The Big Apple

Yesterday I woke up bright and early, filled myself with some yummy French toast and bacon, and boarded a bus headed for New York, the big apple, The Empire state, the city that never sleeps...  The trip had been organised by the Student Union to see...

Cirque du Soleil! The show which I’ve almost seen on countless occasions but never quite made it. So as you can imagine, I was ever so slightly excited. We (Rachel, Emily and I) arrived just outside the Rockefeller Centre about midday and so had a few hours to kill before the show started. So what did we do? Take embarrassing touristy photos of course – It was great!

Rachel, Emily and Me outside Radio City

Emily and Me outside the Rockefeller Centre

(SPOILER ALERT- just saying...)

So we made our way to Radio City to watch the performance, found our seats (right at the back and at the top of course- we’re students) and sat waiting anxiously for the show to begin. It was... slightly disappointing. I don’t want to sound like I didn’t enjoy it because some of it was truly incredible and some of it was absolutely hilarious but I couldn’t help but think at times that Britain’s Got Talent’s Spellbound do a better job! For starters there were a few mistakes, a few falls off ladders and off tightropes, and the promise to do things blindfolded, but only managing to keep the blindfold on for about 5 seconds - not all that impressive. On the other hand the trapeze section which you can see in the trailer was truly incredible and had me on the edge of my seat and similarly the strange spinning contraption around 25 seconds into the trailer was equally awe inspiring. But I sort of expected a bit more than a few amazing moments in a two hour show. The costumes and the set were incredible but at times there was just so much going on and it didn’t flow together well enough to appreciate it all. Also, it had been made into a strange musical type show (of course with completely odd songs and people with wedding singer voices) which was completely unnecessary and strange and I just didn’t understand the point of any of it; so that was sort of lost on me.

Despite my few little issues with it I did enjoy it, though would never have paid full price (ranging from $50-250!!!!) so quite pleased I didn’t! There were two absolutely brilliant ‘clown’ characters who came on in between most of the main acts and they were absolutely hilarious. If it hadn’t been for them I would probably be struggling to find more positive things to say about the show.

But the show was only 2 hours of our day in New York and so we spent the rest of the afternoonWe wandering around Times Square and up and down Broadway and around Central Park taking even more touristy photos!. I love it. While I don’t necessarily love New York (wait for my next blog) I did have an absolutely lovely day and really enjoyed getting off campus and going exploring for a bit.

 Well I did have a lovely time up until our bus was two hours late and so we had to stand waiting in the freezing cold waiting and then some crazy driver drove into the side of us, barely even scratching it, but we still had to wait another hour for a new bus. But that’s a whole other story and I think I’ve done enough complaining for today’s blog!