the empire (state building) strikes back

today - in a desperate (yet ultimately failed) attempt to stop melting credit cards at the tills at macy's - we decided to go up the empire state building. if you're not familiar with it, it's the tall pointy tower, pictured below:



incidentally, the empire state building is almost exactly the same size as the stack of pancakes i had for breakfast this morning. but i digress. after queuing for nowhere near as long as expected, we hopped in the express elevator up 80 floors, then the slightly less express elevator for the final 6 floors, before arriving at the observatory deck. it seems that new york has suddenly been hit by what is locally known as "the big warm up", which i believe is a technical meteorol...metero...mete...weather term for the start of spring. it was a gorgeous hot sunny day, if a little breezy, and there were some fantastic views to be had, such as:



there are also some of those telescopes where you can pay 50c to look down at the exact spot you've just paid $14 to climb 86 floors up from. to be fair, though, the only thing anyone was really interested in were the very curious pigeons who liked having their pictures taken:




it's well worth the trip up to the top. but after all that fresh air out on the observation deck, we'd worked up a bit of a thirst. and so began the eternal cycle of drink-wander-"oooo, look, shops!"-spend-drink-wander-"ooooo, look, shops!"...