves on and it was cold! We went back to the station to go up to 72nd street as this was the best entrance into Central Park for...