Christmas in NYC Rockettes, Rockefeller Center and Chinatown

So our story begins a few weeks ago.  There’s a website that auctions off goods and services to raise money for charity.someone donates, let’s say tickets to the Radio City Rockettes Christmas Spectacular.  The tickets are posted on the site, and bidders post their bids ...

Drew was the successful bidder for two tickets.  The woman who coordinated the auction asked us when we wanted to see the show.  We said “December 14.”

And when Becca heard, she said “you’re crazy, don’t you know that’s SantaCon?”

Yes, the biggest pub crawl in NYC.  The participants dress as Santa as they make their way around the city’s bars.  For charity, of course.  

The woman who coordinated the auction was supposed to overnight the tickets to us.  Instead she used priority mail ...and the tickets were NOT delivered before the day of the show.

We went into the city anyhow, and headed straight to the box office.  So instead of a leisurely walk uptown, enjoying the sites, we had to rush from Penn Station to Radio City.  

I didn’t get a picture of the marquee, but I just love the decorations at the entrance to the music hall.

There were still decent seats available.  We decided to see the show.

The lobby is magnificent.

The stage.

Organ music before the show.

Can’t show you any of the performances, we weren’t allowed to video.  But it was 90 minutes of singing and dancing.  There’s even a short 3D movie.

Afterwards we walked down the block to Rockefeller Center.  There’s a pop up igloo cafe there this year.  It’s where they used to display the duplicate tree topper.    The tree topper is made of Swarovski crystals.

And, of course, the main attraction,  the tree.

We opted not to try to see the windows at Saks.  Instead, we hopped on the subway and headed downtown to Canal Street.

This is what you see on the corner of Canal St. and Mulberry Street:  welcome to Little Italy.

Walk down to the next block, Mott Street, and get a very different view.

It was time for dinner in our favorite hole-in-the-wall, Wo Hop.  A very low frills place, located in the basement of 17 Mott.  No atmosphere at all, but the food is fantastic.  It’s open 24/7/365, there’s always a line to get in, everything except tea is a la carte (you have to ask for white rice and crispy noodles), and they don’t take credit cards.

 Wonton soup, house special lo mein, pork with mixed vegetables — heaven.

Ran into some SantaCon participants on the subway back to Penn Station.  One of them sat down next to me, and it was quickly apparent he’d had too much Christmas cheer...

But overall a great day.

I found a video of one of the dances the Rockettes did in the show.  Enjoy.

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